Cooking (BBQ smoking) a pasture-raised pork leg roast

Bone-in leg roast.  Fresh ham.  "Green" ham

That's right folks it is time to cook a very large hunk of pork.  It's not exactly Christmas anymore but isn't any time a good time to slow cook a gigantic hunk of naturally-good, pasture-raised meat over smoky charcoal?  

Step 1: Salt in advance, preferably overnight

The first step is to defrost the bone-in leg roast and salt it with kosher salt.  I use kosher salt on meats because the big flakes of salt stick better to meaty surfaces than the squared off salt crystals from regular salt.  Which is...why it's used for koshering.  Smart!

Salting the meat before cooking helps to draw moisture out of the surface, which helps with the Maillard reaction we're going for on the surface (more on that later).  Salting well in advance, say twelve hours or more, allows the salt and moisture to combine and create a version of a brine.  If you are concerned about limiting salt in your diet, stop eating commercial processed foods.  The amount of salt you sprinkle on meat is not going to make a difference compared to the salt in commercially-processed foods.

Here's the bone-in leg roast sprinkled on all sides with kosher salt.  I put it in the refrigerator like this overnight.

Bone-in pastured pork leg roast, sprinkled with kosher salt prior to cooking.

Step 2: Rub a dub dub give it a rub

I've seen abuelas cook pork leg roasts with just salt, and maybe one day I will be brave enough to try.  But I do like to use a good spice rub.  You can make your own or buy one.  If nothing else, I think adding a spice rub helps to flavor the smoke that is produced when the surface fat begins rendering off the meat.

I considered injecting the meat with additional flavorings, such as apple cider.  But I decided I wanted to taste the natural juiciness of the pork this time without any additions.  

Start the fire, Billy

I use an upright barrel drum cooker and I just light charcoal in the bottom.  I will say I put a sizeable mound of charcoal in the bottom.  Definitely more than the "recommended amount".  But that's because I was far more concerned with not having to add more fuel than I was with wasting charcoal.  Because of the design of the barrel cooker I wasn't worried about it getting too hot.  On a regular grill I would have had to add more charcoal partway through cooking.

The barrel cooker is designed (by somebody else, and it was a great idea) to regulate the temperature inside as the meat hangs from a hook (or several hooks in this case) over the coals and drips down onto the coals creating flavorful smoke while convection cooks the meat.

Leg roast in the barrel cooker.  In summer I would never allow all those leaves so close to the cooker, but everything is soaking wet all the time right now.  Know your fire safety, kids!

Cooking on a kettle grill

It's entirely possible to smoke/BBQ on a kettle grill.  I've smoked plenty a pork butt as well as several whole turkeys and barbecued brisket, all on a decent but cheap kettle grill.  It does take some care: you need to check the meat and the temperature relatively often and adjust accordingly to try to keep it in the sweet spot of around 250 degrees.  Just take it easy: even a few coals can heat up the grill quite a lot, and your main goal is not to cook the meat too fast.  And if you don't want to add more coals partway through the cook, just finish it in the oven: by the time you're ready to do so, most of the flavor from the smoke is already in there anyways.  

If I were using a standard kettle-style grill, and I have -- the cheap kind not the expensive ceramic woo woo kind -- here is what I would do.  I would place charcoal around the inside of the grill in a circle or like a snake eating its own tail.  In the middle of that ring I would put a metal pan full of water (not your best roasting pan!)  I would put some lit coals on one part of the charcoal snake, and I would make a foil packet, not fully closed, of pre-soaked barbecuing wood chips and toss it on top of the lit coals.  Then I would adjust the bottom vent to be almost closed and the top vent to be almost closed and use an infrared thermometer to occasionally test how hot the meat was getting and adjust the vents accordingly.  You want to shoot for a cooking temperature of about 250 degrees Fahrenheit.  I would plan ahead for the need to add more charcoal.  Over time, the lit coals at one end will spread to the unlit charcoal snake you made around the edge of the grill, and will light those coals in sequence to keep the fire burning.  I would put the meat in the middle of the cooking grate so it is not directly over the coals.  Ideally I would have another pan under the meat to catch the drips and maybe use that to make a sauce.  But realistically you probably are going to have the roast over the pan of water because of space constraints.  You need the pan of water to help moderate temperature spikes inside the grill (in the same way that if you live on a lake your local temperature is moderated by the lake effect.) 

