Cooking Tips:
Pastured meat is leaner than typical cuts you’ll find in the supermarket making it a healthier meal. Grass & dairy fed pork has a rich, delicious sweet taste. Do not over cook meat so as to keep it’s natural juicy flavor and tenderness. You can use ground pork where you would use hamburger in recipes. Cooking a large piece of meat such as a ham, roast or loin makes for wonderful meals, sandwiches and omelettes the following days.
Grilling – Sear in the juices with high initial heat and then finish cooking over a lower heat. Be sure not to over cook the meat or it will dry out and toughen. If you like well done, try medium since pastured pork is much more flavorful than grain fattened meat.
Brining – We brine fresh hams for our family’s table in 3 cups salt, 1 cup sugar or maple syrup, about 2 tsp cloves and black pepper in enough water to cover a 10 to 15 lb ham. Boil the brine, cool and place over meat in a glass, stoneware or plastic container – not metal. For large pieces of meat, debone or inject the brine to get good penetration. Soak fully covered with brine for three days in the fridge turning daily. Longer makes it more tender and saltier. Remove, from brine, rinse and bake 15 minutes per lb starting at 400°F for first half hour – then 325°F until meat reaches an internal temperature of 160°F. Remove from oven and let meat rest 10 minutes before serving.
Corning – Our family loves corned beef so it was natural that we look to make corned pork. We started with the brining recipe as our base, skip the sugar and change the spices to bay leaves, black peppercorns, dill, chopped garlic, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, coriander, ginger, mustard seeds and a few cloves. After corning, drain & rinse the meat. Bring a pot of water to a boil and simmer the corned pork for about 15 minutes per pound until tender. Late in the cooking you can add potatoes, carrots or other root veggies to the pot to cook them in the delicious meat juices. Rest for 10 minutes & serve.
Slow Cooking – My personal favorite is grandma Jeffries’ barbecue ribs in sauce. This versatile recipe also works with loin or pork roast. Begin by cooking the meat for one hour at 350°F – longer for a large loin or roast. While cooking, prepare a sauce, ideally in a cast iron skillet or pot, of one chopped onion, 2 cloves chopped garlic, green pepper all of which has been braised in pork fat or olive oil for about 10 minutes. Add 1 and 1/2 cup paste tomato (crushed, sauce or chopped), 3 tblsp of molasses, 2 tblsp vinegar, 1 and 1/2 tblsp Worcestershire or A1, 2 tsp mustard and some red pepper to taste. Cook sauce 10 more minutes and then spread on baking meat. Bake 1 hour more. Let rest before serving.
Also see the Cooking blog posts and for desert check out the delicious Cupids recipe we made up. It is wonderful at home and for taking to pot luck dinners.
I came across your site looking for ways to fix a pork butt or ham. My husband and I purchased half a hog and realized of course that the ham and bacon would not be as in the store. This is our first time doing this. We are switching our family’s food to be as fresh as possible. I found your site inspiring. I am going to try your brining method and recipe but had a question about what you do with bacon. Do you brine it as well? Could you add liquid smoke to the brine to get the smoky flavor? Thanks, Jeni
My first thought is to give the fresh pork a try and see how you like that. It is a different taste but delicious. Next, you can find my mother’s recipe for slow cooking it on the cooking page above – we use that a lot of many different cuts of pork. Then as you noted there is the home brining. We use that on both hams and bacon. We don’t do it yet but someday I would like to learn to smoke – hmm… that sounds funny! I’ve been reading some good books about it and should review them. Lastly, my son Will recently has been experimenting with the liquid smoke and gotten very good results. He puts it in while simmering the meat in the oven or on the stove. I know he has tried it on hocks and tongue.
Hi, I’ve stumbled across your amazing website and farm on accident…I live in NH and I am stumped with a cut of meat that I have from a pig my parents bought locally…it’s labeled as a “fresh ham butt”. Can I brine it and slow roast it as I would typically for a pork shoulder or a pork butt? I am looking for a pulled pork/chunked portions consistency when it’s done cooking. Help!
The cut you have likely came from the upper portion of the ham at the hip area. See the Pork Cut Chart on our literature page. Typically pulled pork is made from the Boston Butt. A second cut that is used sometimes for pulled pork is the Picnic Shoulder. My son makes pulled pork from the ham which is the same cut you have since we sell out of Boston Butt ever week so we never have it for our home kitchen. It works great. He cooks the ham and then to shred it he has taken to shredding it in the juicing blender in small amounts at a time – just a quick blend and it’s shredded.
We are going to be slaughtering our own pigs and we were wondering if you cure your meat or is that the purpose of brining?
The word “curing” is used by different people to mean different thing ranging from aging to salting to sugaring to the use of nitrites and nitrates. Traditionally the goal was to tenderize the meat and to preserve it for later prior to refrigeration. Now the primary purpose is flavoring followed by the tenderizing since most people have refrigeration. See this search pattern and read this page on the USDA site about hams. They emphasize the use of the nitrates and nitrites.
Nitrates and nitrites have a bad name left over from some studies offering potential links to cancer a few decades ago but recent research has shown that they are found naturally occurring in high doses in vegetables and may actually prevent some forms of cancer. See NoWeirdStuff.org for more and links.
When we make hams and bacon at home we don’t use nitrates or nitrites. We use sugar (maple or brown), salt and spices. See How to brine. At the smokehouse they are used in minimal amounts. I am not sure which way we’ll go, perhaps both, when we have our own smokehouse in a few years.
Just slaughtered our first 300 pounder at home. Husband was sick, so I had to cut it up myself and have been in pork for 3 days now. I put the hams in the freezer with the intention of curing (salt, sugar, etc) them later. My friend who is a meat cutter says no can do after it’s frozen. Oh well. At least he caught me before I ruined it. My question is, will it still brine well after it’s thawed out?
Congratulations and yes, you can still brine and smoke the meat after thawing it. It will work fine.