A Walk Though Pork Cuts
If you are indecisive about what cuts and how do make your choices, keep reading below OR, we have prepared three options you can pick from and we’ll hand it right to the butcher.
The Pit Boss example is for someone who wants an opportunity to fire up the barbecue smoker and grill as much as possible. Get ready for some nice quick grilling and lots of long, slow, flavorful smokes in the cooker. Click HERE.
The Kitchen Wiz example is for when you want a cornucopia of cuts for a wide variety of cooking techniques; fancy roasts for special occasions, flavorful cuts for stews, and a whole lot more. Click HERE.
The Easy Split example is for two families wanting to get a half-hog cut to make it easier to split equally. Or for someone who just wants a little meat at a meal and doesn't need a lot of roasts or other large packages. Click HERE.
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However, if you are ordering a half hog from us and want to hand pick your own cuts, here are some notes to inspire you!
This is a bare-bones guide for custom butcher options when you order half a pig (as an example). There are probably hundreds of mix-and-match options you could configure, just google “custom pork cuts” to go down the rabbit hole. Just remember, whatever you don’t specify as cuts you want will be turned into either ground pork or sausage (bulk, patties, or links).
The primal cuts of pork are the Shoulder, Loin, Belly, and Ham.
Shoulder: If you are going to get any roasts at all, get a Boston Butt roast or two. A smaller 3-pound roast makes leftovers for us (2 adults, 2 small children). The Picnic shoulder also makes great roasts for pulled pork. If you want fewer roasts and smaller cuts, the shoulder can also be cut into excellent steaks (we prefer thick, 1.5” to 2” steaks). Shoulder bacon is also good (meatier) and the picnic shoulder can also make good ground pork, extra sausage or stew meat.
Loin: We prefer double-thickness pork loin chops; you could also keep the loin as one big roast or a few smaller roasts. Bone in theoretically gives more flavor but the bones often puncture the shrink wrap, causing eventual freezer burn. For this reason, we often choose boneless chops. Two double-thick pork chops are a good meal for our family. Bone-in means you don’t get baby back ribs because they are incorporated into your chops. Because the tenderloin cooks differently from other loin meat, we prefer having it as a separate cut. Grind the sirloin or cut it up for stew meat, it’s not a good cut for chops.
Belly: Take the spare ribs in half racks or a whole, and make standard bacon from the belly meat OR if you like Pork Belly (our favorite), tell the butcher you want smoked pork belly.
Ham: A whole cured ham is very large. You can also get it cut into smaller hams or even sliced. For easy-cooking smaller meals, have the center of the cured ham sliced into steaks and keep the ends as smaller hams. We think thicker ham steaks up to an inch thick are more versatile, but for faster cooking you could go as thin as 1/4 inch (think Canadian bacon) This is not sliced deli ham, you do need to cook it. If you don’t want cured ham (because of the salts known as nitrates used in the process) you can also make roasts or steaks from a fresh, uncured ham, or you can grind it to get extra sausage. Uncured ham roasts are good but not quite as good as shoulder roasts. Hams can also be smoked for an additional charge.
Ground/sausage: You will get a few pounds of ground pork or sausage regardless, from the trimmings. If you want more than a about 3 pounds you’ll need to pick something to use for sausage (such as the sirloin, picnic shoulder, or the uncured ham.) In our opinion, all three of these are great for sausage and given how much of it we eat, we often get all three made into a variety of sausages - bulk, hot italian, breakfast, country, etc.
Fat: A couple pounds of lard renders to a couple of pints of cooking lard. It’s the healthiest (no flavor at all) cooking oil option in the world and lasts a whole year in your fridge. The Leaf lard fat is so fine that in Italy it is oven simply mixed with fresh garlic, powdered salt and some fresh cracked pepper and spread onto crackers as a delicacy. We concur - it’s spectacular. It’s also ideal for delicate pastries. If you want more lard than that take some back fat, which makes lard that is great for frying and pan-frying and imparts a hint of pork flavor. Homemade lard is an excellent cooking fat, but plan to store it in the refrigerator or freezer unless you’re using it up pretty quickly. We make ours by putting the fat chunks in the freezer for about 45 minutes to make them easier to cut up, then we chop it up like a really rough cut onion, placing all the chopped bits in a pasta colander suspended above a large soup pot (metal handles). That setup goes in the oven for about 6 hours at 225. We rarely do this twice as it always comes out pure and clean. Pure the liquid lard into sterilized mason jars.
Misc: Get the hocks cured and smoked to add umami flavor to soups and stews. Extra bones and the pig feet are good for making stock. If you are new to organ meat, the heart is relatively easy to cook and mild in flavor - also extremely healthy, as are the kidneys and liver. Pork liver has a stronger flavor than chicken liver; and kidneys taste like mild liver with the texture of shitake mushrooms (we cook in sesame oil with asian noodles and green tail onions). Pork jowl or “guanciale” is quite fatty and can be braised or cured into a very fatty bacon, excellent to use when frying vegetables. The whole head and the tail are probably not worth keeping unless you have specific plans and often the butcher won’t even do this.