If you have a split-sideways barrel drum grill you can tweak the same method as with the kettle grill, but to be honest you should probably try to get a kettle grill if you want to barbecue anything.  Unless your split-drum grill/smoker was priced in the thousands of dollars it's a piece of junk.  I'm not saying that's bad, I have junk that I love too. 

A "gas grill" is an advertising term for a stove you put outside.  I love cooking on gas stoves and I love cooking outdoors, but you can't barbecue on gas.  

Cook to 200 degrees for "falling off the bone"

Fourteen hours later the meat turned out delicious.  Yes.  Fourteen hours.  I didn't weigh the raw leg roast on a kitchen scale (it wouldn't fit) but it weighed I would say around twelve pounds.  

It was done to the recommended temperature for pork, according to a probe thermometer and a taste test, after about 7 hours, but I wanted to bring it up to the high 190s/200ish Fahrenheit internal temperature barbecued meat needs to reach to get that "falling off the bone", pull-apart tenderness.  After ten hours I took it off the hooks and put it on a grill grate, because falling-off-the-bone is good but falling off the hooks into the fire is not.  After twelve hours I decided to finish it in the oven.  This is a normal cook time, by the way.  I was expecting about an hour-ish of cook time per pound of meat.

After action report

In the end it made a very flavorful but very slightly dry pulled pork.  The reason for the latter, I'm convinced, is in the first photo up above: the leg roast does have some marbling but it's simply not enough.  There isn't enough fat like there is in a shoulder roast to keep it juicy while cooking to 200 degrees F.  It does fall off the bone, it does have a nice rich smoky pork barbecue flavor, but it lacks the juiciness of a shoulder roast.  It's good, but I would say for me it wasn't worth the extra time and effort.  The lean meat is the result of decades of big agriculture breeding programs and while raising the pigs on pasture definitely improves the flavor, it doesn't change genetics.  If the pigs eat more than they just get fat, and the pork doesn't get more marbled.

I have another leg roast and when I cook that one I'm going to just take it to an internal temperature of "done" and cut off slices rather than take it all the way to falling apart.  I also want to try to get my hands on some fattier, more marbled pasture-raised pork roasts, which means getting meat from heritage breed pigs.

Making lard in a slow cooker

Lard is a wonderful cooking fat

General notes and update:

The following post goes over how to render lard with a focus on getting the most, clearest lard out of your pork fat. If you just want some basic cooking lard and don’t have a lot of time to spare (but you can keep the slow cooker or similar cooking vessel on for 24 hours) you can cut a lot of corners to save yourself work. The “quick and easy” way to render lard would be to cut the frozen pork fat up into large chunks, just so you can fit it in the pot. Add a half cup or so of water and put it on low heat. When you have some fat rendered, you can simply take it out using a ladle. Put a funnel in a mason jar or other storage container, put a strainer over the funnel, and ladle in the rendered lard. The strainer is just to get out the largest chunks of fat, which you can add back to your pot and continue rendering. It is very easy and not much work. The resulting lard will have more impurities (tiny bits of pork) than if you take extra time, so you should probably refrigerate it and plan to use it up in a few months. It is, however, a lot less work than trying to render and strain out perfectly clear lard.

Pork Fat Rules!

Lard makes the best pie crusts.  It makes the best tamales.  It has a high smoke point and is the best all-purpose fat for frying (any recipe which tells you add extra virgin olive oil to a hot pan was written by someone who can't cook).  Lard is high - yes high - in "healthy" monounsaturated fats.  There is some evidence that lard from pasture-raised pigs is a very good source of vitamin D.  I believe that evidence; please peruse the available research and decide for yourself.  Whatever else, lard from natural, healthy, pasture-raised pigs does not contain "hydrogenated palm oil" (yum?), "mono and diglycerides" (which are trans-fatty acids but are for $ome rea$on allowed in foods labeled "no trans fats"), and does not contain "tert-butylhydroquinone" which is apparently not carcinogenic at anything close to allowable levels -- but still isn't a real food.

