Hi All,
We recently sent our pigs to slaughter and have been thoroughly enjoying the fruits of our labour. Our first time for raising pigs has been a roaring success.
I think we may have error'ed slightly regarding our plan to cure two legs as Parma-style hams. The legs have been buried in salt for 33 days now and we are at the time where we need to bring them out and get them humg somewhere. And it is this little point that we hadn't quite thought through!
One thought was to build a weatherproof structure on the north facing side of our house (so no sun catches it at any time) and hang the two rather large legs in it. The problem we have is the current temperatue is floating around the 27 deg mark.
Another option is that a friendly butcher has offered for us to let them hang in his walk in fridge.
Another is to have them hang in our garage but again, the temperature in there has reached 24/25 at times recently.
So it seems we ar stuck between hanging them in a 1 deg fridge or in 20 ish deg garage or risk up to 27/28 in the side of the house. None of which seem to be options mentioned in any of the books .
If anybody has any suggestions/solutions they will be very gratefully received. As presently I'm thinking that we are going to have two legs of rotten pork which would be an absolute travesty!
Many thank you's in advance,
Simon
PS I've posted this on the River Cottage forum too - desperately hoping for as much help as we can possibly get! Thank you!