Here Piggy, Piggy Piggy...

As a warning this post will be a little different then the rest...

I have a fascination with using knives to cut up dead animals... it's kind of Therapeutic...

But seriously, butchery is a dying art, that is a skill driven and can be impressive to those who don't know how to do it... and it's wonderful stress relief. OK I'm done with the slasher humor, for now. I spent about an hour yesterday on cleaning a little 60 lb pig, so cute, for a whole Hog roast for today. I've always enjoyed Anatomy even when I was younger. Things go together in a logical way and taking them apart is just the reverse of knowing how it's put together. There is an art behind cleaning a hog, it's more then just sticking a knife in a hog, that's how you ruin a perfectly good chunk of meat. Patience and a sharp knife are the two most important parts of working with a whole animal, dull knives cause accidents and impatience will ruin the animal causing a total waste of product.

The first thing you need to do is split the sternum, cut it out entirely saving it for stock, I recommend starting with a clean sharp boning knife to go through skin and meet to show you where the ribs meet up with the sternum then switching to a small hacksaw to slice right through the bone removing it with clean cuts. Save it as well as the rest of the trimmings to come the pork stock you can make is Delicious. After the sternum is gone you and whoever you're with grab a side a piece and pull down sharply separating a few of the ribs giving you more wiggle-room.

There we go hard part done. Take a pair of garden sheers, clean and preferably unused, and snip along the spine where the ribs connect, you'll know when you get them all because the entire pig will lay flat like a book with the spine of the pig acting like the spine of the book. From here on out it's really just being patient and confident with your knife skills, everything that's not a pretty pink color needs to go, using you're trusty steel hone you're knife until it's as sharp as you can before using the tip of the knife to slip under the silver skin, carefully so you don't pierce the flesh, and run you're knife down the piece of silver skin separating it from the meat. Go back and get all of the glands and organs out of the head they'll be a different color then the fat and meat and be squishy to the touch.

Now all you have to do is inject the pig with your flavoring agent, (Apple juice is a good choice) and throw it into you're cooking apparatus of choice (in my case the trailer smoker with Oak wood) and wait...