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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1655 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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One of those things everyone who writes the history books doesn't want to talk about.

This is what makes the most interesting topics. But that explains the existence of tankies.

I asked him, apparently they very rarely got horse meat because it was off-ration and expensive. Their biggest meat treat was the occasional sheep head you could get by being friendly with the butcher. Again off-ration as wastage, skinned and boiled in the traditional English manner of course.
Whale was basically only available after the war. He remembers there being a special shop for off-ration meat.
Visiting relatives in the country was the first time he'd ever had enough butter to cover a slice of toast. He ended up with some skeletal issues from malnutrition, particularly bowleggedness that's really come back to bite him in his old age.

I should offer to cook sheep head for him sometime. I've only ever taken the tongue, but apparently the cheeks are quite good. God knows how you go about skinning it though: only ever seen that done in France. If it's anything like as tough as the back of the neck, it'd take a sharp knife and a lot of patience.

You hang the sheep, make e small hole near one hoof then take an auto tire pump and pump air inside till the skin cleancly separates.

I've always heard that, but never done it. All the ones I do are EZpeel like rabbits because they're 4-12 months old, but if you were doing old mutton that would probably help.

The head is very different in that the skin attachment is a lot more direct.

Sheep’s head is quite good, simmered in a gravy with wine and aromatics added. I definitely would want someone else to skin it though, and that’s coming from someone who processes his own deer and feral hogs on a regular basis.

I'm wondering if you can peel from the flaps left under the jaw from cutting the tongue out. Or even punch forward from the neck.
Will do a full head shear on some and try it this year.

What do you do with e.g. brain and sinuses? In France they were sold all-in iirc, eyes and everything.

Hogs must be an absolute bastard. Do you skin or scald?

Hogs must be an absolute bastard. Do you skin or scald?

Skin. It’s not that difficult, actually easier than deer. Just takes a second fridge and some big buckets for the hams.

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