This is a big one guys, give me a few minutes to enlighten you on something most books don’t get into trust me I’ve looked. By the way these are not usda cuts these are cuts used to cure a whole pig, usda cuts maximize tender popular cuts(i.e. loin) while this style maximizes curable cuts. (If you know any good butchery books leave them in the comments haven’t found many on amazon.) The pig we are cutting in this photo is a mule-shire which is a mix between a mule footed pig and a Berkshire. This is what a foot of a mule footed pig looks like.

Let get started.

Step 1) Take the head off the pig, make sure to get behind the jowls so we can take those off and cure and dry them.(the farm had cut through the jowls already for some reason)

step 2) Fillet the head, starting from the bottom, and get every piece of meat on the skull, it should look like a pig mask.If you got the tongue reserve it and smoke it. (Wrap the meat and skin from the head around the smoked tongue with fennel, lemon zest, etc. then roast it, braise it, sous vide it for an awesome porchetta.)

Step 3) Break out the bone saw and saw through the spin as you see in the picture. Cut though the rest of the meat and skin with your boning knife so you don’t rip up the meat. At this point we reserve half of the pig in the fridge and break down the first side.

4) We need to take out the leaf fat and the kidney; reserve the kidney if its very fresh for a terrine and save all of the soft leaf fat to make lard or “pig butter”

5) Remove the tenderloin from the inside of the rib cage. Save it to serve hot to a lucky guest or save it for sausage meat.

Side Note) This is a gland every animal has them and most of them don’t taste very good. They are hiding everywhere in the fat and meat so look out for them and remove them.

6)Cut between either the 6th and 7th rib for a longer lonza and a shorter coppa or 7th an 8th for the usda cuts maximizing the loin and belly.

7) Break the spine after you’ve cut through the meat.( that’s me with Bryan Polcyn, my teacher, behind me. I think I was enjoying myself) We’ll save the front leg for later.

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8) Now we remove the back leg. There is a natural seam that runs around the leg, follow that seam. Now the tricky part is in picture 2 there is a bone there called the Aich (pronounced like “H”) bone, in a young pig that is cartilage and we can cut through that with a knife. Point your knife at it and push in wiggle it back and forth till it separates. Keep following the seams there is a big gland you should hit between the belly and leg if you hit it you know your going the right way. Cut all the way through and remove the leg.

9) Knead the leg to push any excess blood out of the meat. Blood spoils and if your blood spoils in your prosciutto I don’t think you’ll be happy.

10) Trim the excess fat of the sides and reserve. Then trim down the skin so the salt penetrates the meat better and so it dries better in the drying room. Remove the trotter if you would like to make stuffed trotters or leave it on for look and identification of the breed in the future. Put the leg on the cure then dry.

11)Remove the thin meats from the inside of the rib cage and reserve for sausage. There are spare ribs at the bottom of the normal ribs remove those. Then remove the rib cage leaving the loin and belly boneless.

12)Now we are left with the belly and the loin, cut at the seam right under chain on the loin.

13)Trim the skin off the belly and loin and remove the chains from the loin. Trim the belly fat down to compensate for shrinkage in the meat during drying and square the belly off. Cure both the loin and belly for lonza and pancetta. (make sure your saving all the skin to make chicharones)

14) Get the front leg back out and start by removing the rib cage starting from the top of the pig.

15) Now that the ribs are gone we can easily remove the front leg by following the natural seams to the shoulder blade. Make sure to scrape the top of the blade to remove all the meat with the coppa and the pluma. There are some spare ribs on this side too, remove those.

16)Next is to separate the coppa and pluma, again follow the natural seam. Trim the meat then cure and dry it.

17) the last thing we are left with is the picnic shoulder. We can remove the bones and make a culatello or we can make another proscuitto. We made another procuitto.

Thats It!

Heres some extra picture that I thought were cool.

This is a whole side spread out how it would be before it was butchered. for the most part the pluma and coppa are in the wrong spot. but look at that beautiful belly and all that fat this was a great pig.

Scraps

end result of scraps.

Hoped you enjoyed I know it was long but I think it was worth it.