About two months ago we had the first taste of our home grown heritage breed pork. American Guinea hogs are a small, slow growing, black and hairy animal, who graze like a cow. A breed designed for lard as well as meat, they create lots of subcutaneous fat if they eat anything other than grass. We have steadily improved our grazing management since acquiring a registered breeding pair three years ago, aiming to provide as many of their calories as possible from the variety of plants that create a healthy pasture. Supplements include locally sourced hay when grass is scarce, and any available skim milk from our cow. Lactating sows eat a few pounds of rolled barley mixed with a spoonful of molasses, weaning baby pigs eat a similar ration of grain for a few weeks after their separation from mothers milk. They clean under our fruit trees, eating all of the dropped fruits with glee, and forage for acorns and walnuts in the fall. They are friendly, expressive creatures, definitely my favorite farm animal (don’t tell my poor dog!).
our boar eating a legume in late summer pasture
Grass has the most sugar (and therefore weight gaining potential) during rapid growth in the spring and early summer. This grass is rich in chlorophyll and carotenes, and cream from a pastured cow is visibly yellow in the growing season’s climax (in the case of extremely vibrant plant growth – butter can be bright orange!). It makes sense to harvest animals at the wave crest of intense grass growth, when they store in their body tissue the most nutritious food of the year.
Fat soluble vitamins are especially prevalent in meat, eggs, and milk sourced from animals with access to well managed, peak season pasture. Good quality hay, green and sweet, offers a smaller amount of these carotenes than fresh grass, but it goes a long way in keeping the nutritional content of animal products at relatively high levels year round. We buy the highest quality hay we can find and afford, and our butter is naturally yellow in the middle of winter. Commercial butter is often pale white, and is frequently colored to imitate the look of pastured butter.
Despite all this knowledge, we decided to eat our first pig in February, because we wanted to have a snowy luau (or at least a pit roast with some snow on the ground), and there are too few reasons to throw parties in the middle of winter. It’s one of the worst times of year for animal harvesting, but this pig had enjoyed access to lots of skim milk her whole seven months of life, and had a respectable layer of fat. Despite the lack of fresh chlorophyll in her diet, we were excited to flex our butchering muscles at a pig, and, of course, to taste our pasture in the form of pork.
My last post detailed what happened to her head.
this pig had an odd gait due to scoliosis, but was otherwise a vigorous animal
This was the liver directly after removal from the cavity, the most beautiful organ I’ve ever held. I immediately knew what I wanted to do with it: Cured raw, and sampled in small pieces, sliced thin. Fergus Henderson’s “The Whole Beast” takes all the credit. His recipes are incredibly simple. I have read other meat curing books with authors who hand wring about salmonella and urge the use of nitrate salts. Not Henderson. His attitude is more like – use parts from healthy animals; be generous with good old salt; if you’re concerned about germs, keep it cold. His confidence and ease in the realm of old world food is infectious. I think that’s what convinced me to make and eat this dish, which I would have found a little too adventuresome not many years back.
Removal of the gall bladder is essential in liver preparation. It’s an oblong dark sack filled with green fluid, usually obvious on any liver, and it should be carefully cut out intact (sacrifice some liver, it’s worth being certain the sack isn’t punctured) and composted. The organ is first soaked for twenty four hours in several changes of cold fresh water. A bit of blood seeps into the water and washes away with each fresh bath.
partially covered with salt and sugar
Then it is rubbed with equal parts sugar and salt, in all the crevices and around each lobe, and placed in a glass or ceramic container with a lid. Kept in a cool place for three weeks, it is sprinkled with more salt sugar mixture as needed, to keep the surface covered. I poured off some liquid after about ten days. The organ shrank and darkened during this process, and ultimately ejected about a cup of dark red liquid.
fully covered in sugar and salt
After three weeks, the liver was rinsed thoroughly and rubbed it all over with cracked black pepper. Rolled up in a clean cheese cloth, it was wrapped in string and hung in our cellar to dry. It looked like a smaller, darker version of itself. The salt removed a lot of the water in the meat by osmosis. Curing is all about releasing moisture from the cells, until they are dry enough to be inhospitable to microbial activity.
After two weeks I opened the package to see what had transpired. No mold on the surface, which had turned even darker brown, it looked and smelled like liver jerky, only not as hard or dry in appearance. It seemed like it was losing moisture very slowly. A bit of moisture had absorbed into the cheesecloth. From what I’ve read about curing meat in general (though “The Whole Beast” offers no advice in this regard), low humidity during drying forms a hard crust on the outside of the meat, trapping water in the interior. The inside is still too moist to be stable, and the partially cured meat rots from within. It appeared that the cellar had high enough humidity for the process, but a bit too high for the liver to be “done” after the suggested three weeks of drying time.
The liver was much firmer than it had been raw and uncured, but it was still tacky to the touch. I cut off some mostly dry slivers from around the edges. They were incredibly salty, with a livery tang. I wrapped it back up and hung it for another week.
Seven days later I brought the package up from the cellar and ate several tiny pieces. It was slightly drier, but was still sort of gummy in the middle. I could stretch it in to very thin sheets, like dough. I cut the liver into four pieces, rubbed more pepper into the fresh cuts, then arranged them on a plate and enclosed it in a cheese cloth. This sat on my kitchen windowsill for about another week, while I turned the lobes each day to expose the moister side. I nibbled on one lobe, a few little bites each day. When they were mostly dry, I put them all in a lidded glass dish in a cool spot. It’s been eight weeks since the initial salt cure, and the moisture content is homogenous throughout the lobes. It feels solid and looks like oddly shaped meat jerky, with a dry surface and leathery texture.
I consider this cured liver to be a daily nutritional supplement. Liver is one of the best sources of vitamins A, D, and iron. These vitamins are heat sensitive, and with raw liver, my body has access to lots of nutrients even with very small portions. The curing process is supposed to kill any parasites. I believe our pigs are parasite free because of their diet and environment. I would not attempt this recipe with anything other than the organ from a very healthy animal, and of whose diet I had intimate knowledge.
As for flavor – it’s salty, peppery, and strong, but not unpleasant (if you like the admittedly “acquired” taste of liver and fermented meats); there’s something primal about it that I love (no one else living here wants to help me eat it, and I’m fine with that). Sometimes I put the pieces on a slice of buttered bread, more often I wash down a few shavings with a beverage. The original recipe calls for serving with hard boiled eggs and radishes, I intend to try this combination as soon as our radish seeds mature.