The Everything Guide to Living Off the Grid (28 page)

Turn the bird over, so it is lying on its back. Locate the vent between the legs. (The vent is the area where the bird emits eggs or droppings.) Insert just the tip of your knife into the skin about an inch above the vent. If you insert your knife too far you risk cutting the intestines.

Carefully cut up to the breastbone. Then carefully cut the area underneath the vent. You will want to take your time and not cut too deep. The vent has thin, tough tissue holding it in place, and you might need to work it loose with your fingers. If the bird was properly starved, there should be no feces inside the intestines; however, never take this for granted and keep the bird slightly over the edge of the table to avoid fecal matter dropping on your work surface. Immediately clean up any spilled fecal matter.

With the vent cut free and loose from the body, you can gently pull the intestines free from the carcass. Once they’re removed, you can reach into the bird and move your hand along the sides of the ribs to break the entrails free of the body cavity. Once you locate the gizzard—a round, hard organ—pull it out. The rest of the entrails with come with it. Often, the esophagus and crop, as well as the trachea, will also follow the entrails when you pull the gizzard out.

Next, insert your hand back into the bird and follow the ribs to the spine. This is where you will find the lungs. They are quite spongy, so you need to carefully lift them out with your hands. Unfortunately, they don’t always come out in one piece, so you need to continue until you don’t feel any lung tissue anymore.

Once the cavity is clean, turn the bird back on its chest and remove the neck. You should first cut the muscle tissue around the bone as far as you can. Then you need to bend the neck backward and break it off. It is better to break the neck than cut it because the remaining edges will be less sharp, reducing the risk of puncturing the wrapping you will store your bird in when you freeze it.

Finally, on the other end of the bird are two small yellow oil glands, or preen glands. These glands should be carefully removed from the carcass. They are located inside the lump above the tail. Make an incision above the glands, cutting all the way to the bone, and then slide your knife along the bone, coming out at the tail. Be sure there is no yellow glandular tissue left, because it can foul the meat.

Rinse the bird thoroughly, inside and out. Put the bird into a tank of ice and water and let it chill for thirty minutes. Be sure the ice water also gets inside the body cavity so the entire bird is chilled.

Giblets

The giblets are the parts of the innards that you generally save and use for food. These usually include the heart, liver, gizzard, and neck. You’ve already harvested the neck, so just make sure it is rinsed thoroughly and placed in a plastic bag or container.

Chicken or turkey giblets are usually simmered in water for use in soups, gravies, or poultry stuffing. Once cooked, the liver will become crumbly, and the heart and gizzard will soften and become easy to chop. Cooked giblets should have a firm texture, and their juices should run clear. Casseroles containing giblets should be cooked to 160°F. Stuffing should be cooked to 165°F. Chicken giblets also are commonly fried or broiled.

The liver needs to be separated from the gallbladder. The gallbladder contains bile, an extremely bitter green fluid. You need to handle this carefully because if you break the gallbladder, the bile can contaminate the meat and cause it to be inedible. Cut the gallbladder away from liver, being
generous with the amount of liver you leave on the cut, just to be sure. Then rinse the remaining liver and package it with the neck.

You should cut the gizzard open along its narrow edge. Slice down until you see a white lining. Try not to nick the yellow inner lining. Pull the gizzard apart with your fingers and remove the inner sac and white gizzard membrane and discard. If you cut into the lining, you will find grit and even rocks. The gizzard is how birds chew their food. Simply remove the grit and peel the lining away from the muscle.

Cut the heart away from the attached arteries. Then you can slice the top off the heart, push out any coagulated blood, and rinse any out any blood remaining in the heart chambers.

Rinse all giblets thoroughly, package them, and chill them in ice water for at least thirty minutes. Then dry them and package them with the bird.

Butchering Large Domestic Animals

When you are considering butchering large domestic animals like cows and hogs, you need to be sure you have the right equipment, the space to work, and an experienced friend to work with you. If you don’t have someone with experience, you can either send your animals to a butcher who will kill them and then cut and wrap the meat for you, or you can buy a DVD that shows you the process in great detail. Because you have invested time and money into raising your domestic animals, you want to be sure that you are able to harvest the greatest amount of meat possible.

You should butcher when the weather is cool, like a fall day. Pick a location for butchering that has clean running water handy. Here are some items you will need if you are going to butcher your own meat:

• A .22- or higher-caliber rifle or pistol (with cartridges) and good aim
  
• A block-and-tackle or strong rope and hoist to raise the animal, along with a large tree that has a strong limb to hang the carcass from
  
• Some good sharp knives, a whetstone, and meat saw
  
• A clean wood saw for cutting the animal in half
  
• Several five-gallon buckets to hold the liver, heart, and any other organ meat you want to save
  
• A 50-gallon vat for scalding a pig
  
• A clean tarp or cloth to cover the animal after the carcass has been skinned
  
• A place to store the meat so it can age before it’s cut
  
• A place to store the meat, like a freezer or pantry, after it’s been processed or canned
  
• Butcher paper, freezer bags, or freezer paper to store the meat in
  
• A marker or labels to label the date, cut of meat, and kind of meat on the package
  
• A garbage can with liner for the butchering residue
  

You should butcher only healthy animals. If your animal seems unhealthy to you, have your veterinarian check it and treat it until it is healthy again. Don’t eat an animal that has died unless the animal has died of an injury, like getting hit by a car. Even in that case, if the animal has been dead for a while, don’t eat it.

