For those of you who are attempting to butcher a whole or half animal at home, this is the place to come for questions, concerns, and advice. Post your questions/comments here. If you’ve had a success or a failure, let us know so others can learn from your experience.
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Hi, I’m looking for a way to slaughter bipedal carnivores that eat cheetoes all day, and drink booze. They sit on couches staring at reality tv, while getting fat eating fried chicken, and chugging Coke. They tend to smell like old sweaters and mouldy cheese. Any way to sell prepare these losers so I can make a buck?
I don’t think those kind of carnivores would taste very good.
I’m moving to Portland in August and I’ve always wanted to learn the ins and outs of butchery. I was a Sous Chef in Pittsburgh for a while, so I know how to prepare meat – but I was never given the opportunity learn how it ends up in the cooler. I would have, but the academic world called and now I’m on my way to a PhD in Urban Studies at PSU. As soon as I relocate to Portland, I’d love to take some classes, meet curious folks, and learn as much as I can about this amazing craft. I actually think that the meat market can have a transformative effect on neighborhoods and – while elaborating on my acuity with the craft – I want to explore (socially, not scholastically) how Portland has embraced the butcher. I’ve already perused the recommended book list and I’m preparing to pore over their directives, but I was wondering if there are any other suggestions the fine members of PMC have for someone who has finally decided to feed his curiosity.
Can’t wait to meat you guys!
RJ
Hi RJ!
Definitely come take some classes with us. You’ll become a part of a greatly diverse community. I think it’s incredibly interesting to think about how the meat market transforms (or doesn’t transform) a community. One of the major reasons I started the PMC was to bring people together over a pig. When a dozen people get together to learn butchery, and they all go home with the spoils of that animal they all worked on, I think it’s definitely transformative. It transforms how you think of the meat you are eating, but it also transforms how we perceive the process of butchery and slaughter (and thus the food system we are all a part of). Imagine if, in every neighborhood, there was a place you could go to break down an animal with friends and neighbors, with someone there to advise you and help you wrap and prep your cuts. How different would our relationship to animals and meat and food be?
Was wondering if anyone knew any good reference books (in English of course) for french seam butchery for beef.
Unfortunately, at least to my knowledge, there aren’t any great books in English on french seam butchery, but if you have a few different books at your disposal, you can usually piece it all together or come up with a kind of personalized seam butchery style all your own. See our resources page for some of those books. I like to use a combination of Good Meat, River Cottage Meat Book, the diagram in the Charcuterie book, Basic Butchery of Livestock and Game, Cutting Up In the Kitchen. One of our instructors, David Padberg, also drew up a great French Seam Butchery diagram for pigs (but not for beef) that could be helpful. I’d be happy to send that to you. But I think the best thing to do is to take one of our classes (even a seam butchery class on pig will help you with beef), as I don’t believe any butchery diagram, no matter how detailed it is, really guides you enough to be able to perform it well at home. Hands-on learning makes it so much easier to understand the basic premise of seam butchery on any animal. That said, the great thing about “seam butchery” is that, when in doubt, you are following the seams: your knife followed the space between bone and meat or it follows the space between muscle groups which is almost always marked by a kind of white seam of other fat or tissue or silverskin.