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When we were staying in the remote Pacific island of Penrhyn in the Cook Islands, Neville went off on a Wild Pig hunt led by our good friend Rio Teika. They came back with four pigs. There are only 50 people living in the small village of Tetautua, and no abattoir within 500 miles, so the villagers gutted and butchered the pigs themselves. Aru Kia acts as the village butcher because he worked in NZ in a lamb processing plant for seven years and did a quick, efficient job right in front of our eyes. This is how they did it. Preparation Time: 1 hour
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1. Put the pig into a large container and pour boiling water over part of the skin surface to loosen the hair. |
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2. Scrape the area clean with the edge of a sharp knife. |
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3. Repeatedly pour boiling water over the hairs and scrape until all the hair is removed. |
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4. Wash the pig in the sea. |
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5. Pose with the bald pig. |
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6. Cut around the tail and anus with a sharp knife, taking care not to cut the bowel because of the risk of contaminating the meat. |
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7. Carefully slit the skin on the stomach with a sharp knife taking care not to break the membrane around the innards. If you do, you will make more mess and risk contaminating the meat. At this point, I think that the pelvis was split to make it easier to remove the innards. |
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8. Continue to carefully slit the skin on the stomach. |
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9. Continue to carefully slit the skin on the stomach. |
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10. Make a deep incision from under the chin to the breastbone, reach in with your fingers and pull out the throat. The top end of the innards should now be loose. |
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11. Separate the membrane around the innards from the rib cage and inside of the carcass. |
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12. With someone holding the front legs, ease the innards out of the carcass |
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13. Continue to pull and ... |
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14. ... the whole innards should come out in one piece. |
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15. Ensure that there are at least 30 sharks circling off the dock. |
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16. Throw the innards into the sea and watch the water boil as the innards are consumed in three seconds. |
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17. Check that all the innards have been removed. |
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18. Wash the carcass with sea water. |
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19. Cut off the head. |
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20. Cut off the feet. |
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21. Feel for the back edge of the ribs and separate the back legs from the carcass. |
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22. Trim excess skin and fat from the legs. |
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23. Hang from a big hook and separate a leg from the pelvis. The hook was inserted into a slit cut at the back of the heel above the hoof. |
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24. Separate the pelvis from the other leg. The legs can now be de-boned by slicing along and around the bone with a long sharp knife (but it looked difficult.) |
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25. Trim the bottom of the rib cage and then cut off eight ribs as a slab, cutting through the back bone vertebrae. |
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26. Using a strong, sharp knife, chop the vertebrae in half to create two sets of ribs. (This looked to be an acquired skill...) |
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27. Cut 25% off the end of the ribs (not much meat and lots of skin). Use a strong knife/cleaver to crack them and a knife to separate. You should now have two nice, meaty racks of ribs. |
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28. Having got the prime cuts of leg and ribs, cut the rest of the meat off the carcass. |