{"id":2867,"date":"2013-02-22T03:00:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/?p=2867"},"modified":"2013-02-22T03:02:31","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T11:02:31","slug":"so-i-bought-this-pig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/22\/so-i-bought-this-pig\/","title":{"rendered":"So, I Bought This Pig&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2868\" alt=\"Whole Hog\" src=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/IMG_1216-e1361513586887.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I got home late one night a couple of weeks ago to a couple of harried emails and phone messages.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Hey Darrin, I\u2019m in your neighborhood and I\u2019ve got your hog. Call me back and I\u2019ll drop it off.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s on, suckas!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A couple of hours later, I had a couple of massive coolers sitting in my living room containing more than my weight in pork.<\/p>\n<p><em>I was in heaven!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What followed was a couple of hectic weeks butchering, curing, smoking, and otherwise preparing the whole hog to guarantee that I don\u2019t need to go to the grocery store again until at least the middle of next summer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>That\u2019s right, I bought a whole pig!<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Why Buy a Whole Hog?<\/h2>\n<p>After many months of researching, I decided to buy a whole (butchered) hog from a local farmer.<\/p>\n<p>I did this for several reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I hate grocery shopping, and love the idea of having a chest freezer full of meat in my house so I don\u2019t have to worry about it.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted to learn how to cook parts of animals that people in our culture have traditionally been afraid to try.<\/li>\n<li>Enterprising types have praised pigs since \u201ceverything but the oink\u201d can be cooked up in some tasty way.<\/li>\n<li>I <a href=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/28\/how-to-roast-a-chicken-like-a-boss\/\">roast whole chickens<\/a> all the time, but buying a whole cow is reeeeeeeeeally intimidating. A whole pig is a good challenge and middle ground between the two.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted to support local farmers that are raising their livestock sustainably and healthfully.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here\u2019s what I found in those coolers that fateful night:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2 loins<\/li>\n<li>2 ribs<\/li>\n<li>2 bellies<\/li>\n<li>2 shoulders, with hocks and trotters attached<\/li>\n<li>2 hams, with hocks and trotters attached<\/li>\n<li>1 head (yeah, that\u2019s right!)<\/li>\n<li>1 liver<\/li>\n<li>1 heart<\/li>\n<li>1 set of lungs (fo realsies!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ve been busy preserving what I can, and freezing the rest (hence the lack of updates recently).<\/p>\n<p><em>But now it\u2019s time I let you in on the epic project I am undertaking!<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>The Game Plan<\/h2>\n<p>Over the next several months, I\u2019ll show you how I am cooking (and eating) an entire pig from snout to tail.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I\u2019m calling it \u201cThe Whole Hog Project!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Expect plenty of pics and videos as I document how to cook everything from the obvious (pork chops) to the exotic (pork skin).<\/p>\n<p>Although I haven\u2019t settled 100% on my plan, here\u2019s the roadmap that I am currently settled on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019ll cut up the loin into a bunch of pork chops for frying and grilling.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll make barbecued ribs from the ribs (der!).<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll cure and smoke the bellies to make bacon.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll cure and smoke the hocks for adding to soups and stews.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll cure and smoke both of the hams to make city hams.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll make sausages, rillettes, and pulled pork from the picnic ham and butt.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll use the head, trotters, and tail to make headcheese.<\/li>\n<li>(But I\u2019ll set aside the trotters to make something known as \u201ctrotter gear.\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll use the copious amount of fat to make lard and cracklin\u2019s.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll use the skin to make scratchings.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll make p\u00e2t\u00e9 from the liver.<\/li>\n<li>Not sure what I\u2019ll do with the heart or lungs yet, but you will be the first to know!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Whole Hog Project<\/h2>\n<p>While I\u2019m usually all about minimalism when it comes to kitchen <a href=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/09\/the-minimalist-guide-to-kitchen-equipment\/\">equipment<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/21\/the-minimalist-pantry-making-the-most-of-a-few-ingredients\/\">ingredients<\/a>, I will be focusing on a different kind altogether for the next few months.<\/p>\n<p>I will instead focus on using as much as possible of an animal for food in order to show how to reduce waste show how long one person can sustain themselves on the flesh of just one critter.<\/p>\n<p>This certainly won\u2019t be for the squeamish, who\u2019d prefer to think that their meat magically appears in boneless and skinless versions shrink-wrapped at the butcher\u2019s section of the supermarket.<\/p>\n<p><em>Hold on to your seats, folks! Things are about to get interesting around here!<\/em><\/p>\n<span id=\"pty_trigger\"><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got home late one night a couple of weeks ago to a couple of harried emails and phone messages. &#8220;Hey Darrin, I\u2019m in your neighborhood and I\u2019ve got your hog. Call me back and I\u2019ll drop it off.&#8221; It\u2019s on, suckas! A couple of hours later, I had a couple of massive coolers sitting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whole-hog-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2867"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2871,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}