Cut the fat

I got pork fat directly from the butcher, frozen in long slices like thick chao mian and with the occasional pig hair still sticking to it, which I removed. [Note: Our new processor does a much better job of cleaning up the fat.]  After all, we're not just flopping turkeys here.  I first cut up the strips of frozen fat with kitchen scissors.  In the future I think I might then run the chunks of fat through a food processor to increase the surface area to mass ratio: more on that later.  [Note: Yes, if you have a food processor, this step does speed up the lengthy rendering time. Seems worth it.] I cut up enough to fill a six quart crock pot about one third full.  As you can see in the image, the pieces are mostly smaller than a cubic inch but are not uniform in size (more on that later.)   

Pastured pork fat before rendering

To produce almost colorless lard (which will appear white when solid) one is supposed to remove every non-white piece from the fat prior to rendering.  I applaud everyone who has that kind of patience.  Cutting up frozen pork fat with kitchen shears was where I chose to stop on the scale of "pains taken".  [Note: Our new processor does remove almost everything except the fat, resulting in even creamier lard.] The finished product from this batch is a creamy, milky color, with a very slight tint of golden yellow.  That's partly because pasture-raised meats often have yellowish fat due to higher levels of the vitamin A.  It's also because this lard is made from general back and belly fat, and is not the white "leaf lard" which comes from the softer fat around the kidneys.

Add water and slow cook for a long time

I added about a half cup of water to the slow cooker along with the pig fat.  Even though cooking on relatively low heat, I added the water to make sure the fat would begin rendering before it began burning.  This trick also works when frying bacon.  I'm sure I could have rendered the lard in a heavy pot on the stove instead of in the slow cooker. [Note: rendering on low heat on the stove works just as well as using a crock pot.]

Stir occasionally

After quite a lot of fat had been rendered out the remaining pieces were looking decidedly browned.  This doesn't bother me in particular, but I suspect that by increasing the surface area of the pork fat prior to cooking more of it would render out rather than remaining solid and frying. Pulsing the cut up pieces of fat through a food processor would make them smaller and thus increase the surface area.  [Note: Yes, this is true.] You can see the browned remaining pieces of fat in the photo; this is after already removing most of the rendered fat.  

After removing the rendered fat

Strain the rendered fat into a container and let it cool

Strain the rendered fat

I ladled out as much as I could of the liquid rendered fat and strained it through a mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth.  Again, I only aimed to remove the largest bits and pieces.  Had I wanted to, I could have cut anything not pure white off the initial batch of fat, and I could have strained the rendered result through multiple layers of cheesecloth, perhaps several times, to produce a clearer end product.  Pure lard is almost devoid of pork flavor: that's not what I was going for here, as this batch is just going to be for general cooking and I want the added flavor.  It tastes like very, very, very mild bacon grease - smooth with just a hint of flavor.

yum

Perhaps I'll strain the next batch a bit more and save it for baking.  This batch filled a pint-sized mason jar with plenty left over.  The finished product (before cooling) is in the photo at the right.  The lard turns a milky color after it is cool; the image at the top of this page is actually quite a bit yellower than it looks in real life.  Note that this lard may not be solid at room temperature, depending on the temperature.  Solid "lard" is hydrogenated and has other chemicals added.  This is the all natural, real thing.  And boy is it good stuff! We store it in the refrigerator when we’re not using it, but if you use it regularly a small jar would probably last just fine on the counter.

What are your favorite recipes using lard?

Lessons learned - pig harvest 2017

We spent all season with the pigs trained to and confined by electric fence, moving them to new ground by opening up new areas and enticing them in with food and fun.  And lots of patience.  After the first time, they never seriously tested the fence, only touching the electric a couple times during moves when they got confused (pigs don't see very well), or by accident (which we've done ourselves more than once.)

