Curing will enhance the flavor of the meat, also used as a preservative.

On cooking fresh pork, unless you cook it Luau style in the ground, or smoke-slow grill it, to me there is just not as much flavor. Bacon isn't bacon unless it's cured, other cuts just aren't 'cut out' to be eaten without curing. It is a taste thing.

Cheri

The only parts we have cured are the hams and side meat for bacon. But having said that, we also like the hams fresh and the side meat sliced about 1/2 inch thick and fried, is wonderful fresh and un cured....can't beat fresh side meat fried crisp with cream gravy and taters.......lol
Everything else we have cut and frozen uncured.......
It's a matter of choice but I thinking you wouldn't want to cure the whole pig....

It used to be just for preservation. They had no refrigeration. Some foods can only be obtained that way such as cured ham and bacon. The flavor of home cured is a taste from heaven. Our local locker plant quit doing it years ago and we haven't raised hogs in a very long time, but we all remember it as the best food in the world.

Pork products can only be kept in a freezer from 3-6 months before the quality deteriorates because of the high fat content.

Ground ham is wonderful and I would choose this over the cured ham or fresh ham. We had it put in l-lb. packages and we liked it by far more than the fresh ham slices.

Good luck with your butchering. When you say pig, what size are you talking about. Around here most butcher at about 220 lbs.

Arkiema, you made me drool thinking of all that delicious cured meat (and the gravy and potatoes). I have always said our food in southern Missouri was more southern than any other area.

gld

The farmers years ago had no way to keep meat to use past butchering day so a portion of the meat was "cured"....that was done in a variety of ways so they would have meat to eat between times when hogs were butchered.

The portions that were cured were the hams, shoulders, "side meat" whic(h included the bacon) and the jowls. And, these were either salt cured, sugar cured or smoked. The proper trimming of the hams and shoulders was an "art" that made these large pieces aesthetically pleasing.

Salt curing was done in the smoke house. The portions to be cured were laid out on the tables and packed in large quantities of salt. Sugar curing involved injecting the cuts with a sweet solution. Smoking requred that the pieces be hung (by wires) from the rafters in the smoke house (a small out building on virtually all farms) and a smoldering fire maintained for a specified number of days.

Butchering was only done once or twice a year so curing was essential so people could have pork more than a few days a year.

Virtually the entire hog was used. The fat that was trimmed was "rendered" (melted down in huge cast iron kettles over a roaring fire outside) and poured off into five gallon "lard cans". That lard made some of the most scruptious pasteries ever eaten and was also used as "shortening" to fry/cook with. There is much derision expressed about its use today but given the life style of our ancestors it was very healthful. My grandmother lived to be 100 years of age and cooked with lard in a myriad of ways all her life. She died without suffering from vascular disease nor high blood pressure.

The meat from the head was cooked and scraped meticulously from the bone, ground, spiced, put into molds and used as "hogs head cheese" (an early form of "bologna"). The feet were cleaned with care, cooked and canned in a pickling solution......"pickled pig's feet". The tongue was processed either similarly to the meat from the head or was simply cooked and sliced to be eaten in sandwiches. The brain was eaten "scrambled" much like eggs....etc.

The excitement of "butchering day" was one of the highlights of my early years. After the hogs were killed it was a lot of fun.....I used to run to the house and hide my head during the actual killing so I would not hear the squeeling of the hogs being slaughtered.

The neighbors would gather in to help with the processing of the meat. There was a flurry of activity that the children only saw on their "home" farms at few times of the year....when the fields were harvested (grain and haying) and at butchering. People were especially prized for their various skills. For example, one of my father's brothers, my beloved Uncle Clayton, 'trimmed out' hams and shoulders expertly and was welcomed at all the neighborhood get togethers.

The women would work diligently in steamy kitchens with hot fires blazing in the wood stoves preparing a huge dinner (mid day meal) for the butchering crew and later in the day processing the specialty meats and grinding, seasoning and sacking sausage. Some people stuffed meticulously cleaned intestine and made sausages by filling and twisting off sections but my people made many long thin sacks of white muslin that the sausage was stuffed into for "patties" instead.

Sorry for the long reply but your question just triggered a wonderful trip down "memory lane" for me. It was a physically hard life but a very satisfying and productive way of life.....I miss it.

Judy

Pig butchering day in our family was also a day to remember. By the time I came along, indoor plumbing had come to our farm, so the old "out house" had been moved and was used for the "smoke house". In the spring when the fruit trees were pruned, we'd stack a good supply of the prunings by the smoke house to dry A retired butcher and his wife would help butcher. My mother bought the spices, fresh each year, to use in the making of the sausage and the butchers wife would hide in the walk in pantry to mix the spices -- it was a secret recipe. (my mother eventually mixed the spices together and made a recipe we preferred) Our kitchen was hugh with a large wooden table that would have the extentions put in. The butcher had a small bull dog who would run around under the table waiting for a "tit bit" to drop. After the bacon and ham was cured, they were rewraped in cheescloth and hung on hooks in the attic around the wood stoves brick chimneys. I still have the hooks. We use them to hook the bucket on, then hang on the neck of our tee shirts, when berry picking. Those were the days that the hams and bacon were not wet, etc. Mmmmmmmm Good

Another memory came to me reading these last two posts. We did not use a solution but a dry sugar cure mix that was rubbed in well and pushed into the ends around the bone of the shoulders and the hams. When the meat was cured,the pieces were always wrapped in muslin and hung from the rafters of an outbuilding called a smoke house but I don't remember them actually smoking the meat, but I was a child so they might well have. I still have mom's sugar cure recipe somewhere.

Oh, the memories.

gld