Pork Breakdown In Action - Picnic / Shoulder
There is a large visual difference between a unbroken hog, and the cuts and meat that it will later be. With the pig trotters still attached, the picnic is very recognizable as a living thing. There is a shrouded enigma in the way the animal changes from a form that is obviously not food, into something palatable.
Three quarters of the the weight of a pig can be meat and fat, but the rest is bone and skin. These parts are separated from the meat, and make for a good pork stock.
Much of the animal can be butchered with a breaking knife and a boning knife, although since the 20th century, the band-saw has been commonly used for dense bones like femurs or the spine. Pork bones are not as hard as beef, and so a hand-saw is efficient for cuts like the shank.
When butchering, energy can be conserved by using leverage and gravity in your favor.
Using the flexible boning knife and working on 1-2 day old hogs with slightly hardened skins, the knife bends to the contour of the inside part of the skin, separating the picnic with the fat layer from the exterior skin.
The short ribs remain on the picnic and cover the brisket. You could also use the whole part of the shoulder for braising, smoking or dice and grind the lean and fatty pork for sausages.
The upper half of the shoulder (not shown) often referred to as the boston butt or pork butt, is the other half aligned with the loin and chop sections. The butt is more commonly smoked and used for barbeque or carnitas than the picnic.
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