charcuterie

its right behind the shibuya station and the shibuya excel.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=shibuya+station&sll=40.714266,-73.955339&sspn=0.017874,0.018604&ie=UTF8&hq=shibuya+station&hnear=&radius=15000&layer=c&cbll=35.657992,139.699266&panoid=6xG3SFmvXOMDa7l0rLn2cA&cbp=12,169.97,,0,1.72&ll=35.657941,139.699354&spn=0,359.997675&z=19

MWhite, click on the bitly for the g-loc. (xpost)

Ah, that makes sense. God, it's been ages since I've been in Tokyo. I miss Yoyogi Koen on a weekend in spring.

i miss the strong dollar/weak yen... T_T

When I was modeling there I always wanted the Yen to be strong.

My agency was in Harajuku and I used to 'get away' sometimes and walk through Meiji Jingu-Mae. I always felt lucky my agency was so close to a park and the subway.

you gonna be there during sonar fest?

will be in barcelona the week of, but we're doing an overnite up the coast on the 17th and returning to US on the 19th. sonar looks like a cool gig tho.

phil-2 have u driven a car in spain?

where are you overnighting at?

[tbh kinda loving a food thread spinning wildly out of tangent, unlike other threads that always converge on food themes for long lengths imo]

^^
yea and it's annoying me shasta
back to the charcuterie ya hams!

how 'bout this:
i cut up a chicken yesterday and usually i just throw the skin away cuz everybody's always saying how the skin is bad for you but for some reason i saved it this week. what the hell do ya do with chicken skin? should i try to make cracklins?
i guess this isn't exactly charcuterie, but this is: http://ilovefood.fronza.net/?cat=41

I'm pretty sure only in america do we think that animal skin (fish, chicken, pig) is bad for you.

the skin is an important part of chicken stock.

I want a drying fridge.

The last time I had a whole hog butchered, I cured 1/2 the belly as bacon and roasted the other half - cut the skin in 1/2" strips with a sharp paring knife, rubbed with thyme and black pepper, slow roasted until the skin crisped totally up and the meat was just about fall-apart.

I have 3 or 4 whole jowls in my freezer - thinking about trying for guanciale.

jaq this is a no-brainer. you should really do this and put lots of pictures

shasta-
i think in america it's basicly fat=bad
and skin has alot of fat, which most people skim off of they stocks so i am not sure how important it is to chicken stock
this ddude let's 'em know

you skim off the fat but surely the skin still flavors the stock?

flavors and adds texture - like cartlidge, the collagen/gelatin in the skin adds so much body

thinking about trying for guanciale.

Yes!!!

cartlidge, the collagen/gelatin

That's why the feet are awesome for stock.

oh yeah, I make pork stock from roasted neck bones and trotters and it's completely amazing. I hadn't thought about using chicken feet though - will do for the next big batch now.

Here's the photo set from the dry aged ham I did - not 100% in order and two different kitchens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/illiterati/sets/72157600215964848/

Wow. I have a smoked dry-cured ham aging right now. I had planned on letting it age for a couple of months. Do I really need to go 18 months though?

nope, it depends on the weight, which I didn't realize at the time. 18 months for that little ham was probably 9 months too long. Still tasted AMAZING, but was seriously dried out and difficult to cut.

OK DUDES I ORDERED THAT RUHLMAN CHARCUTERIE BOOK FROM AMAZON
LOOK OUT

Better start stocking up on Lipitor.

i just wanna have a bad-ass heart attack

http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/foods/he176w.htm

http://www.sausagemania.com/tutorial.html

hey JAQ did you make guanciale? also would you plz describe the process of 'having a whole hog butchered' for those of us who aren't doing that sort of thing yet?

in chicago i found this place, peoria packing co. that i plan to utilize:
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=23813

btw first recipe in ruhlman/polcyn's charcuterie book: bacon

re: guanciale - I'm waiting until we move to a house (in a few months) before I start any meat projects. I've got my eye on a cold smoker and a meat-aging refrigerator for the new space.

describe the process of 'having a whole hog butchered'

Start by going to Eat Wild and finding a local farmer who raises the livestock, usually during the winter. Get in touch, and find out if they can raise one for you and how much $ you need to send. Usually it's under $200 and covers the cost of the animal and its feed and care until butchering. Most farmers have a local butcher they use and can generally quote your final costs in the amount per pound of "hanging weight", so you can have a rough idea of how much you'll need to come up with in Oct/Nov. If the farm's close enough, I try to go visit a few times - the people who've raised pigs for us have also done fruits and vegetables so I'd pick up 50 lbs of tomatoes to process or whatever was in season.