After you process meat, you can use the hide to create skins and pelts for your own use. “Tanning” is a procedure that cures the hide and makes is soft, malleable, and beautiful. You can tan the skin of deer, rabbits, pigs, goats, and cattle.

After your animal is butchered, check the meat carefully. Look for local bruises and injuries, abscesses, and single tumors. Those you can cut away from the meat and discard. However, if you find inflammation of the lungs, intestines, kidneys, inner surface of the chest or abdominal cavity, or numerous yellowish or pearl-like growths scattered throughout the organs (more likely in the case of sheep than cows or hogs), call your veterinarian and find out whether or not your meat is tainted.

When butchering hogs you have a unique slaughtering decision to make. Because hog rind or skin is edible and generally considered a valued part of the meat you eat, hogs are scalded and then the hide is scraped. You scrape to not only get rid of the hair, but also dirt and scarfskin, or the top layer of skin. Keep in mind the size of the hog and the logistics of getting it into the scalding water, turning it over, and getting it out of the water. In order to
scale the pig, you lower it into boiling water for about a minute, pull it up and scrape it. You might need to lower it back into the water several times in order to complete the entire carcass.

The other option for a hog is to skin it, like other animals. However, you tend to lose much of the valuable fat used to make bacon and lard. Whichever option you choose, remember that you can still use the pigskin as not only a food source, but also for gloves and clothing. Once scraped or skinned, follow the procedures described above for cutting large game in order to process your pig.

CHAPTER 16
Your Pantry

When you are living off-grid, you generally don’t have the ability to just run out to the corner supermarket. You need a well-stocked pantry that can not only create a foundation for the things you like to eat, but also provide as a resource for you and your family during harsh weather and lean times.

Grains

Grains are both an essential part of a healthy diet and a basic staple as an emergency food. Mankind has been harvesting grain for thousands of years. There have been archeological digs dating back to 9000 B.C. that have found evidence of the use of grains. For many cultures, grains are a dietary staple.

Wheat

If you were ever looking for one source that could be a survival food, it would be wheat. Wheat is not only a nutty-tasting grain that makes wonderful bread and muffins; you can also use wheat as a meat substitute, a vegetable, and a source of vitamin C and antioxidants. That is why wheat should be part of your family’s long-term food storage plan.

You can store whole-kernel grain for a long time in a dry, cool area, but once you grind it, you should store it in your refrigerator because the oil in the kernel can spoil and the flour can turn rancid. Wheat is classified in three ways—the season of growth (winter or spring), whether it has a soft or hard kernel, and whether the bran layer is colored red or white. Generally, hard wheat is higher in protein and can store longer than soft wheat, although soft wheat is the wheat of choice for pastry flour.

When you purchase wheat you should buy it from a reputable mill. The protein count should be no less than 12 to 14 percent and the moisture count should be under 10 percent. Make sure you store your wheat in a cool location in tightly sealed containers.

Wheat can be used in a variety of ways:

• Cooked unground wheat
  
• Flour
  
• Gluten
  
• Sprouts
  
• Wheat grass
  

Cooked unground wheat

To get the goodness from the whole grain, you can add boiling water and whole-kernel wheat to a thermos and let it sit overnight. In the morning, the wheat will have swelled to double in bulk and softened. You can eat it
like a hot breakfast cereal with honey, dried fruit, and milk. You can also use wheat as a meat substitute in a casserole. Just make sure you add additional water and allow the casserole to bake until the wheat is tender.

Bulgur is white or red, hard or soft whole-wheat kernels that have been boiled, dried, slightly scoured, cracked, and sifted for sizing. The result is par-cooked cracked wheat. Bulgur may be sold as a pilaf or tabouli mix and may be called tabouli wheat. In stores, bulgur can be found near the pasta, rice, or hot cereal, or in a specialty food aisle.

Flour

When you are going to use wheat for flour, you need a grain mill. An electric mill makes the job easier; however, it is wise to also purchase a hand mill in case of emergencies. Whole-wheat flour has more nutrients, protein, and fiber than bleached white flour. It can be substituted for part or all of the all-purpose flour in most recipes. You should experiment with your favorite recipes by substituting more whole-wheat flour for all-purpose each time. Because whole-wheat flour is denser, if you are going to replace the all-purpose flour completely, use ⅞ cup whole-wheat in place of 1 cup white. If you grind the wheat coarsely, you have cracked wheat. Cracked wheat can be used as a hot cereal and can be added to bread recipes to give the bread a nuttier taste.