How to Debone a Pig
- 1). Select your tools carefully. Your boring knife should be mostly rigid and your butcher saw should be medium-size so you can saw through thick bones. Wear an apron if you do not want your clothes to be ruined during the deboning process.
- 2). Take off the head of the pig first. Make an incision with the boning knife near each cheek of the pig. Then, use the butcher saw to rip through the bone. Make another incision from the fourth rib of the pig all the way down to the shoulder joint. Cut off the foreleg with the saw and repeat for the other foreleg.
- 3). Make an incision along the saddle area of the pig by cutting above the hind legs, moving the knife horizontally. Remove the hind legs with the saw, then separate the legs. Locate the pig's spine and cut it in half horizontally. Take this piece of meat and remove the loin section by horizontally. sawing through the loin bone of the pig.
- 4). Take each primal cut of the pig, including the shoulders, legs, belly and loin. To remove the bones in these sections, cut into the meat with the boning knife, making long incisions so that the meat can be splayed open as if it were a book.
- 5). Hold your boning knife as near to the revealed bone as possible and cut along the bone to separate the meat from it. Pull away the meat that comes free of the bone as you cut. If you come across the aitch bone or bones that are deeply secured by cartilage, grab the bone and twist until the cartilage is visible. Cut away the cartilage and pull the bones out of the meat.
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