If you don't want cured pork in a half hog share

We occasionally hear from people who don’t like (or at least don’t eat) cured pork products because of the salt and sugar content, the sodium nitrite, or because they simply prefer the flavor of fresh pork. If you are avoiding nitrite salt-cured pork but instead paying extra for “naturally” cured pork products, you are likely being deceived. Here is our old blog post on why “natural” cures are a scam which are probably less healthy for you than the regular stuff. If you want to avoid added nitrates, you’re going to have to just avoid commercially cured meat. You can make salted and smoked pork belly at home, instead of bacon. Just be aware that the reason cure recipes use pink salt (sodium nitrite) is to safely prevent dangerous toxins which could make you sick or kill you. Of course many people have salted and smoked meats without using sodium nitrite and never had a problem, but there is a risk and you should know what you are doing.

Here is what we would recommend you do if you want a half hog but don’t want cured meat.

Pork belly

Get this in 2-3 pound roasts. It’s very popular to leave the skin on and slow roast it so that the skin crisps in the rendering pork fat. Poke holes all over or cut slits to let the fat out. Without skin you can braise it such as in chashu. There are also many options to roast or braise pork belly in cubes, or fancier cooking options such as lechon kawali (simmer the cubes of pork belly until they are tender, then let them air dry and fry them). For the most versatility, leave the pork belly as a skin-on roast; you can always cut the skin off and cut the roast into cubes, later.

Uncured pork leg

With some fat left on, our pork legs work fine for making boneless roasts. It’s not quite as good as the pork shoulder but it’s certainly good enough. Leg steaks are also excellent. You’ll want to braise them or otherwise slow cook to keep them from drying out. Because of this, you likely don’t need to worry about steak thickness as much as with a pork chop, where thin chops are less forgiving of overcooking. A thinner leg steak will braise faster. As with the belly, cubes of leg meat are versatile and can be used in stews, braises, or grilled on skewers. You can always cut up a roast into cubes later.

Get the ham hock

If you’re avoiding cured meat for health reasons but you do enjoy the flavor, by all means make sure to get some cured and smoked ham hocks! Yes, these are cured and smoked, but while you can certainly eat the meat if you want to, what they’re really best for is to flavor things like beans and rice or vegetable soups. You get the salty, smoky flavor of the ham hock, but diluted in whatever broth you’re using, which means you can control and limit the amount of salt you ingest. Just remove the hock after it has given its flavor to your broth. Unless you are on an extremely strict diet, you’ll be able to enjoy the flavor of cured and smoked pork without actually eating it.

Simple Pork Cuts Checklist/Walkthrough

This is a bare-bones (or boneless - hah!) guide for placing a custom butcher order for half a pig. We have some more in-depth plans elsewhere and there are probably hundreds of cuts you can get from half a pig, so if you have the time and desire to be adventurous then by all means, just start looking at “cuts of pork” and you’ll find a lot. However, if you are ordering a half hog from us or another local farmer so that you can put good food on the table for your family and you don’t have time to do hours of research, here you go.

The primal cuts of pork are the Shoulder, Loin, Belly, and Ham.

1. 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 good roasts for pulled pork. If you want fewer roasts and smaller cuts, the shoulder can also be cut into steaks. Shoulder bacon is good, and the picnic shoulder is also good ground for extra sausage or cut into stew meat.

2. Loin: We prefer double-thickness pork loin chops; you could also keep the loin as one big roast or a few smaller roasts. Two double-thick pork chops are a good meal for our family. Bone in means you don’t get baby back ribs, but you do get bones in your chops. The tenderloin cooks differently from other loin meat, so it may be best to have it separate. Grind the sirloin or cut it up for stew meat, it’s not a good cut for chops (unless you really like it.)

3. Belly: Take the spare ribs in half racks or a whole, and make standard bacon from the belly meat or have it cut as uncured belly roasts.

4. Ham: A whole cured ham is very large. You can also get it cut into smaller hams. 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. This is not sliced deli ham, you do need to cook it. If you don’t want cured ham 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.

5. Ground/sausage: You will get a few pounds of ground pork or sausage regardless, from the trimmings. If you want more than a few pounds you’ll need to pick something to add (such as the sirloin, picnic shoulder, or the uncured ham.)

6. Fat: A couple pounds of fat renders to a couple pints of cooking lard. Leaf lard fat has a more neutral flavor and you can use it in pastries. If you want more lard than that take some back fat, which makes lard that is great for frying and pan-frying. 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.

7. Other stuff: 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. Pork liver has a stronger flavor than chicken liver; kidneys have quite a strong flavor. Pork jowl is quite fatty and can be braised or cured into a very fatty bacon. The whole head and the tail are probably not worth keeping unless you have specific plans.

Once you know what you want, custom ordering from the butcher is super simple. Here’s the literal text of an email we sent one of our custom butchers recently for a half hog for our family:

Hi [butcher’s name]

It’s [our name] [our phone number]

For our half hog:

Shoulder: make as many 3 pound-ish bone in roasts as possible. Smaller is fine, we want them to fit into a 6-quart slow cooker.

Loin: pull off tenderloin, baby back ribs (full rack), double-thick chops (2 per package), stew meat the sirloin (1 pound pkg).

Ham: grind for sausage

Belly: spare ribs (full rack), regular bacon 1 pound packages.

Sausage: 1/4 breakfast sausage (loose), and split the other 3/4 between brats and ground pork. 1 pound packages
Organ meats none this time, I'll take any trotters and extra bones.

Thanks!

(NB: We eat organ meats but our personal freezer was getting full at the time, and we already had plenty of lard and smoked ham hocks on hand.)