Hounds In The Kitchen » Meat

Luminescence

Rachel — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:01:24 +0000

When one prepares an ingredient from raw to plate, one learns all the secrets:
where succulent flesh gives way to stone,
the bitterest part of the leaf,
how light shines through fat.

It’s a gift, to know a thing through and through.

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Luminescence is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Algonquin Provincial Park Canoe Trip

Rachel — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:42:18 +0000

In less than four weeks, Alex, Lil, and I will leave our homestead in the good care of neighbor Jan and drive north through Toronto to Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada. We will rent canoes and stay the first night at Northern Wilderness Outfitters. From there, we will canoe two days through North Tea Lake to Biggar Lake where we will camp for two days before taking a return trip.

We are traveling with my parents and three sisters, Alex’s parents, brother and soon-to-be sister in law, my Uncle Mike, good friend Krash and his girlfriend, my cousin Todd and two of my younger cousins.

Dad and Uncle Mike resting on Biggar campsite, 1999

This is a trip my father has taken seven times before, three with his now deceased father, starting in 1970. Uncle Mike attended six trips; everyone but the young cousins, Krash’s girlfriend and Lil have been at least once.

Because the canoing includes several portages, we must plan equipment and food carefully to avoid excess weight. I started preparations last fall when I reserved four bags of dried gold rush apples for this pilgrimage. I know that these special Charlie’s apples will be a delight to our tastes after a few days of eating packable camp food.

The cooks in the family (and there are many) are each planning a night’s dinner and co-planning lunches and breakfasts. Alex has cured many meats to take along including bacon, pancetta, saucison sec, and dried fish (cod or salmon, to be determined). My meal, one of the last and therefore least fresh, will be rice and madras lentils with chocolate pudding for dessert.

We hope to see moose, loons, and the northern lights. We hope to be minimally sunburnt and bug-bitten. We hope to return refreshed from days with family and without electronic interventions.

Are you taking a summer vacation? What are your hopes for time away from home?

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Algonquin Provincial Park Canoe Trip is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Basement Charcuterie

Rachel — Mon, 24 May 2010 20:03:58 +0000

If you home cure meat, this might be a familiar site:

Five pounds of saucisson sec and a fifteen pound serrano-style salted air-dryed ham hanging in our basement. Both are made from the meat of Red, the hog we slaughtered in April. The saucisson sec will hang for three to four weeks and be taken on our long back country canoe trip in July. The ham will dry until the fall at the earliest.

Curing meat hanging from drop ceiling stringers is just one of the pitfalls of home charcuterie.

If you take up charcuterie like Alex has, you might also find yourself with hundreds of feet of dried hog intestine, i.e. casing, in the fridge, pictured above. You’ll probably have a stash of pink salt, that nitrite containing bacon flavoring good stuff. Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie book will be nearby for recipes and advice on all types of curing. You will have a meat grinder and possibly several other sharp and dangerous tools.

Of course you will also have the rewards: spicy delicious chorizo, home cured guanciale (jowl bacon pictured above), salt cod, fresh breakfast sausage and the experience to preserve whatever comes your way.

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Basement Charcuterie is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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Reflections on the Pig Slaughter

Rachel — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:45:50 +0000

Last week I shared our method for slaughtering a pig by hand. Previously we shared why we wanted to slaughter. Today’s final post is reflective of the whole experience.

Work to Be Done

Rachel: Once Red was dead, we all worked quickly to process her body. There was no spoken communication, but there was a shared feeling that part of honoring her life was to finish the work. There was a sense that to raise and kill an animal, we ought to use every part. I feel the same way about seeds I plant at home; we try to use every fruit and edible part of our garden plants to justify our use of water, land, and sunlight in their growing.

Ease

Alex: It was a whole lot easier than I had imagined. There was almost no struggling by the animal and I think it was as pleasant an ending as could be hoped for. I found the pig anatomy fascinating. I’ve never been in an anatomy lab, but I understand pigs are very similar to humans in that department. The organ layout was very interesting, and I was not grossed out at all by what I was seeing.

