We slaughtered a total of twenty pigs today; the pig slaughtering case has been ongoing from morning till night.

Despite the cold winter, the busy pig butchers were all covered in sweat.

The women helped to separate and pile the cut pork into different parts.

A pile of pig heads was placed on the ground, and the pig offal was placed in a large basin. Two layers of clean reed mats were laid on the ground, with pork fat, tenderloin, ribs, hindquarters, hock, front and hind trotters, and large bones spread out on them respectively.

The brigade had already discussed it. Although it wasn't the New Year yet, given that Lijiapo was quite well-off this year, they decided to distribute a batch of pork to everyone first after slaughtering the pig, so they could eat it first!

How arrogant those words are!

This time, the pork was distributed per person: each adult received one pound of spare ribs and one pound of pork fat, and each child received half a pound of pork and two pounds of large bones.

The remaining pig offal, trotters, and heads can be bought with money, as they are a benefit of the brigade and are half the price of what you'd pay outside.

Everyone in Lijiapo had a happy smile on their face, and the adults treated the naughty children with an unprecedented gentleness.

The adults, holding their ceramic and iron basins, lined up in an orderly fashion in front of the meat stall, waiting to receive meat and large bones.

Of course, large quantities of pork belly, as well as pork tenderloin with fat, were sent to canneries in bulk.

A few days ago, under Li Xiangdong's guidance, Zhao Sufang and her team successfully developed braised pork canned food. Today, everyone at the cannery is ready and waiting for the pork to arrive!

Li Tang and Liu Yuliang first weighed the pork on a scale, finding it to be 3,536 jin (1,255 catties), and then jointly signed Wang Zhenbo's ledger.

Over here, Zhao Sufang led her people to unload the meat, clean it, and then cut it into strips four centimeters wide, each strip of meat with skin and a good balance of fat and lean.

Young men dressed in work clothes held torches and burned the pork skin one by one.

Each piece of pork was blackened after roasting, emitting the aroma of cooked pork. If you listened carefully, you could also detect a slight fishy or gamey smell in the aroma.

This is because the skin of pork has pores that give it a fishy smell, and burning it can remove this unpleasant odor.

In addition, it is impossible to remove every single hair when scraping pig hair, so burning it can also clean the remaining pig hair on the pork skin.

"Pig skin shrinks when exposed to high temperatures, making it chewier!" Li Xiangdong explained to everyone.

They had never used fire to singe the skin of pork before, so seeing this step was quite novel to them.

Zhao Sufang clapped her hands. "Alright, stop muttering! Everyone, scrape off the soot from the cooked pork skin with a knife and then wash it clean with water."

Scrape off the charred layer with a knife, and the remaining pigskin is golden yellow.

Next, the pork was cut into four-centimeter square pieces, which Li Xiangdong called "shai zi kuai'er".

The cannery's four large iron pots, each the size of a ten-inch pot, were filled with water. Diced pork pieces were placed in the cold water and simmered over medium heat to slowly remove the blood from the pork through heat treatment.

After skimming off all the blood and scum with a spoon, bring the pot to a boil, boil for another 5 minutes, take it out and wash it with clean water, then soak it in a basin of cold water for 2 minutes.

While the pork was being prepared, another group was preparing the spices for braised pork.

Crack the cinnamon bark, prepare the star anise, crush the fresh ginger, and diagonally slice the scallions. Place them in a dish for later use.

After washing the large iron pot clean, put in the freshly rendered pork fat, heat the pot and add the oil, then add rock sugar to caramelize it. This method not only makes the braised pork a bright red color, but also adds an extra layer of caramel flavor.

Once the sugar is caramelized, throw the pork pieces and spices into the pot and stir-fry them briefly.

No need to stir-fry for a long time. Just toss the pork a few times to ensure it's evenly colored. Then add some soy sauce and white wine, and enough broth to stew.

Simmer for two hours, until the pork is tender but not deformed, and the pieces fall apart easily when gently picked up with chopsticks.

When the cannery was opened, the entire cannery was filled with the aroma of pork. The workers were all secretly swallowing their saliva. It smelled so good!

However, no one stole any of it. This was the first batch of braised pork canned food from the Lijiapo Cannery, and they were hoping to make a fortune during the Chinese New Year!

While the braised pork was cooking, the glass jars were sterilized in boiling water.

The next step was the packaging process. To make the braised pork canned food look very appealing, Li Xiangdong and Zhao Sufang conducted several different experiments and finally determined a method.

That is, first add pork broth into the canning jar, then use a small spoon to put the whole pieces of pork in, and finally scoop a layer of lard on top.

The braised pork canned in this way has a clear, golden broth at the bottom, with whole pieces of pork inside, and the top layer, once cooled and solidified, becomes snow-white lard!

Modern people might find this unhealthy, but this was the 1970s, when oil and fat were a luxury in food.

Zhao Sufang and her team worked for a day and a night and finally produced more than 6,000 cans of food. The cans were labeled with a specially made red label with the words "Meiyao Brand Braised Pork Canned Food" in big letters!

Given the high prices of pork and spices, a 360-gram can of braised pork is tentatively priced at 1.8 yuan per bottle.

Li Xiangdong didn't stay at the cannery the whole time. After watching the workers finish filling the first can, he strolled away with his hands behind his back. He wanted to go and take a look at the livestock shed.

The pork had all been distributed to each household, but some well-off families were still picking out pig's trotters or pork bones, thinking of taking them home to stew.

Pig heads and offal are rarely bought, and they are piled up in large quantities, forming a stark contrast with the dwindling number of pig trotters.

Li Xiangdong looked at the twenty pig heads with their mouths intact and the twenty sets of pig offal, and generously bought them all.

Liu Yuliang advised him, "I still saved two fat pork knuckles for you, nobody knows! If you want to eat meat, just buy those! A pig's head is just bones, what's the point of eating it? The pig's offal is smelly, nobody around here wants to eat it! You're just wasting your money!"

Li Xiangdong smiled and said, "Oh, I want those two pork knuckles too, and I also want the pig's head and offal."

Liu Yuliang couldn't refuse him, so he had no choice but to weigh him.

Everything else is fine, except that the pig's large intestine is full of feces, and it smells terrible.

Liu Yuliang was so kind as to send two people to clean up the excrement for him before weighing it!

Li Xiangdong asked for another basin of pig's blood, intending to use it to make blood sausage.

Just then, Liu Yuxiu arrived, panting, carrying a basin!

She and Li Weijun went to her parents' house at Guanyutai today to help with chores, only to find out when they got home that everyone had gone to distribute meat!

Looking at the empty meat stall, Liu Yuxiu was a little dumbfounded!