Pig blood: How do you catch it? [moved from Home Cooking]
My parents are going to slaughter and butcher one or two hogs this fall, and we're not sure about the best way to catch the blood to use in blood puddings and such. Any tips or resources you can recommend? How do you keep it clean and prevent coagulation? Vinegar? What's the best vessel to use? Etc. My mom grew up on a farm, but can't remember how this part was done! Thanks for any direction you can provide.
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My recollection od this, from 20 odd years ago was much the same as Infomaniac's, with a few minor differences.
We had a gallows at the farm. The pig was fasted for 24 hours, for the sake of an empty bladder and stomach -- reasons obvious.
Pig was despatched with a ball pein hammer blow or .22 bullet between the eyes. Hoisted up on the gallows by meat hooks through the rear gams immediately, then the throat slit from ear to ear. Hold head back and catch the blood. We experienced no kicking this way.
After the blood was drained, the pig was immersed in a bath containing water at precisely 160 degrees F. This allows the hair to 'slip' and most of it can be rubbed off with a coarse scrubbing brush. You'll know when the hair starts to slip as it will easily come away after the pig has been immersed for a minute or two. After this job is done, the pig is then hoisted up on the gallows again to dry the skin and any coarse bristles are either shaved off with a sharp skinning knife or burnt of with a blowtorch, which also assists in the drying process.
After this, if the pig is to be butchered, it was halved down the backbone using a small chainsaw which had been meticulously cleaned and the lube chamber filled with olive oil. Don't know if you've ever seen this done, but after everything was over, the farm dogs used to come down and lick the gallows block clean!!
After halving, the halves are separated at the fourth rib from the front if I remember rightly, and then hung for a week in the coolroom before being butchered.
The piece de resistance for me was the boiled down head of the pig, judiciously seasoned and herbed, set in loaf pans and sliced thick on slices of fresh baked, buttered bread. I LOVE brawn -- and come to think of it, I've never seen mention of it on this board......
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re: Ozbyte
We didn't call it brawn, but fromage de tete is definitely a delicacy where I'm from. I like it best as "bouillie"--when it is chopped, spiced, and ready for the loaf pans, but is not yet gelled/firm. It is warm & spreadable & delicious...if you microwave headcheese for a minute or two, it reverts to this state, but I think it's much better fresh...the parsley & green onions are still a little crisp.
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Let's see...it's been a little while since I attended a boucherie where the pig was actually killed on-site (the nouveau cajun way is to order a whole hog, already dead, from a butcher). But it seems to me that the pig was killed with a bullet to the head, then was scalded w/hot water & the bristles/hair scraped off, THEN it was hoisted up & bled from the neck vein (jugular, I guess). Blood was caught in an ordinary cooking pot and salted for later use in blood stew & boudin noir.
Now you've got me thinking....I'll have to ask around and see if this process is a standard one, or what.
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re: rootlesscosmo
How does this carry the risk of lead poisoning in the pig's blood if it has all been drained and there's no circulation anyway? I think this could only occur if you ate the bullet and I bet there's squillions of people out there who have inadvertantly swallowed lead shot from wild ducks or rabbits. I tend to think most of it would exit from the other end in a day or so, and isn't lead poisoning a cumulative thing?
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There is indeed a hog-slaughtering truck that comes around, and my parents are, I think, going to take advantage of it (they live in northeastern Washington State). The problem is that the guy with the truck doesn't ordinarily save the skin or the blood, so my mom and dad want to help out with (that is, micromanage) the slaughtering process. Thanks so much for all the advice so far—this is really helpful.
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Infomaniac
Aug 28, 2006 06:14 PM
I can't answer for anyone elses family, but my grandfather who came to the USA around 1890 something, used to raise lamb and hogs for most of the families from his church. I remember when ever there was going to be a slaughter, most of the men from the church would come to help out and share with the cuts of meat.
When my grandfather got to old for it, he thought my father would naturally take over but that never happened.
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My question is why would your parents want to do this!?!
I grew up on a farm too, and the only thing my parents killed themselves were chickens!! - rest, they brought in the local butcher.›2 Replies-
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re: JudiAU
Pat Hammond
Aug 31, 2006 03:20 PM
States with lots of hunters should have some places for portioning up a deer, etc. My area of central Maine has quite a few. The hunter will have his favorite place. You take your animal to them and they cut it up into roasts, steaks, grind it up, and even make sausage.
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re: pitu
Infomaniac
Aug 28, 2006 05:39 PM
A good bleeding is essential, and should take maybe 5 mins.
