Four-Part Basic Butchery Series

Camas Davis, French-trained butcher, food writer, and founder of the Portland Meat Collective, a traveling butchery school in Portland, Oregon, will be offering a hands-on, four-part basic butchery and charcuterie class series in February. This will be an excellent series of classes for those of you who have taken one or two classes from the PMC already but want to gain more practice. It’s also a perfect introductory class for anyone wanting to learn the art of home butchery and charcuterie. Students will have the opportunity to break down their own ducks, chickens, rabbits, and pig, and they’ll learn how to make such meaty delicacies as rillette, bacon, hams, sausage, and pâté. In addition they’ll find out how to prepare, cook, and cure cuts of meat that they may not have experienced before. There will be an emphasis on sourcing good meat, with a thorough education in alternative, sustainable modes of food buying and production. By the end of the class students will have gone home with the meat from one duck, one chicken, one rabbit, and part of a whole pig. Guest cooks and instructors will also take part in teaching the classes and at the end of each class students will be treated to a dinner made from the ingredients they worked with that evening.

Birds: February 3, 2012

In this first class, students will learn the basic principles of seam butchery by breaking down a whole chicken, using various approaches and techniques culled from American and European butchers. Students will then cultivate a French state of mind: learning how to parse out a whole duck in preparation to make confit, stock and rillette. Over the course of the class, students will also learn about the main differences between French and American ducks raised for foie gras, as well as the differences between farm-raised and wild birds. At the end of class, students will sit down to a meal using the ingredients they’ve just worked with.

Rabbits: February 10, 2012

For this second class, students will build on the skills they’ve honed while working on chickens and ducks and put their knives to rabbits. This class will emphasize rabbit charcuterie and cooking, and also look at traditional dishes that utilize this animal. Students will also learn the basics of cooking and preserving rabbit, and will end the class over a meal using ingredients they’ve just worked with.

Pigs, Part I: February 17, 2012

Now that the students have advanced their basic butchery skills by working on chicken, duck, and rabbit, they’ll try their hand at something a little bigger: a whole pig. After a demonstration on one side of pig, students will work on the other side, parsing out loin from belly, coppa from picnic, and hams from trotters.  They’ll also learn how to brine and smoke hams and salt pork belly for bacon. At the end of class, students will sit down to a pork-centric dinner.

Pigs, Part 2: February 24, 2012

For this last class, students will each break down their own pig head, and learn how to make headcheese. They’ll also learn how to make pork sausage. Lastly, they’ll finished the hams and bacon that have been brining, smoking, curing, and drying for the past week.  Students will prepare a final dinner, over which the class will review what they’ve learned and look toward a splendid future of home butchery and charcuterie.