Graphic Pictures

Rachel: During the kill and slaughter I was not emotional. I downloaded the pictures that same day and did not come back to insert pictures into the post until Saturday night. Looking through the images, my heart wrenched and my stomach turned several times. The images, out of the context of physically doing the hard honest work, were more emotional. I guess that’s why we say “a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

Responsibility

Alex: I like taking responsibility in my life and doing things myself. For this reason, I am happy I slaughtered a large animal and got to experience the processing of it from start to finish. I feel more connected to my food after this experience and have a greater appreciation for what incredibly hard work meat-packing must be. After watching Food, Inc., I am even happier to be attempting to wean myself away from factory meat production.

Vegetarian Pig Killer

Rachel: “Aren’t you a vegetarian?” I get asked this a lot, especially considering that my most popular posts have to do with meat. I am a vegetarian. I don’t order meat entrees at restaurants and I don’t cook meat for myself. After more than ten years, I simply do not enjoy the texture of meat. However, I have no beef with people who want to eat meat.

I actually do enjoy the taste of some meats (hello, bacon!). When Alex makes a meat dish he’s particularly proud of, I taste it. In the interest of not being a bother, I eat soups and sauces that may contain meat stock in restaurants. I suppose some would revoke my vegetarian card for eating this way, but I try to not concern myself with what other people think.

In the early days of my vegetarianism, I did not want to handle meat and some parts grossed me out. Over the years of living with Alex the meat lover and raising a omnivorous child, my view has changed. I now have no problem scaling fish, cooking chicken breasts, or skinning a just-dead pig, so long as they were raised and killed ethically.

Lessons Learned

Alex: 1. I would definitely bring more knives or a proper sharpening stone. Butcher knives or a skinning knife with an up-swept blade would be a plus as the one I had seemed to work incredibly well for most pig-chopping jobs. I had no idea that chopping through the skin and skinning the pig would dull the knives as quickly as it did. In addition, I would purchase a proper butcher’s hacksaw for going through bone. The hardware store model worked fine, but the painted blade left a yellow color to some of the bone.

2. For killing the pig, I would use a pistol next time. The rifle worked fine in the end, but it was unwieldy and tricky to manage while trying to wrangle the pig. I would also take a slightly larger caliber as I was nervous the 22 might not do the job properly. Even though it worked, it is not a very potent caliber, and I would be nervous about getting a deflection off of a thick part of the skull. I think something along the lines of 22 Hornet or 5.7×28 would work exceedingly well.

3. The hoist. Thankfully Denise had a block and tackle. However, I think it was sized for the lambs she more often slaughters. As such it was somewhat strained under the weight of Red. For slaughtering an even larger animal (cow, bison, etc…), I think it would be hard to do it without a motorized winch.

4. The hide. Next time I would like to save skin for either cooking or leather purposes. This means reading up on tanning or finding an appropriate hair-removal method for the carcass.

Next Time

Rachel: Will we slaughter an animal again? Probably. Not only did slaughtering save us money over sending the animal to a processor, it was not difficult. Knowing how to gut and process an animal is a life skill I’m glad we now have. Alex plans on hunting deer this fall, we may eventually slaughter one of our backyard chickens, and Denise knows we will happily help her dispatch 2Silos animals.

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Reflections on the Pig Slaughter is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
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How We Slaughtered a Pig

Rachel — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:31:50 +0000

Meet Red. She’s the pig we slaughtered last Saturday with the able assistance of another meat lover, JR, and Red’s owner, Denise of 2Silos farm. Earlier I published why we wanted to slaughter a pig.

What follows is a factual account of how we humanely harvested this meat animal. It was hard manual labor that we attended to with reverence for the life we took.

I have included pictures to illustrate exactly what happened. Some readers may find this subject and the photographs graphic. If that’s the case for you, you might want to wait to read a reflective and less intense post I will publish next week. Intrepid readers, keep on.

We arrived at 2Silos farm early Saturday morning. We met Denise’s pigs and plethora of chickens, sheep, and geese housed in and around her gorgeous two siloed barn.

