Page:The Hog.djvu/221

219 dry sifted ashes; mix and incorporate them well. The salter takes a ham into the tray, rubs the skin with this composition and the raw hock end, turns it over, and packs the composition of salt and ashes on the fleshy side till it is at least three-quarters of an inch deep all over it, and on the interior lower part of the ham, which is covered with the skin, as much as will lay on it. The man who stands ready to transfer the pieces as they are salted takes up the piece, and deposits it carefully, without displacing the composition, with the skin side down, in the bottom of the trough. Each succeeding ham is thus deposited side by side, so as to leave the least possible space unoccupied.

"When the bottom is all covered, see that every visible part of this layer of meat is covered with the composition of salt and ashes. Then begin another layer, every piece being covered on the upper or fleshy side three-quarters of an inch thick with the composition. When your trough is filled even full in this way with the joints, salt the middlings with salt only, without the ashes, and pile them up on the joints so that the liquefied salt may pass from them into the trough. Heads, jowls, backbones, &c., receive salt only, and should not be put in the trough with the large pieces. "Much slighter salting will preserve them if they are salted upon loose boards, so that the bloody brine from them can pass off. The joints and middlings are to remain in and above the trough without being re-handled, re-salted, or disturbed in any way, till they are to be hung up to be smoked.

"If the hogs weighed not more than 150 lbs., the joints need not remain longer than five weeks in the pickle; if they weighed 200 or upwards, six or seven weeks is not too long. It is better that they should stay in too long rather than too short a time. "In three weeks, jowls, &c., may be hung up. Taking out of pickle, and preparation for hanging up to smoke, is thus performed:—Scrape off the undissolved salt (and if you had put on as much as directed, there will be a considerable quantity on all the pieces not immersed in the brine; this salt and the brine is all saved ; the brine boiled down, and the dry composition given to stock, especially to hogs.) Wash every piece in lukewarm water, and with a rough towel clean off the salt and ashes. Then put the strings in to hang up. Set the pieces up edgewise, that they may drain and dry. Every piece is then to be dipped into the meat-paint, and hung up to smoke. The meat-paint is made of warm, not hot, water and very fine ashes stirred together until they are of the consistence of thick paint. When they are dipped in this, they receive a coating which protects them from the fly, prevents dripping, and tends to lessen all external injurious influences. Hang up the pieces while yet moist with the paint, and smoke them well."