welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen we are continuing our breakdown
of a whole hog with Jaime who is a butcher educator author and who also
works with Westside beef who has provided us with this hog and today
we're going to break down to the belly that's right um so let's get started I
mean when I look at a belly Isle I see bacon but there's other cuts in here
that aren't merchandised if I understand it that you don't see at the butcher
shop that's right so first one that we would be taking off in order to kind of
make this or get it close to bacon would be this diaphragm muscle here and that's
our skirt steak okay so this would be the outside skirt steak and then we've
got our inside skirt steak which is this muscle right here but these are normal
so this would be trimmed out this would end up as sausage problems right yeah
and this would be left on the belly normally we'll leave that on the belly
yeah okay yeah and then I mean just for point of reference we do have a flank
steak here too so all of these cuts are analogous to what you would see in beef
right because it's on four legs and yet like you said but they just they they're
not cut the same in pork as they would be in beef yeah it kind of boils down to
merchandising and what we've been kind of conditioned to see it's nice to see
that people kind of go outside of those norms and and and kind of play around
with the different opportunities I don't see too much going on with the skirt
steak but I certainly see a lot more butchers maybe doing bone and belly
chops which is so different too right so yeah it shouldn't just be just black and
white like this is eventually going to be bacon there's lots of other options
options we can explore as well so if you if you're interested I'm terribly
interested in cooking these cuts separately because I've never had them
and I want to try them yeah so can we cut those out and and make them
separately of course we can I wonder does I want to try them okay but let's
let's start okay so first thing I would do is just hold the skirt steak up on a
90 degree pedal and just kind of follow its shape along those ribs and then
we've got our road side skirt steak it's very tiny it is right which is probably
why it's folded into other other things exactly yeah so in order to kind of
jokingly say we probably need about four or five of
those to feed somebody's yeah anyway and then we can seem out the flanks tinkles
right here so once we kind of identify where it is that we want to cut through
it's just a matter of seaming it out you're just following the fat just
follow this fat the kind of the fasciae that attaches that muscle to the fat so
then we've got pork flank steak right well I still want to that's like one
taco exactly so now you I think of when you put them all together you're gonna
have a pretty decent meal let's try this let's cut this one out and see yeah do
you want to try this sure so honestly you saw how I remove
the flank steak so you just need to make a cut just deep enough to kind of go
follow along the shape of that skirt steak okay go ahead
so not very deep just I'm almost just scoring it that's right
okay yeah there we go and then once you get to that point you should be able to
find the semen no right I just pulls out that's right so now what you need to do
is I would run my knife just along that top part too and goes just about as deep
as you did okay yep just on those ribs perfect so just
pull
and just you have to take the knife and just score as you need and then you just
pull it out no there's a yeah they might have a little bit of cartilage here from
their face or the ribs okay there we go yep you can you just hide you take that
with it and we can trim out later and just again here yeah a piece of
cartilage there you go I know this Christine cool um and so
that's just cartilage on yeah well just take your knife and just run along the
bottom of there just cut just like that yeah perfect and now you've got to skirt
steaks and a pork flank steak that's a meal who knew I did not know because I'm
because you never see them exactly okay so now we've got let's do the the
belly chops sure not a problem so what we're gonna do is we're just gonna flip
it around okay and then if you want I don't know I fold there might be a
little bit of cartilage here that we might just have to get through yeah okay
perfect so once I remove that I'd like you to take the steak knife okay and I'd
like you to go simply right in between that rib and just follow that shape of
right in between those rooms
bird so that is a belly chop that's a bone-in belly chop okay
and you know I don't know that the cooking preparation would differ very
much from doing it on a grill you could either just do it really quickly or you
could do a low and slow okay kind of responds well to both those okay yeah um
probably take the skin off before okay not necessarily I mean the only thing
that I kind of recommend any type of skin on product because the fat will
render out normally what I like to do is I'll just make a little bit of a cut
into the skin okay and that just allows it to keep its shape while the fats
rendering out so you can cook it with the skin on and matter of fact sometimes
I prefer doing that because there will be natural seems that just outdoor sort
in between the skin and the fat that after you cook it it's kind of like
smoking bacon we actually prefer to smoke it with the skin on yeah because
the skin is a heck of a lot easier just to peel off through these natural seems
than it is to try to knife cut them off okay so if you can cook it with the skin
on it's just a matter of pulling it off feeling it off yeah exactly
okay and so there's two or three in here I'd say you probably get a another two
out of that that would be respectable size
great and one more let's do one more okay so the rib here takes our angles oh
right so what I like to do is just kind of well just kind of follow the contours
let the let the bones kind of speak to how it's gonna go so I would go
somewhere in around that neighborhood there so you're taught starting at the
tip of this next rib but you're allowing yourself face of exactly the base that I
rip there there you go okay so this still provides us with an opportunity to
take these ribs away and still have a nice piece for belly cool go ahead okay
so what I'll do is I'm just gonna come in and run my knife under these ribs
like so so I'm just making sure that my knife is staying right against those
bones as I make these cuts and then once I can lift the bones up high enough I'm
just gonna follow the base of them and then I'll take off that last a little
bit of rib so now what I've got is a nice piece of
boneless belly which would still allow us to cure at least this portion here so
we're still gonna get about four pounds out of it okay cure it and smoke it or
cure it and hang it with pancetta or if we're gonna put smoke on it then we
would have smoked bacon and this section here normally gets trimmed out as you
can see like not all parts of the belly are created equally we get a lot more
fat in this area so if we can just kind of fish out some of the muscle tissue
that's in there we can always add that into the trim pile and make some sausage
just goes into the sausage yeah and so that's the belly that is the belly so
there's there's a few things in here that I've never seen before which I'm
really happy that we did this so that I can I can give them a try mm-hmm this
goes into soup stock yep the bones got some chops which are gonna be great to
try I I wholeheartedly believe that I've had them on occasion and they're quite
tasty and some belly for bacon that's right so next up loin let's do the loin
excellent so come on back for us breaking down the loin thanks for
stopping by see you again soon action
bounine belly chopped boneless belly inside skirt steak outside skirt steak
flank steak
you