Purchasing a half hog for the freezer - the complete details
Having grown up in close proximity to the city the entire concept of purchasing a whole or half animal any bigger than a chicken to put in my freezer never entered my thoughts. As I became more interested in the “know your food, know your farmer” narrative, my quest to source ethically farmed, premium quality food for my family introduced us to some good Missouri folk who sold us a 1/4 of their beef cow which filled my freezer with all kinds of steaks and roasts which I would never normally purchase at the store based on just the price per lb alone!
Those good Missouri folk are now our neighbours!
For those of you who didn’t grow up on a farm, here’s what you need to know about the process, what it costs and what you get.
The meat from a half hog ( a rough guide)
Once a pig is taken to the butcher and everything that will NOT be used for meat is removed and the meat is cleaned and inspected the butcher will record a carcuss weight or hang weight which will give you an idea of how much meat to expect.
Our Mangalitsa pigs typically return a hang weight of 250-300 lbs including meat, bones and lard. So a half hog will give you between 125-150lbs of product.
As a rough breakdown this is what you usually can expect
Hams - about 20% of the hang weight which you can have cured, smoked, sliced as steaks
Loin - about 25% of the hang weight which you can have cured and sliced into canadian bacon, cut into chops ( bone in or out) cut into loin roasts
Ribs - about 5% of the hang weight. Spare ribs are the belly ribs while baby back ribs come from under the loin, are smaller and more tender. Baby back ribs can be cut if you have ordered ‘boneless’ loin chops.
Belly - about 10% of the hang weight. Traditionally this is cured and/or smoked and sliced as bacon. However it can be left as a whole or half slab for smoking or left fresh for those who enjoy to home cure their own meat
Shoulder - about 20% of the hang weight. Picnic and butt roasts are the common cuts and can be packaged as 7lb roasts or 3lb roasts to suit your needs. These are your ‘pulled pork’ cuts!
Miscellaneous cuts - about 10% of the hang weight including fat which can be rendered as lard, hocks which can be cured and smoked together with your hams, and jowel which can be cured into jowl bacon - a bacon much heavier in fat to meat ratio and typically used for making italian carbonara dishes.
Trim - about 10% of the hang weight. This is the surpluss trimmings of meat that did not go into the above cuts. This can be made into ground pork or pork burgers, breakfast patties or pork sausage links.
When the hang weights are confirmed you will be given a ticket number and the butcher will be given your name. At this point you will call the butcher to give your cut list based on the above information.
Processing information & costs ( a rough guide)
Once the carcuss is cleaned the butcher will allow the meat to rest under refrigeration for a period of days before processing.
Once processing starts meat will be cut and packaged according to your instructions and the turn around time of this process can be between 1-3 weeks depending on the complexity of your order.
When ordering a half hog this way there are 2 costs, you will pay the farmer for the whole sale price of the animal which is $6/lb for our mangalitsa pork. You will then pay the butcher per/lb for the processing (based on what you have done) for a half hog this is roughly around $150 including, dispatch, inspection, curing, smoking, packaging & labelling. Both butcher paper wrapping and vacuum packaging are available which you should let the butcher know about at the the time of your cut list instructions and also if you want your fat rendered into lard, and your pork bones saved for making bone broth!!
How much space do i need in my freezer?
If you are ordering a half hog as a general rule 2-3 shelves in your upright freezer should be ample on the provision that you are opting to have the fat rendered by the butcher (which in doing, turns the fat into lard - a shelf stable product that does not need to be frozen). One lb of back fat yields roughly 2 cups of lard which will be decanted into 1 gallon tubs (8lbs/16 cups) so you can calculate how much lard you will receive based on the hang weight.
Since there is an added cost to having the butcher render your lard, be assured it is a very simple process to do yourself at home - all you need is a slow cooker or large turkey roasting pot however the back fat will need to stay frozen until you have time to render it so do take this into consideration for freezer space.
