The Swine Crew—Part 2

My spouse augmented the novice ranks, carefully slicing meat from fat. The all-male swine crew graciously accepted her. It helped that we had known several of the guys for a couple of decades and the fact that she arrived early, carved diligently, and left late. (She got repeated compliments on how hard she worked.) About the only dampening impact she might have had on them was a little toning down of their language, but that did them no harm. I could have helped them relax a little, if I’d given them a few samples of the imaginative expletives she often releases around me.

She reports that, besides random gossip, the talk around the cutting table consisted primarily of the guys trading their various experiences of the ways of handling the pig processing job, or sharing stories from past adventures. Like fish stories, in which the whopper that was caught grew another inch with each narrative, memorable hogs of bygone days have grown heavier with each telling of the tale.

The stories continued the next day, when I joined the crew. Half of them hovered around the boiling kettles, thankful for the heat on a cold February morning, and the other half surrounded a sheet of plywood, seasoning chunks of meat that then got stuffed into the sausage grinder. Rather than regard me as the oddball who stayed home while his mate joined them the day before, they saw me as a fresh target for their slaughtering tales. I was a little concerned that they’d tell me to go inside and help the women prepare lunch. (They were making roast beef sandwiches—using supermarket industrial beef.)

The second day’s main activity was boiling down the goodies in those large cast-iron kettles. The lard rendering is pretty straightforward: the previous day’s chunks of fat are heated in one kettle, carefully stirring so as not to burn it, and then pouring into an old pillowcase (used as a filter) and finally squeezed in a lard press. The bits of cooked skin and meat left in the pillowcase are dumped out and munched on throughout the day, as “cracklin’s.”

The second kettle holds all the scraps (the making of scrapple!) not used for other purposes—head, heart, liver, tongue, bones, and such other offal stuff. It’s boiled until it’s mushy “puddin’ meat,” at which point all the chunks are sifted out of the boiler and placed on a table. Folks gather round and finger through the morsels, removing all gristle and pieces of bone. This is an important step, since some of those old folks can’t afford to have a tooth broken when they bite down on a chunk of scrapple.

To the pot of broth, in the meantime, a mixture of flour and cornmeal is slowly stirred in, along with a blend of seasonings. There is a little more banter at this point, over how much seasoning is just right, but again the participants yield to the taste buds of the host. At this point either scrapple or panhaus is made. These are ways of not wasting much of anything, that German and Dutch immigrants brought to the Mid-Atlantic states. Panhaus (a good German word, also spelled ponhaus, pannhaus, panhas, and pannaus) is that mixture of broth, grains, and seasoning—ladled into small pans. Scrapple is the same mixture, back into to which has been added the bits of puddin’ meat, after passing them through a grinder. When the panhaus or scrapple mush sets up, it is usually sliced and pan fried.

I’ve tried a few bites of scrapple. It’s not bad, even kinda tasty, but like the visions of chickens running through my head, my appetite for scrapple or panhaus wilts when I think about what parts of the hog it contains. One of the running jokes at the slaughtering party is about the tongue—which is fished out of the broth just before making scrapple. It’s laid on the table and the participants cut off a slice, dip it in salt and pepper, and savor its delicate flavor. One fellow, however, can’t quite bring himself to try a taste, saying that he can’t take the thought of where that tongue once was. That man speaks my mind!

I am grateful for our neighbors’ offerings of food and their invitation to join their swine crew. They have taught me that close at hand there are healthy carnivorous alternatives to industrial meat. We have been introduced to a few of their time-honored traditions of preparing basic ingredients for hearty meals. We’ve enjoyed participating in social activities that help contribute to a healthy community. And thanks to my spouse’s good work with the guys, we end up with a few quarts of beautiful lard and several pounds of scrumptious sausage. She even shares her bounty with me—providing I help with the dishes.

The Swine Crew—Part 1

In the previous posting I described my evolution towards once again occasionally imbibing meat. That process got a boost recently, when some of the bounty of our neighbors’ pig slaughtering came our way, in the manner of an offering of some lard and bacon. Now I’ve never cared for fat steaks or a pot roast, but bacon… how can anyone resist it? And lard is such a tasty medium in which to fry any number of foods. When I cook rice and beans for breakfast (that protein!) with an egg, it’s rendered much tastier with a dollop of lard added.

When our neighbors discovered my taste for bacon and lard, they knew that they’d swept up not only my meat-loving spouse into their food net, but this inveterate vegetarian as well. It was time to invite us to one of their swine-slaughtering parties! They follow a time-honored tradition of holding a butchering bash—wherein a handful of men gather over a weekend to kill, cut up, and render pig parts, while the women prepare meals (to supplement all the munching the men do, as they work).

While my spouse eagerly agreed to join the swine crew, I had misgivings. Years ago (prior to my strict vegetarian days) we raised chickens. The time came to slaughter and dine on a few. It was almost more than I could do to dispatch a chicken, but I managed the dastardly deed. Then it proved absolutely impossible to eat it. As I reluctantly tried to chew, in my mind’s eye I saw this cute bird running across the yard. It had become almost a friend. I was unable to swallow. That episode helped push me into my vegetarian days.

Pigs resemble people far more than chickens do. This fact gave me serious doubts that I could cut up the flesh of a porker (let alone eat a big slab of it later), so I opted out of the first half of the project—that sees a pig killed and sliced up. I felt that I could manage the second day, however, when huge cast iron kettles are set atop wood fires and chunks of fat are melted into lard in one of them. Into a second kettle goes various organs, bones, gristle, pieces of the head, and miscellaneous other unmentionable body parts, to get boiled down into what they call “puddin’ meat,” which becomes the basis of scrapple and panhaus (more on them later).

So I stayed home the first day—washing dishes and bringing in the laundry from the line—while my spouse joined the men at the cutting table. I slightly regret not being present during that phase, not being able to listen to them banter back and forth during their carving work; but I didn’t regret missing the carving experience.

My spouse later gave me a detailed account of the operating-room cutting scene: Two or three families usually form the swine crew—the slaughtering squad being six or eight men whose ages span at least three generations. The oldest are in their eighties and they know they have a key role as teachers to the younger guys. They bring to the cutting table the experiences of having done this as kids, under the tutelage of their grandfathers. Much of their granddads’ same equipment is still being used by them—the venerable knives sharpened to narrow daggers, the lard press, the sausage grinder, and the huge cooking kettles. Despite the range of experiential levels in the crew, each man defers to the host’s intentions—in how to cut up the meat, what parts will go for sausage or lard, what to do with the head, etc.

The first job is to dispatch the pig, gut it, and chill the meat. Again, it’s the host’s call in this area. The animal may have gotten “stuck” or shot. After gutting, the body is rolled into the scalding tank, where the bristles are softened and then scraped off. Depending on the size of the hog (usually 200-300 pounds but sometimes approaching 1,000), different scalding schemes are used. One huge porker required a backhoe to lift it!

After chilling the halves of the pig, the cutting begins in earnest. It is serious business—the men may banter and joke a bit, but haste is important, lest the meat warm too much and provide a fertile breeding ground for bacteria. It also requires a good level of concentration, as the tip of one’s finger could otherwise end up in the next day’s puddin’ meat pot. The more experienced carvers create ribs and roasts and chops—wielding knives, handsaws, and a small band saw (though I don’t think that anyone’s grandfather had one of the latter). Those with less experience (my spouse) are given the task of cutting small meat chunks up—sending fat pieces to be later rendered into lard and the leaner pieces to the sausage grinder.

More on the carving party next time…