Red was allowed out of her pen and into the chicken yard. She was wiley and escaped for a quick jaunt around the farmyard before we corralled her back into the pen. The plan was to shoot her centrally between the ears and eyes to instantly stop brain function. Alex, who won a marksmanship award while in Army Basic Training, manned the 22 long rifle. He took his time to corner and aim because a miss would cause the animal to suffer unnecessarily.

The kill shot was perfect. Red fell with not so much as a peep. She convulsed involuntarily for about a minute as all large animals do.

We loaded her 250 pounds into a wheeled cart and pushed it up the hill into the barn. After several attempts, we finally strung her up by her ankles over a roof beam.

Denise felt for the juglar and cut a slit in the throat to drain the blood. The blood was drained into a sterile bucket so that it could be used in making blood sausage.

It took nearly a quarter hour to capture the blood. When the stream finally slowed to a drop a minute, we moved on to gutting.

Denise ran a sharp knife carefully through the center line. She was aiming for just through the skin but accidentally made a small cut into the small intestine. Small intestine contents smell and are a source of bacteria so we worked quickly to clean up the mess and remove the guts.

We discarded the intestines. Though they can be used for sausage casing, we had neither the skill nor time to process the intestines as carefully as is required for use. Other organs (liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart) were reserved for offal recipes.

Alex cut around the anus so that the colon, uterus, bladder, and connective tissue could be removed.

Then skinning began from the legs down. We took turns running sharp knives halfway between the skin and meat so as to retain as much fat as possible. It took almost 45 minutes to completely skin the pig.

Another option is to place the carcass in boiling water, scrape off the hair, and retain the hide for leather making. Denise did not have the facilities for this process and we did not have an interest in curing the skin, so we discarded it in the way described above.

When the pig was finally skinned, Alex sawed off the head. JR kept the head for head cheese making, giving Alex a jowl for guanciale (a cured dried bacon, similar to pancetta).

Denise and Alex then sawed through the backbone to split the pig into two halves.

The halves were rinsed with fresh water. From there, JR and Alex cut the pieces into appropriate primal cuts and packed them in ice filled coolers.

We carted the coolers home for further processing. Alex butchered while I ran the Foodsaver, resulting in a freezer full of honestly raised honorably killed pork. The belly, jowl, and ham were kept fresh for curing and smoking. If y’all make a fuss in the comments we can write more about the exact cuts we made and how we plan to use the parts of the animal.

There you have it, the story of Red’s end. The experience was profound and fascinating. Please return next week for our reflection on how it felt to slaughter a pig and the implications of doing so.

Due to overwhelming response, I’m linking this to April 23rd’s Food Renegade Fight Back Friday.

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How We Slaughtered a Pig is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

We’re Slaughtering a Pig. Why?

Rachel — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:27:54 +0000

A few months ago, Denise Beno from 2Slios farm tweeted that she had an unclaimed Duroc/York pig this season. She asked if anyone might want to buy a whole or half. Alex and I and decided that purchasing a side of pig would be a good way to fill our freezer with well raised meat and give him more experience with home charcuterie.

In making arrangements with Denise, Alex learned that traditional processors often discard cuts of meat he would prefer to have, including the jowel and offal. Denise offered that Alex and the other buyer could slaughter the pig with her and process it however they wished.

We jumped at the chance. Here’s why we will wake early, drive to Mt. Vernon and slaughter a pig on Saturday.

Alex: I appreciate sustainably and humanely raised meat. I have had great experiences with Denise and the meat she raises. Her meat animals are of the highest quality, and I know her animal husbandry ethics are in line with my expectations.

Rachel: I don’t eat meat, expect for the occasional taste of home cured bacon. After over ten years as a vegetarian, the texture is something I no longer enjoy and I feel I can balance my diet better without meat. Meat, in particular among foods, is often raised with disgustingly low humane and earth conscious standards. I am very concerned with the provenance of meat we purchase.

Alex: Per pound this will be low cost meat for the quality I will be receiving. It’s true that because of government props, sustainable meat costs more in the market today. I don’t mind doing a little bit of work to reduce some of the cost.

