How do you cook your hog?

[a_m_s100]

I'm trying not count my chickens before they hatch but I'm heading up in the hills chasing hogs this weekend. I have stuck several in my time and I always have had them processed by a butcher; made into all different flavors of links. I want to experiment with my next hog and wanted to get all of your thoughts. Side note, has anybody ever prepared theirs in a smoker? I'm open to all ideas. Thanks much!!

 

[voidecho]

I've got to get one first!

 

[quicknick]

I just cut them up the best i can and throw them in the crock pot for pulled pork and chili verde.

 

[Wolfe]

When we get back from Texas we do mostly sausage. We make everything into a very mild Italian then we can use it for chili.

Mix two pounds of ground pork or sausage with two eggs and around 1 cup of panko as a binder. Make into 1.5 inch meat ball then brown on convection in the oven at 450 or until brown. Take the drippings from the pan and mix with your favorite bbq sauce and cover the balls and bake until the bbq sauce is caramelized. Serve in a sandwich or with rice.

Take 1 hind leg no skin and cut the shank off. Make a big pouch of aluminum foil in a deep pan. Season with salt, pepper, fresh garlic, a dash of liquid smoke and a touch of honey. Add 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup each of apple cider and apple vinegar. If you do not want it to have a bite add less vinegar. Start in the oven at 400 for 1.5 hours then turn it down to 300 for 3 to 5 hours depending on size. Check during cooking to make sure there is liquid and it is not burning. It will fall off the bone when done.

Just a start but both of these are easy and very good. If you hunt a lot you may want to look into a cabelas grinder. You do not need to do many animals to make up the $500. I have the 1.5 horse #22 and love it. It does about 10 lbs a minute. I am not good with cutting steaks or chops but I do well with the sausage and larger cuts.

Good Luck

 

[Deleted member 33033]

When we get back from Texas we do mostly sausage. We make everything into a very mild Italian then we can use it for chili.

Mix two pounds of ground pork or sausage with two eggs and around 1 cup of panko as a binder. Make into 1.5 inch meat ball then brown on convection in the oven at 450 or until brown. Take the drippings from the pan and mix with your favorite bbq sauce and cover the balls and bake until the bbq sauce is caramelized. Serve in a sandwich or with rice.

Take 1 hind leg no skin and cut the shank off. Make a big pouch of aluminum foil in a deep pan. Season with salt, pepper, fresh garlic, a dash of liquid smoke and a touch of honey. Add 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup each of apple cider and apple vinegar. If you do not want it to have a bite add less vinegar. Start in the oven at 400 for 1.5 hours then turn it down to 300 for 3 to 5 hours depending on size. Check during cooking to make sure there is liquid and it is not burning. It will fall off the bone when done.

Just a start but both of these are easy and very good. If you hunt a lot you may want to look into a cabelas grinder. You do not need to do many animals to make up the $500. I have the 1.5 horse #22 and love it. It does about 10 lbs a minute. I am not good with cutting steaks or chops but I do well with the sausage and larger cuts.

Good Luck

My hogs had balls so I went the all sausage route too but mixed it up between sweet Italian, hot Italian, Cajun and chorizo.

 

[Hog slayer]

I usually cut the tenderloins from the hog out myself and soak them in basque marinade for several hours and barbecue them the next day on the hunt. It just does't get any better than that, fresh tenderloins are really hard to beat. I will then cut the back straps and make steaks, the rest goes to the butcher to make sausage. Apple, Italian, Cajon, Chorizo, and breakfast sausage. I keep it pretty simple.

 

[Wolfe]

I got sick of the $100 per hog for something I can do at home. There is a company in Huntington Beach call South Bay Abrams that will sell you small amounts of seasoning. If you need more fat TK asian market on Bolsa in Westminster will have it.

 

[bisonic]

Take a look at this site for some great recipes: http://honest-food.net

Hank is a gourmet chef who posts great recipes for all kinds of wild game. The Chilendron is awesome, as is the venison chili. I've also tried the chile colorado and chili verde and loved both.

Chops on the smoker are phenomenal - just watch the temperature. I've made pulled pork from a shoulder roast on the smoker that was tasty but didn't fall apart the way store-bought roasts do. I might not have cooked it right, or maybe it was just too lean.

I always have a lot of sausage made up, usually an italian sausage. Great for pasta, lasagne, or pizza, or just make patties and throw on the BBQ at a tailgater.

 

[jimmmb]

Take a look at this site for some great recipes: http://honest-food.net

Hank is a gourmet chef who posts great recipes for all kinds of wild game. The Chilendron is awesome, as is the venison chili. I've also tried the chile colorado and chili verde and loved both.

+1 on that, great website to pickup recipes and tips on cooking wild game. Great info on foraging too for anyone who might be into that. Hank is based in the Sacramento area and most of what he writes about is local.

 

[voidecho]

Holy smokes....that's an awesome site. I think I remember him from MeatEater. Saving that as a favorite.

 

[99luftbalut]

Pork chops were in the oven; did one leg roasted in the oven; most everything else was in the smoker (Cookshack's smallest model) including the head, which was delicious with tortillas and guacamole. Most of the smoking was over cherry wood.

