I tell people almost that because it's they way I looked at it.
I tell people it's just a big squirrel.
What I eat most is ground meat or steaks from back strap or steaks from back leg meat.
Separate the muscles and cut a steak from it.
Save the fat off the pig to mix with ground to make sausage. You do not need casings to make sausage.
I make it and wrap it like you do all the other meat.
Pig back straps I make small steaks/ chops.
The front shoulders and neck meat are ground. Belly meat be bacon.
I skin my pigs like a deer.
I have rendered some pork fat, I got 1/2 a gallon of excellent frying oil from it.
Picnic ham is easy to make with pink salt and water soak. A 2 day soak per pound of meat. I use the butt or ham as some call it.
It will soak and actually turn that pink color. After curing is finished you can cook it in the oven with pineapples and brown sugar etc or pressure cook it or pan fry it or stick it on a smoker for a few hours with some hickory or whatever you like to smoke pork with.
I have had so much meat in the freezer I had to resort to pressure canning. Beef and deer.
Friend and I had 4 pressure cookers going at 1 time and a cast iron skillet browning the cuts of meat before we added them to jars with some water poured into the skillet to make broth from the sticky scrapings in the pan.
We seasoned the meat with creole and pepper.
You can pressure can the toughest meat like right off the ankle and it is fork tender.
Plastic fork tender.
Dump the meat juice out of the jar and make brown gravy with it and then add the tender chunks of pressure canned meat.
SOOO GOOD.
A really good way to do a front shoulder is take the entire shoulder and stick it in the BBQ grill and smoke it or cook it slow and keep sauce of some kind on it or wrap it or cover it in foil.
It will be so tender and you get every bit of meat that way.
Yes, canning meat is good stuff. Never thought I'd like it until stopping into a place on the way to the farm to buy free range eggs from a retired couple that lived there. They had a pantry full of canned pork and beef along with every variety of vegetable and jelly's.
Nobody answered the door a couple of years ago, and I see the house and property has sold now so have to assume they went to town or something more serious happened.