Rachel: I actually keep a much closer eye on our budget than Alex does. I often arrange for us to buy ingredients in bulk to save money. The risk, of course, in freezing meat is that a power loss can wipe out your investment. I guess we’ll just have a huge barbecue if there’s a blackout this summer.

Alex: I’ve been a meat eater all my life, but have bought almost all of the meat I have ever eaten already cut up and packaged. I’ve only ever cleaned fish or squirrels I have caught/killed myself. I have never dressed out a large mammal. I would like to hunt deer for food this year and feel the experience of slaughtering a pig will be good for when I need to clean a large animal on my own.

Rachel: I too have not witnessed the slaughter or processing of a large animal up close. I am comfortable handling and cooking meat even when I don’t eat it myself. I know that killing and butchering a pig will be hard work; I plan to do with reverence for the life we are taking.

Alex: I wanted this to be a learning experience that could be shared on Rachel’s blog and with our daughter Lil. Lil will not accompany us for the slaughter because we want ourselves to be fully present and distractions when dealing with a large animal, saws, and knives can be dangerous.

Too many people are completely disconnected from their food. The hamburger they are eating did not grow on a meat tree; it came from an animal that was born, raised and ultimately killed to provide food for another species. Some people subconsciously push this knowledge out of their head while eating meat. I’m certainly no vegetarian, but I believe that when I eat meat, I have a fundamental responsibility to know and understand where it comes from.

Rachel: Absolutely. I will record the slaughter with video and photos to share here. I’ll provide fair warning to those who do not wish to read anymore about it. Though it used to be commonplace to have intimate knowledge of raising and killing meat animals, many people now are far removed from farms. It is my hope that sharing the experience of the slaughter will inspire more people to question and consider their food sourcing.

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We’re Slaughtering a Pig. Why? is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Make it Yourself: Sausage Making

Alex — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:49:57 +0000

You may have read Devie the hound dog’s version of making sausage. Here’s my version of the basics.

I received the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman last Christmas. Since then I experimented with making my own bacon, smoking various meats and cooking confit of all sorts. Until recently, I had not attempted to make any sort of sausage.

Sausage is the heart of charcuterie, whether it is fresh breakfast sausage or a fine aged peperone. This Christmas, I received the food grinder and sausage stuffer
attachments for our Kitchen-Aid and am in the sausage making business. I purchased enough hog casing from Butcher Packer for about 250 pounds of sausage and have all of the adjuncts (dextrose, sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate and kosher salt) needed to make all the popular styles.

Thus far I have made fresh garlic sausage, breakfast sausage, Sauccison Sec (French dry-cured country sausage) and Spanish chorizo (also dry-cured). I package each in a vacuum sealed bag to store in the refrigerator or freezer until I eat it.

Whether the sausage is fresh or dried, I have distilled Ruhlman’s excellent sausage making advice down to a few rules:

1. Always use at least 30% fat in your sausage. If you are using a good fatty cut of pork like pork shoulder, this should be no problem. Sometimes you will want to add extra fat with additional cuts like fresh side or back-fat.

2. Keep everything as cold as possible. Seriously, almost frozen is where you want to be. I didn’t do this the first time around, and the result was a mushy unworkable mess. My procedure now is to freeze the entire grinder attachment with blades attached before making the sausage. I then spread my meat and fat on a cookie sheet i nthe freezer until it is getting stiff and crunchy (but not frozen). The bowl you grind into and any other tools should also be frozen. When stuffing your sausage, keep the sausage mix in a bowl set in ice (or snow, if it is plentiful in your area as it was this winter). Your sausage quality depends on these steps to maintain a low temperature.

3. Keep everything clean. I haven’t had a contaminated batch of sausage yet, but my experience with beer brewing has taught me that cleanliness reduces the likelihood of a batch going bad.

4. Use the specified amount of salt or nitrites. First of all, this makes the product taste authentic. Secondly, the proper amount of sodium nitrite is critical for food safety especially in dry-cured products. This is the ingredient that will keep your product from spoiling, or worse yet developing botulism. Do not skimp or leave sodium nitrite out with the thought you are looking after your health.