Cured the belly with some pink salt from BassPro and a fantastic maple cure recipe I'll try to dig up and post here. Also cured some shoulder meat this way (aka buckboard bacon).
Edit -- here's the site with the cure recipe I used:
http://amazingribs.com/recipes/porknography/making_bacon_from_scratch.html

Smoked the hocks and made some bean soup.
Saved rendered fat and bacon grease and will use it for a pie crust and make an apple pie with that.

I still have the liver in the freezer. I don't know what to do with that. Suggestions?

 

[ltdann]

http://www.jesseshunting.com/forums/showthread.php/202016-Before-and-After

 

[99luftbalut]

^^That looks great! What kind of wood in the smoker, and how long did you cure those?

 

[ltdann]

There's a link in that post, the easter ham that walks thru the whole process. I think it was three days in brine, after injection. It spends about 24 hours in the smoke house. The first 12 are at 130F. The actual "smoke" part is only an hour or so. I use hickory sawdust to smoke hams.

http://www.sausagemaker.com/tutorials/ham/beginners_ham.html

You can use tender quick to make the brine as well.

 

[ltdann]

I buy alot of my casings and ingredients from Sausagemaker.com. LEM is pretty good as well, especially the stuffers.

 

[sancho]

wow..i've seen that food site before..but never the link to his photographer's stuff. my mind is blown away!!

if i could do it over again, i'd be a food and travel/hunt photographer.

but to the question..i rarely make sausage. i eat the stuff more in it's natural form..chops, braises. i treat wild pork like regular pork. it works awesome..leaner, more amp'd up pork flavor.

 

[Deleted member 33033]

I've got to get one first!

For you I recommend the following. First, marinade your tag for a good long time...

 

[HogWild805]

I just cut them up the best i can and throw them in the crock pot for pulled pork and chili verde.

Crock pot is the way to do it to tenderize the meat. Otherwise just BBQ sometimes produces a tougher meat when cooked. I take the shoulders, butts and back strap that is it. When you gut the wild pig you are opening yourself up to "Brucellosis". Wild pigs can carry it and it is transmittable from wild pigs to humans. If you do not gut the animal you are greatly limiting your chance of exposure.

The next precaution is cooking your wild pig to 180 degrees or more.

I use store bought marinades and let the meat soak for 24 hours or so then BBQ or Crock pot. Iam telling ya the very best wild game meat on the planet as long as you process your animal fast and cool the meat ASAP.

That website for recipes is awesome.

here is more on "Brucellosis" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brucellosis

 

[ltdann]

You may be confusing Brucellosis with Trichinosis. Brucellosis is mainly caused by eating unpasteurized milk or undercooked meat. Contracting Brucellosis from butchering wild hogs is very rare. Reasonable precautions, wearing gloves (especially if you have cuts on your hands) will prevent transmission, IF the hog is infected.

Trichinosis is the disease that's most commonly associated with pigs and bear. It's caused by the larvae of the a worm (round worm I think) and is transmitted by eating undercooked meat. It's one of the reasons that you almost never see pork or bear jerky, it's not cooked, rather just dehydrated. Matter of fact, a JHO member contracted Trichinosis from bear jerky a few years ago.

In domestic food supplies, Brucellosis and Trichinosis have all been eliminated due to food safety regulations. Very Rare.

The national pork council, CDC and USDA all recommend that whole cuts of pork be cooked to a minimum of 145F (internal-checked with thermometer) and the ground pork to 160F internal.

With wild pork (because of low fat and meat density), low and slow is the way to go, otherwise the meat gets tough. Cooking as high as 180F will all but ensure boot leather.

When making fresh smoked sausage, salami (not dried aged meats) a cure is needed. Pink salt, tender quick, praque powder, Instacure#1 etc an cooked to an internal temp of 152F. All the cures must have sodium nitrite. The combination of the cure and temp makes it safe.

Dried products, Capicola, salamis, Procussito etc, need instacure #2 (more sodium nitrite). The two are not interchangeable.

A word about marinades. Studies have shown that whatever benefit derived from marinades will occur in an about an hour since the marinade doesn't penetrate more than 1/8" into the meat. Any time after that is pretty much a waste. It's one of the reasons good jerky is only about 1/8" thick.

If you want the flavor of the marinade to go deeper into the meat, you need to inject it.

When doing a smoked ham the brine solution MUST be injected all the way to the bone. I inject about every inch and then cover the ham in the brine solution or 3-5 days under refrigeration. Artery pumping is another way to go. When properly done, the cooked ham will have an internal temp of 152-155F and be uniformly pink and moist.

It's a real art to do your own meats and Charcuterie is the highest form of the art. After 20 years, I'm just feeling confident enough to try it.

10 lbs of Keilbasa in the making

 

[Wolfe]

Itdann that is a great post. I have not done hams yet. We will be back in about 12 days with a load of hogs from Texas and I think I am going to try one. The guy we hunt with did get brucellosis from a hog and said it was one of the worst things he has ever had. Thanks for all of the great info.