There are two ways of curing meat – a salty brine, or just plain salt. I will share recipes for both.
Tag: paleo
Cutting up a pig without a saw
Before our pig kill (see this post) we had discussed what we wanted to do with each part of the pig. To keep costs down, we just had the mobile butcher here on one day to do the kill, hair removing, gutting, and sawing the pigs in half and leaving them to hang for a day before we would cut them up ourselves. If we wanted him to cut them into pieces he would probably have to come back another day.
We’ve never before cut pigs up ourselves, and how we handled it is a bit different to the process I’ve seen elsewhere because we didn’t have a saw. Every other instruction around is for how to do it with a saw, so I will write about how we did this using only 6” (15cm) boning knives, and maybe a firewood axe and a good aim (depending on how the spine has been cut).
Pig day
Our 6 month old Wessex saddleback boar pigs
The next few photos are of the pig slaughtering process, with commentary, to help others who want to raise their own meat or understand a process that has mostly been forgotten in modern times.
Our pigs have lived happy lives in the paddock above for the past few months. They have been able to express their pig-ness, and have enjoyed a diet of acorns, whey, scraps, and local gmo-free grains. Their natural behaviour is to search for roots in the ground with their snouts, turning over some of the soil in a gentle way, and also manuring it. They feed the soil life and prepare the ground for new plants to grow.
Vegetarians might want to stop reading this now.
Continue reading
Roasted Butternut Squash and Spinach Salad with Cheese
I’ve never successfully made a hard cheese with a natural rind before.
On a biodynamic fruit day, back when we still had Buttercup the cow, I mixed some of her milk with some of our goats milk, cultured it, sort-of followed an asiago recipe (I am not so good with all the continuous stirring), pressed it, salted it, and put it in the makeshift cheese cave to age. Roughly once a week, mostly on other biodynamic fruit days, I would tend to the cheese. I would rub more salt on it, brush it, to keep the growth of some things in check, and to help it form a rind. For months I looked at this cheese every week, wondering what it would taste like.
After around five months I cut into it. It’s probably the best cheese we’ve ever tasted!
Today I made this salad with it. Feta is really good in this, as is any hard cheese, or you can use chopped walnuts instead. This is a good salad to make ahead of time, it will keep in the fridge for a couple of days, just make sure the squash has fully cooled down before you add it to the spinach.
Roasted Butternut Squash and Spinach Salad with Cheese
Continue reading
Best Ever Beef Burgers
Burgers served with cheese, lacto-fermented pickles, and salad
Simple Wonderful Lamb Burgers
These are the perfect burger. They’re juicy and full of flavour yet they hold their shape.
Minimally seasoned with garlic and herbs to let the taste of lamb shine through they can be served in a variety of ways; with tzatziki and greek salad, with gyros or kebab toppings, with traditional burger accompaniments like fried eggs, salads, and sauces, or with any vegetable side dish…even Swedish braised red cabbage.
Bosc Pears (how to tell when they’re ripe, and how to cook them)
Superkraut (A foolproof way to enjoy eating fermented vegetables every day)
This kraut is super for a number of reasons:
- It tastes good enough to be eaten like a salad
- It has an added superfood ingredient that’s often missing from modern diets
- It is foolproof to make and to store, even for beginners, if you follow my detailed instructions
7 Secrets to Making Successful Sauerkraut Every Time
Perfect Pulled Pork (two ingredients)
This recipe is perfect for a number of reasons. Firstly it’s just two ingredients, thrown in the oven and left in there for several hours to slowly cook. Secondly the taste is great (you need to use good pork though). Thirdly, the leftovers reheat well, just bake the amount that you want for one meal on a low heat until it’s heated through. This recipe can even be made with frozen pork without needing to thaw it in advance – just give it half an hour or so longer in the oven.
The Nourishing Hearthfire 