But we don't own a livestock trailer so when the time came to get the pigs to the processor we elected to hire a rented trailer (paid by the hour!) and ask the pigs to cross through a hole we made in the electric fence (new concept to them) and step up (which they had never done before) into the trailer (a strange new place) in order to get food in the trailer (but there were still some things to root up in the pasture enclosure).  In order to get the pigs to go the direction we wanted as quickly as possible we decided to embark on a process of rapidly condensing their pasture so that the walls of the electrified fence closed in on them into a tighter and tighter space with the electric fence surrounding them and closing in tighter and tighter, their only escape being the strange and unknown trailer.  Or crossing the electric fence.

This was not a wise decision.  Also, we can testify that if you train them to electric, treat your pigs really well and give them plenty of space and fun stuff to do and unlimited food and water in their pasture, they will not cross that electric fence unless you, the farmer, are really, really, really stupid. 

And that's why we didn't end up cramming the pigs in a trailer to harvest them in November but instead harvested on farm in December with Lonestar, a local mobile livestock harvest small business.  We're also switching to a different type of electric fence that doesn't cost over $100 per easily-destroyed section, and will recycle our current electric setup (after repairs) for some other exciting uses to be announced soon.

This was a very valuable lesson for us.  In the additional month the pigs gained quite a lot of weight.  We aren't happy about that, because it means they finished over the ideal size for our customers.  They also ate a lot more food -- far more food than they made up for in weight gain.

This was a painful, stressful, but useful lesson to learn.  At least it wasn't painful or stressful for the pigs.  We are big fans of mobile livestock harvest now.  

Anchor Ranch After Dark

OK, OK, that was kind of a click bait title.

We received a Fenix headlamp as an early Christmas present.  I don't know the model and anyways this isn't a plug for Fenix, but the point is it puts out about 1000 lumens on max setting and can do that for several hours which means I can take photos like this one:

Working at night by headlamp

(Photo: New portable-ish pig shelter, halfway completed.)

One of the main sources of extra work we had this year was keeping the pigs sheltered.  Since we move them regularly they don't always have access to the shelter of a tree.  Part of living on pasture is that they do live in the elements, but we also don't want to force them to lie in the baking sun all day, or spend all day in the cold rain.  Keeping pigs inside electric wire is relatively easy so long as the pigs are happy and content where they are.

This year our solution was setting up a tarp for them strung from T-posts.  However that meant pounding in T-posts every time we moved them (sometimes into very hard and rocky soil) and tying up the tarp.  It also meant going out to chase the tarp when what is essentially a giant sail snapped its ties, going out to rescue the tarp when the pigs climbed on each other ("piggyback") to reach a corner and tear it to shreds...basically it meant buying a lot of replacement tarps and, in addition to moving the shelter, a lot of extra work repairing it.  Usually in a storm, at night.

Thus we're experimenting with a more permanent mobile pig shelter for the future.  Iteration 2.0 features cattle panels bent in a half-cylinder and attached with heavy-duty fence staples to pressure-treated 4x4s braced with pressure-treated 2x4s.  Corrugated deck drain covers the sides and a tarp covers the top but this time the tarp is attached with baling wire.  Which probably deserves a blog post some time soon because baling wire definitely wins the prize of most used item on the farm.  

The result isn't likely to be completely pig proof, as pigs are more destructive than an unsupervised two-year-old.  And it can be dragged over flat ground from point A to B , but it isn't exactly "easy" to move.  But it is likely to be an improvement over what we've tried up until now.  We're looking forward to seeing our 2018 pigs trying it out!

Our pig cut list December 2017

Just a quick update with a list of what we decided to do with our with our whole hog.  More updates to come soon!

Head: Kept to make head cheese.

Tongue, Jowls, Neck, Backbone: Kept to make sauces or to braise.

Offal, Lard, Soup Bones: Kept.