Use a smooth dipping motion to insert an 8 to 10 inch VERY sharp preferably double bladed knife into the correct place on the pig's chest. At this point, I would advise to find a picture with a diagram as to where the right place is, because in this instance a picture is worth a thousand words. You are aiming more or less for the heart, but it is the main arteries you will actually be severing, NOT the heart. The motion you are making is like drawing the outlines of a shallow bowl, dipping down and then up again. If you do not get a very copious blood flow immediately, do it again quickly, with the full length of the knife.
Allow the pig to finish bleeding out, which can take several minutes. Expect some twitching and continued motion; this will persist whether or not the pig is actually dead. When you have finished bleeding out the pig, you should have about 4-5 quarts of blood in your bucket. Add vinegar or 1/2 cup of non-iodized salt (sea salt is best, or ordinary non iodized table salt) and stir for about 30 seconds. Use a strainer to scoop off and discard the white foam. You now have stable blood that will not clot and will keep in your fridge for weeks in edible form. If you don't do this, you will have a solid block of blood jello which has much more limited culinary use. (Makes a great fertilizer).
Make sure you have at least 4 quarts of blood in that bucket, or your pig is not sufficiently bled out. A good bleed-out involves a very healthy and constant stream of blood, which you can encourage some by keeping the pig's head slightly lifted so that the fat around the wound does not settle and close it.
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I'm told that even in farming areas of Italy there are professional hog-slaughterers who travel around in the late Fall weeks when most people kill pigs. S&B Farm in Petaluma CA, where I've bought piglets for roasting, doesn't do any of their own hog butchering, though they kill and dress poultry. In other words it's a big, messy, complicated business, requiring special equipment, special skill, and (not least) the determination to carry on in spite of the spurting blood and ear-splitting howls from the pig itself.
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Heck, I'm just a city girl, so what do I know... but there are professional butchers/slaughters that make house calls. I know a woman in Vermont who has someone come over with his slaughter truck to do away with her chickens once a year.
I was in Cuba for New Years once. It's tradition there to have a pig roast, so the morning before New Year's Eve I was woken by the sounds of a pig being slaughterd out side my window. It was no easy task, two or three big guys to tie and wrestle the poor thing and cut it's neck. This was in Havanna and the joke there is that the city guys are really bad at it and take half the day to kill the poor thing. -
Pat Hammond
Aug 28, 2006 03:51 PM
I admire your parents for what's bound to be a huge undertaking. Are there any old timers around who can give them advice? All I remember is an enormous cauldron of boiling water; I guess I've blocked out the rest. If they live in a community where there's lots of deer hunting and the like, the places where the dead animals are taken to be butchered would be a good resource for information. Good luck to them!
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re: Pat Hammond
Infomaniac
Aug 28, 2006 03:53 PM
An enormous cauldron of boiling water is probably how they remove the hair from the skin now.
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Infomaniac
Aug 28, 2006 03:45 PM
This isn't something you would forget that easily.
Depending on how large the pig is, it needs to be secured. You might want to secure the hogs mouth too to help weaken it. Pull its legs back to expose its throat. Have a large pan or bucket ready to catch the blood drippings. Once the pig is subdued (sometimes a few hammer blows to the head), the incision is made in the neck of the pig.
One puncture begins an inexorable flood of blood, and death comes after a minute of unanswered trumpeting calls for help.
It makes a sound like a dying dinosaur.
While people are holding the ropes, they attach the other end of the ropes to something (bucket loader or barn door with pulley system) they can raise up the pig by its rear feet. After hoisting the pig once it begins to get too weak to stand. At this point the pig begins to realize the end is near so it peacefully accepts its fate. Then a pan is placed under the trickle of blood to capture some for the making of blood pudding. A little vinegar in the blood will prevent it from coagulating.
Once the pig collapses and dies, it is usually layed on a bed of straw and set on fire to remove the hair and sear the skin. You then need to hoist it up by it's rear feet. Metal hooks work good for this. Then raise to hoist the pig vertically. Then the pig is split open down its center and all the organs are removed and placed on a table for subsequent cleaning and preparation.
Then the job of carving the meat begins.
It's been about 20 years, but thats sort of how I remember it.
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Are they going to do this themselves? Golly, they're a lot more enterprising than I am. I've seen chicken blood collected. You cut the jugular and hold the chicken over a pan. It made me feel sick to see and put me off any kind of blood product for life. But a 200lb pig is a whole other problem.