5. Avoid air bubbles in the casing during the stuffing process. If they develop, prick them with a sterile needle to remove them. It will take practice and experience to get your stuffing technique down.

Rachel took this short video when I made chorizo:

Follow these rules, use a good recipe, and enjoy homemade forcemeats. Happy stuffing!

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Make it Yourself: Sausage Making is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Make it Yourself: Sausage Step by Step

Alex — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:31:07 +0000

I was writing this basic sausage making post and looking at pictures I took. I noticed Devie in every.single.picture! She has been an integral witness to all sausage making events so I thought it would be fun to narrate from her perspective.

Sausage making is awesome. Every time the bald guy (Alex) brings the meat grinder up from the basement, I rise from my day long nap to watch the happenings and wait for the humans to make a mistake. Someday they will drop the entire batch on the floor and I will be ready to gobble it up.

First, the bald guy gets out the fresh pork. He chops it into chunks and puts it in the freezer for a little while.

Next comes the grinding. The very cold pork is forced through the very cold grinder.

The meat goes back in the freezer while the bald guy prepares any seasonings and prepares the Kitchen Aid for mixing.
Chilled ground pork is mixed with seasonings and binders according to the recipe. The bald guy always yammers on about the salt ratio so it must be important.

Sometimes the bald guy stops there and forms the sausage into fresh rounds.

Other times he gets out the stuffer. He loads up the stuffer with rinsed casing. Usually the tattooed lady (Rachel) has to help stuff the mixed meat into the casing. I don’t think she eats meat, so I guess it’s ironic that she helps make sausage.

The bald guy likes to make one long stretch of sausage and twist it into links at the end. If it’s a fresh sausage, the bald guy packs it into vacuum sealed bags right away.

For an aged sausage, he hangs it in the basement for a week or two. Oooh does aging sausage smell good!

If I’m really lucky they will cook some sausage for me as a treat. Sometimes I get scraps of meat along the way by helping myself. The bald guy and tattooed lady don’t seem to like that.

After all this meat observing activity, I have to sleep for the rest of the day. Watching the people cook is exhausting!

Stay tuned for Alex’s view of sausage making including sources and references.

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Make it Yourself: Sausage Step by Step is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

Confit Canard (Duck Confit)

Rachel — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:23:28 +0000

So what do you do with all of the wonderful rendered fat from the roasted duck? You didn’t throw it away did you? Rendered waterfowl fat is one of the most delicious cooking mediums out there. One of the tastiest dishes that can be made with it is Confit Canard also known as Duck Confit.

Confit is a term that is usually applies to meat that is slowly cooked submerged in fat. Is it healthy? Absolutely not. It is, however, delicious and not in the least bit greasy despite the cooking method used.

For duck confit you need the the leg, thighs, and fat of a duck. You can buy whole ducks and butcher them, reserving the breast for other use or buy the legs on their own. In Columbus, both whole, parts, and fat can usually be found at North Market Poultry and Game in the North Market.

Once you have the legs, trim of any excess skin and pat them dry. Coat them in a mixture of kosher salt, chopped garlic and thyme and let them rest refrigerated for at least 12 hours.

After the resting period, rinse the legs in cold water and again pat them dry. Place them in a shallow pan and fill the pan with enough rendered fat to cover the legs. Michael Ruhlman advises that you can use a mixture of 50% fat (any combination of poultry fat) and 50% olive oil. By our experience he is absolutely correct, and the end result is just as flavorful.

we switched pots and added some fat so legs would be totally submerged

After covering the legs in the fat, place the roasting pan in the oven on 200 degrees and let it cook. The process can take up to 12 hours and can be completed overnight if you wish. You will know the cooking is finished when the meat pulls easily away from the bone of the leg.

Traditionally at this point you would let the meat cool underneath a layer of fat and store it refrigerated for many months as a preserved food product. It is ideal to let confit rest for at least a week to fully develop its flavor but even a few days will do if you are in a time crunch.