Shoulder: Cut as roasts (Boston Butt boneless roast and picnic shoulder roast).  Cut off some of one side as country-style ribs.

Loin: Kept one crown rib roast and cut the rest as pork chops one inch thick and frozen in packages 3 chops to a package.

Ham: Cut one fresh ham in half.  Cured another ham and center-cut for ham steaks.

Belly: Kept one fresh pork belly cut in half for roasts.  Cured and cut the other as bacon sliced and packaged in 1 pound packages.

A note on cured meats

What is cured meat?

Cured products such as bacon are typically (more on this later) made by adding nitrates or nitrites to a brine mixture.  (A nitrite is basically a nitrate minus an oxygen atom.)  A standard cure uses sodium nitrite.  An alternative is to use something like celery powder.  Celery powder is naturally high in sodium nitrate. 

Nitrates and nitrites

Besides celery, some other vegetables such as spinach contain relatively large amounts of nitrates.  A large percentage of the nitrates you consume probably comes from vegetable sources, not cured meats.  The human body converts some ingested nitrates into nitrites.  Regardless of the source, your digestive system normally handles these with no problem. 

If, however, something goes awry in your digestive system, sometimes nitrites in meat can instead convert to nitrosamines, which you may have heard may be a risk factor for cancer.  It's up to you how much weight you give in the real world to laboratory findings that something is a statistically significant risk factor.  Entire books have been written about what "statistically significant" really means.  Nitrates in fresh vegetables don't normally turn into nitrosamines because most of these vegetables don't contain amines, since amines are normally associated with proteins.  No amines, no nitros-amines.   

It's not clear what are all the factors that can contribute to nitrosamine production.  Could the quality of the meat (CAFO vs. pasture-raised) be a factor?  Could what the animal ate be a factor?  Could the addition of chemical preservatives or artificial colorings be a factor?

There is no such thing as "uncured bacon"

Simply put, there is no such thing as "uncured" bacon.  Bacon is by definition cured.  And most "nitrate-free" bacon is not nitrate free at all: products labeled as such simply contain nitrate from celery powder (and will have a small note that this is the case, under the gigantic "Nitrate Free" label).  Since this nitrate is consumed with the meat and not as a fresh stalk of celery, it gets digested along with the same amine groups present with a standard cure.  So...if there is a health risk, is this reducing it at all?  In fact, it might be easier to measure how much nitrates and nitrites are added to a standard cure than it is to determine exactly how much is naturally present in any given batch of celery powder used for curing.  

You can make your own nitrate-free* cured meat

(* Well, "no nitrates added" would be more accurate.  Since nitrates occur naturally, you'd have to somehow remove them all to be "nitrate free".) 

Cured meat products are typically made with added nitrates or nitrites, but obviously cured meats have been around a lot longer than synthetic sodium nitrite or celery powder.  The benefit of including nitrates and nitrites in the cure is that doing so significantly reduces the risk of botulism.  However, you can find plenty of recipes for how to take pork belly and salt-cure it at home using a homemade brine.  It's like home canning: there are risks, so it's important to know what you are doing.  But it's certainly possible and plenty of people do it all the time.

We take no sides in the health debate.  It's possible one or other type of cure is healthier.  We don't know.  We simply encourage you to educate yourself and make whatever decision you think is best for you.  We hope this explanation helps with that!  We do think that cured meats are nutritious and delicious, and therefore worth eating and appreciating in moderation.  

Rain

The dry summer lasted longer than most were hoping, but we've finally had some rain.  2.5 inches in three days by the precisely accurate, super expensive rain gauge here on the farm.  (A plastic tube attached to a t post.)

The pigs were getting a bit unhappy about dry 100 degree days, and are now in hog heaven.  There are green shoots coming out everywhere (yum), it's not sweltering hot (ahhh), and with just a few minutes of light digging...MUD!  MUD MUD MUD MUD MUD!  (Happy pigs.)

It's back to the standard pig farmer's uniform: Muddy overalls (the pigs are very friendly and like to share their fun.)  To avoid causing marital strife, do not wear muddy overalls in the house.