When your animal is at a marketable weight and it's butchering time, you might have the option of being there. Our farmers have used a mobile abbatoir that comes to the animal, rather than hauling the animals to the butcher (which greatly adds to their stress). The carcass has to hang and cool for a certain amount of time before it is cut, wrapped, and frozen. If you're right there, you might be able to bring home a certain amount of fresh meat. If you want bacon, hams, or hocks smoked, that adds time to the final processing and to the cost. But generally within two weeks of butchering, you go pick up all your meat and whatever other bits you specified you wanted (fat/trotters/ears/tail/liver/etc).

Another option is to go your county or state fair and bid on the 4-H livestock. You can usually get set up with a hauler and butcher at the auction by asking around.

There's another thread here somewhere where I spell out how many grocery bags of meat you get from various animals. A whole hog is about the same as a side of beef - 8 to 10 grocery bags I think, plus a tall kitchen bag (13 gallons?) of trimmed fat.

This one: Buying meat in bulk

Speaking of cold smoker I've had some great success with a soldering iron, an empty tin can and smoking pellets. I cold smoked the ham I mentioned upthread, scallops and mozzarella.

Obviously if you have your eye on a real cold smoker a soldering iron might seem a little dinky, but I was very pleased with the results.

I had some fair success converting our gas grill into a hot smoker at one point. The soldering iron idea would be perfect for a cold smoker - what did you use for the big container/racks?

I have a charoal hot smoker that I used. I set the tin can with the soldering iron onto the lowest rack. If I was smoking more food I probably would have removed the water pan and placed the can at the bottom where the charocal would go.

If you do place the can on the lowest rack be careful about what you place over the can on the upper rack. That soldering iron can still put off some heat.

yo rm- could you plz supply more details of this soldering iron smoker thing?

is like this?

Close to that. There are other links that I found but basically you take a tin can and open it about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Punch a hole for the soldering iron near the lip of the can in the middle of the remaining part of the lid that has not been opened. Then fill the can with pellets and insert the soldering iron through the hole in the can.

Here's a tutorial on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sivMMDnUEpc

they do not mention this technique in the charcuterie book by ruhlman and polcyn . . . .

but nonetheless i plan to utilize it

homespun! homeskillet. hometown. u my homey n shit

They probably don't mention it in Charcuterie because the Bradley smoker they recommend has a cold smoker attachment. While I would love to get a Bradley (and may do so one day) this method works very well.

so any of y'alls ever make a chicken gallantine? i think i might try that as my first foray into charcuterie

Haha. Really? First foray?

Seriously, if chicken galantine is your first foray into charcuterie and you pull it off, I am going to lobby for an "I Love Stone Soup" board because that is where I will belong.

How did your bacon go btw?

i haven't sourced pork bellies as of yet. but i can find chickens, yo
also payday is right around the corner
plus it's not like i'm going from working to master kraft mac n cheese to attempting fermented sausages here dude
i can do some culinary wizardry methinks
actually i was thinking tasso ham might be a good first curing project cuz it's less meat, right?

i dunno righteousmaelstrom, you seem incredulous. have you made the galantine and it's like too many pitfalls impossible?
it just seems like less equipment and ingredients i might already have, ya know? i dunno i still have to get a meat grinder

also have any of yunz ever spit roasted a whole pig? please provide details

I think I'd want some spare chickens to practice on, to make sure I got the "remove skin in one relatively neat piece" down. Otherwise, sounds like a labor-intensive but tasty project.

Nah, not saying you don't have the skills to pull off chicken galantine, jdchurchill. I've never made galantine. Just saying if you can do it then I suppose I am underestimating your skills and for that I do apologize.

Not certain where you live though where you can't get pork bellies easily. I guess I am spoiled. I live in Portland -- I used to live very close to an Asian supermart where you could literally get anything off of a pig -- snout to bungs and everything in between. It is there.

Tasso ham is hella easy. I remember the Ruhlman recipe being kind of heavy on cloves though. I'm not a big fan of cloves so I think I used less than called for and compensated with other spices

thanks for the tip about cloves i am not a hueg fan either. i have found a place where they is rumor to have the bellies, but i aint walked in there yet. see upthread: peoria packing co. link to some other forum

Pork belly is also called side pork. You might see it by that name, though it's usually sliced. Asian markets are excellent places to get all the pig parts you might need, but also Hispanic carnicerias can be good.

is pork belly really that hard to find in the usa? any butcher over here has it