After this fat nap, the meat can be used in many ways. If you warm the fat back up, you can remove the legs easily, pat them dry and shred the meat from the bone. This can then be used to top toast points, make a creamy spread or as a salad topper.

An alternate treatment is to reheat the leg whole in a saute pan and serve it as a main course. The fat you cooked it and stored it in can be strained and re-used multiple times; there is no need to throw it away.

For a Rose Bowl party this evening, we served the confit pulled over cranberry sauce on toasted homemade bread. Guests loved eating it and watching the Ohio State Buckeyes cook the Oregon Ducks!

This post was co-written with Alex. In the interest of research, even vegetarian Rachel tasted and enjoyed the confit.

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Confit Canard (Duck Confit) is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.

How to Cook a Duck

Rachel — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:11:59 +0000

The Rose Bowl is days away. The Ohio State Buckeyes are playing the Oregon Ducks. Alex and I are both alumni and football fans. We are bringing a duck confit dish to a Rose Bowl party to poke fun at the opposing team’s mascot.

One of the most common complaints about duck (or goose for that matter) is that the meat is greasy or dry and unpalatable after roasting. Usually this is a result of not cooking it long enough to render away sufficient fat, or cooking it far too long and drying out the meat.

The method we use for waterfowl including duck and goose is based on Julia Child’s technique in The Way to Cook. This method encompasses a preliminary steaming step followed by a more traditional roasting process. The end result is succulent meat that is tender, moist and not in the slightest bit greasy.

To begin, buy a fresh duck or goose from a reputable source. Our favorite Columbus sources are North Market Poultry and Game and Weiland’s Market. Brine the bird in the refrigerator for up to twelve hours.

Trim the cavity of the bird of excess fat and trim the wing tips. Remove any giblets from the cavity and reserve these with the wing tips for making stock/gravy. You may or may not want to play with the bird at this time, giving a puppet show with Rose Bowl references.

Aggressively salt the cavity of the bird and place it breast up in a metal roasting pan on a rack so that it is at least an inch off the bottom. Fill the pan to just below the bird with liquid. Any mix of water, wine, apple cider or orange juice works well, keeping in mind that flavor will be imparted to the bird. A few aromatic vegetables like celery and onion are welcome additions to the liquid.

Cover the pan tightly (aluminum foil is fine) and place on the stove top over medium heat to begin steaming. Keep the liquid at a simmer, and add more as it boils away. The steaming time will vary by the size of the bird. A small duck (5 pounds) will take only half an hour while a large goose (12 pounds) will take about an hour. When the steaming is done, remove the bird to a tray and drain the liquid from the roasting pan.

goose fat separated in a nontraditional pilsner vessel

For a large goose you may collect as much as 3 cups of fat from the steaming process. Reserve the fat for future cooking use. It is easily poured into ball jars, cooked, and then refrigerated.

At this point, stuff the bird if that is your plan. A liver and fruit stuffing suits the flavor of duck and goose well, but your tastes may vary. If you do not want to stuff it, place an onion and some aromatic herbs in the cavity to add flavor.

After stuffing, truss the legs together and place it breast side down in the roasting pan. Put it in the oven at 350 degrees. For a smaller bird, you will want to flip it over to finish roasting after one hour. For a larger bird, flip it over after one and a half hours. Finish roasting breast side up for 30 minutes to brown the skin. The meat should feel tender but slightly springy when pressed.

Remove from the oven and allow the bird to rest for 15 minutes while juices redistribute. Carve the bird up like you would a chicken and it is ready to eat.
As you carve it, you will notice that there is still some fat in the bird. Because a vast majority of the fat was steamed away, the meat will be moist and taste delicious without being greasy. Also, you might notice that around the legs the juices will still be slightly red. This is perfectly fine. If you buy your poultry from someone you know or trust, there should be no worries about food-borne diseases.

GO BUCKS! COOK THOSE DUCKS!

Stay tuned for the Confit Conard (duck confit) technique post Thursday.

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How to Cook a Duck is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen
We love to hear from you! Please add your comments or send Rachel an email.