Workshops and Events: Pig Share
Skills. Friendship. Meat.
Last week I ordered a whole side of pork from Bi-Rite (a very special local market) and this weekend Molly and I and six friends will share that meat. I’ll lead everyone through butchering the hog into individual cuts for their freezer—usually about 15-20 pounds per person—and then we’ll cook some meat and sit down for a dinner.
This makes our 10th pig in as many years, and while most of those pigs came directly from a handful of ranches, this from-the-butcher-pig is a fitting anniversary of sorts, since this whole thing more or less kicked off at Bi-Rite 10 years ago.
In 2014, I’d been talking a lot about a desire for a more intimate relationship with the meat I ate—supporting quality farms, or sourcing it myself. I was trying to get into hunting, but had not (and still haven’t really) cracked it. I explored meat shares with local ranches and had even purchased a quarter of a cow, but 168 pounds of beef was too much for one apartment. After a year on the All-Beef-All-The-Time-Diet, I vowed to not revisit my beef sweats.
Seeing all this, Molly reached out to Chili Montes, Bi-Rite’s butcher, and asked if I could sit in with him while he broke down a side of pig—her very thoughtful birthday gift to me. Not only did he welcome me in and patiently walk me through the butchering, but Chili also invited me to join the Bi-Rite staff on a field trip to a local ranch. Really special experience.
Butchering with Chili made pork feel right-sized. Accessible. And, more than that, I saw the opportunity for a workshop-type event that could be done at a house. A reason to gather friends, learn some skills, share a sense of accompaniment, and savor a well-earned meal. That each person would take home a cooler of high-quality pork was nearly a bonus.
Not long after, we picked up our first side of pork at the San Francisco Ferry Building farmer’s market from Devil’s Gulch Ranch, gave it a shot, and I found it to be every bit as rewarding as hoped.
If doing something similar feels compelling, but also a bit daunting, I’m here to share some details and demystify:
Pork is big, but not too big. Each side is 90-120 pounds, and you can purchase just one side. No offal (organs), no head, but you can usually request both, especially if you buy two sides at a time.
The big consideration with pick-up is refrigeration and timing. We’ve done a bathtub of ice tarped with a sleeping bag, but realistically, unless you have a commercial fridge, you’re committed to butchering on the same day you get your meat. We’ve bought from a few local ranches, some of which we’ve met at the weekend farmer’s market, others have a weekday they deliver to businesses in the area. Some allow direct pick-up at the ranch, but again, only on certain days.
Purchasing through a local butcher is also an option. The upside there is they can likely keep it in their walk-in fridge until the day you need it. The downside is some middleman costs.
Yes, it can be a jarring package—one half of a pig, even without a face, brings most folks a lot closer to the whole-animal reality of their meat. (These are good feelings to wrestle with, I think.) But it’s still a very approachable entry point that stops well short of the blood and guts of slaughter.
You don’t need a lot of space. We have butchered on outdoor folding tables and in apartment kitchens. The pig starts out pig-sized, but the first step is to quarter it, and so pretty quickly you’re working with much smaller meat.
Equipment-wise you don’t need much. A couple decent sized coolers. Bowls for scrap. Big cutting boards are smart, a boning knife, and a larger knife. A bone saw and cleaver can help, but you can get by without them. We package our cuts in plastic wrap, then butcher paper, sealed with freezer tape, and buy the large rolls of both at restaurant supply stores.
Cost-wise you may pay more per pound than you would for cheap factory-farmed meat, but it's cheaper than buying quality pork cuts from your high-end butcher. Prices will vary, but think $4-8 per pound.
You don’t have to know what you’re doing. (I barely do and have to consult my notes every time.) Watch a video or two. While there are “right” ways to butcher a pig into recognizable and named cuts, there’s also no harm in simply turning big meat into little meat. When I’ve hunted and butchered elk, most of those cuts end up labeled “leg roast” and “shoulder chonk” and they all cook up just fine.
If all this still feels like a lot, there are plenty of meat-share programs out there, and rounding up some friends or neighbors to divide a quarter cow isn’t a bad way to bond over food. There are also meat share/butchery workshops—early on, Molly and I attended a public butchering workshop in Berkeley. And if the size feels overwhelming, goats and lamb are also a little smaller than pork and are similarly available. So, there are options if you want to ease in.
That’s the gist. It’s very doable. And worth doing.
You can view it as a workshop, sure—but it can also be billed as “we’re all limping through this video together”. I think our gatherings are somewhere in between. Either way, it’s a chance to learn some new skills and to share a unique experience (and some tasty meat) with friends.
