The Family Pig is an earnest and winsome course in domestic pig raising, harvesting and eating. Inspired by the pig, we go deep and wide in the preservation of pork, the salting of bacon, the harvesting of innards, the carving of flesh and the unreproved indulgence in fat and salt. You take with you not only a package of educational material and sausage of your own making, but the working knowledge of harvesting two pigs from the field to the two-year-old prosciutto hanging in your kitchen.

Registration now open!

Includes 3 Years of Content…

a value of nearly $400 reduced to $24.49:

OR FREE WITH A YEAR’s SUBSCRIPTION.

***Now Offering: Newsletter Special.  Sign up for our occasional e-mail Newsletter for a code to receive our 60-day Trial offer at checkout.  Code is given with each of our monthly newsletters for your use at checkout.  Choose the “Newsletter Special” option below, or simply choose “Monthly” or “Yearly” if you’d like to commit now without a code.

This is a 6 page annotated list of all the tools you need to process pork, lamb and goat from home in the old-school way.  It is a PDF that you download after purchase.  It includes sources, prices and purchasing tips and represents the summation of our huge and costly education in what works and what doesn’t.  Once you have the right tools (also meaning you don’t have the wrong ones) the meat nearly processes itself.  (Not really, you wouldn’t want that anyway.)

The necessary tools for cutlery, slaughter, butchery and basic curing are covered in this digital download.

This precept equips you with the knowledge to make and use stock.  It is no exaggeration to say that a successful kitchen makes use of stock at least everyday.  It is the ingenious method of turning even bones into food.

This is a 10 page digital download.

In this precept, Lauren conveys instructions for making soap from animal fat.  In addition to holding up the galaxy and being the brains behind Farmstead Meatsmith, she has managed to create the only soap I know of that simultaneously moisturizes and cleanses.

This is a 6 page digital download.

This is the lengthiest precept at 41 pages.  In writing it, I assumed you wanted to know everything about how to kill a pig in your backyard proficiently, beautifully and without waste.  Each step is detailed, including the kill, dehairing, offal harvest, splitting, cold storage and more.  This is where nose-to-tail eating is made possible.

This is a digital download.

I wrote this over the course of a kickstarter campaign for our backers.  Each day I made an entry for the thirty-three days of the campaign.  They pertain to the limitless art of meatsmithery.  As such, they range widely from deglazing, whole-animal spit roasting, broccoli and BBQ to name a few.

This is a 20 page digital download.

This precept relates the simple process of making, storing and using the leaf fat of a pig to great culinary affect.  This internal body fat is found in cows, lambs and goats so these instructions apply to them as well.  Pork leaf lard, however, simply is the best and original shortening.

This is a 6 page digital download.

There is a rationale to cooking meat.  The proliferation of recipes disguises the fact that you only need to know three things to cook any cut to perfection, no matter how obscure.

This is a 14 page digital download.

Knives have a significant impact on my quality of life as a butcher.  Having agonized over this topic for years, it is my pleasure to spare you needless suffering by offering this precept.  It details my path to scary sharpness so that you can come too.  Good meat economy is impossible with dull cutlery.

This is a 19 page digital download.

This is an annotated list of the books that I found most useful and inspiring.  They taught me how to be a meatsmith and they will carry you down the same path if you let them.

This is a 5 page digital download.

This precept marks a huge departure from mainstream curing conventions in the US. It will equip you to make, store and eat bacon without nitrites, freezers or fear. There is nothing simpler and more essential to kitchen thrift. The principles conveyed here apply to prosciutto, guanciale, pancetta and lomo in their original glory.

This is a 16 page digital download.

For a long time we charged for a digital download for DVD of To Kill A Pig Nicely. We’ve recently made it FREE on YouTube to give you a taste of our Meatsmith Membership program content. WATCH THE WHOLE FILM BELOW OR ON OUR YouTube Channel. 

https://vimeo.com/242842069

Meatsmith Knife Folio by

Farmstead Meatsmith and Teranishi Studio

Murray Carter’s Blade Sharpening Fundamentals 

NOW AVALIABLE ON CARTER CUTLERY’S YOUTUBE PAGE

View Blade Sharpening Fundamentals HERE

Advanced Blade Sharpening Fundamentals HERE

As with all my knives, I follow Murray’s sharpening instruction to the letter.  The video is almost three hours long.  It will equip you once and for all not only to achieve sharpness, but to understand the sharpening process.

Of infinite worth to me is the free-hand approach.  Murray describes the short comings of jigs and angle aids focusing on giving you the skill to sharpen free-hand with one coarse and one fine stone.

Be warned: if you are not careful, this video can lead directly to condescension towards all knives but your own.  Try not to bunch the owners of said knives into the category of dullness.  In fact, this collection all but commissions you to spread sharpness far and wide.