CRBrewHound wrote:Hey adam, thanks for posting all this, there is some really good info here.
No problem. I promise next time I'll take more detailed step by step pics of the butchering process, even a couple short videos showing techniques I use. When skinning, it's more about pulling the skin and only cutting when you need to cut. Cut once to break the skin from the outside, then any other cuts always cut from the inside fatty part of the skin. This will save your blade sharpness. You want to see where the leg muscle stops and gets to skinny bone. On the hind legs, it's just below where the cables are in my first pic. Make a small cut just a few inches long, then flip the blade over, stick the tip in and open the rest of the skin around the leg in a circle. Now start pulling the skin down and slice along the inside of the skin to free it from the muscle. Do the same on the other leg. For the asshole, it's right under the tail, very close, as they have no space under it. Take a larger circle cut around it Don't worry about waste here, worry about getting shit on the meat and spoiling it. You want to free it from the pelvis at this point. I like to zip tie it shut so no shit can come out. Twine works well too. Continue skinning the legs until you take the "pants" off down to the hips. Now begin gutting. Insert your knife on an angle and make a shallow cut, just enough to get into the body cavity. You will hear air release. To open the cavity, I use a gut hooked knife. It opens it like a zipper without cutting the guts. When the intestines fall out, reach up into the pelvis and pull the asshole and colon through and into the gut pile. If you tied it shut, there shouldn't be any shit on the meat, since it's sealed.
Here is a pic of the legs skinned and the intestines removed. Look in the pelvis and notice the dark spot. That's shit that came out of the colon when I pulled it through the pelvis. I forgot to tie it off. Rinse that off right away. Now look at that leg on the left in the pic that isn't cabled up. See that natural curve on the inside by the pelvis? That's where you want to cut to remove the ham from the pelvis. Chop off the foot at the skinning line, then follow that inside curve of the leg and cut the tissue free. There's a ball and socket joint there, set the knife down, grab the ham with both hands and twist it out of the socket. Hands on opposite sides, twist and pull free. Now look the other leg that's hanging. Look at the part that's got all the fat and you can see a faint teardrop shape naturally there. Starts about where the light bulb is and runs down to the hip. That muscle group is the sirloin tip. The tip of the thigh. The sirloin is the lower back. The sirloin tip is that front group of the lower rear leg. It's confusing at first.
Here I've removed the intestines and skinned it open on the underside to the chest. Reciprocating saw right through the sternum (breastbone) will open things up and make the vital organs easier to remove.
Here's a shot of me showing the cavity. The skin is over to the left of my hand and my hand is holding onto the side pork. Side pork is where bacon comes from and is the abdomen muscles.
With the backstraps, you can cut the top third out (if hanging by the feet like I did) to get two hands on the strap and then just pull downward toward the head. It pulls right off the bone. Very little cutting required there. Look back at the pic where I have the front quarters and backstraps removed. Free the meat along the spine, cut across to separate it from the ham (thigh), cut a little down toward the side, then pull.
Gutting and skinning is the hardest part really. Butchering is pretty easy. The muscle groups are pretty easy to separate and bone out. Just follow the seams made by the groups and connective tissues. Remember to cut meat with a knife and bone with a saw. The one exception I make is using a saw to cut the ribs free of the spine. You will cut meat and bone at the same time. Just rinse the ribs well after cutting to get the bone chips off.
Here's a pic of the main cuts or "primal cuts" that people are familiar with. All told, from the time I shot it in the head to the time I started to clean up was about 2-2.5 hours. That's slaughter (gunshot to the brain), slicing the jugular to bleed out, gutting, skinning, primal cuts and boning the meat. I wish you guys were closer as I'd come over and help you out if you ever bought a whole pig.
