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Archive for the ‘Butchering’ Category

Gone Butchering…

11.05.10

I dearly wish I had the time to edit video at the moment, and will as soon as I can afford an evening, but the bottom line is when there’s a carcass hanging, priority one is getting it dealt with. And from the time you pull the trigger to the time it’s all in a freezer involves a WHOLE lot of steps, and a fair jag of time.

Because I’m picky with game cutting – no connective tissue [it doesn't break down like pork or beef], bones [they stink when cooked imo], sinew/silverskin [unless you like slimy snot, even post cooking], cartilage, or anything other than simply ‘meat’ for that matter is allowed – it’s a pretty time consuming task. With a cow or pig, you can make cross-muscular cuts into large sections, leave bones in, etc.  I’ve seen guys break down beef with a band saw in a few minutes. With game, it ain’t like that: every muscle is separated from its neighbor and cleaned thoroughly. At least that’s how I do it.

So that is what I’m doing.

re video: I shot a From Local Farms episode at Irvings Farm Fresh prior to my hunt, as well as footage of butchering of an antelope. Then I have this hunt video, and possibly a ‘how to butcher a moose’ video. I’m going to be busy for a while…

Rendering Lard – my new bff

11.27.09
Why, oh why, have I never done this before? I’ve cut 10 sides of pork in the past 13 months, and never, not once, did I render lard. Stupid. I will forever and ever, from this day forward, consider the leaf lard in the pig a very valuable piece of yield. Not only is it excessively easy to harvest – lightly attached on one side around the tenderloin area – it is the choicest of fats for making pastry dough. Or frying potatoes [ok, duck fat and beef tallow have good reps here too]. Or frying, say, pork. Or, well, anything, really. So why didn’t I try it? Stupidity. Only saving grace is that it wasn’t wasted – it was simply ground before. Never again.

The process is simple, and has been well documented here and here. I did about half of my stash at 120C in the oven, it took 8hrs give or take, and the smell made me want to barf. I don’t understand. It’s cooking pork. Creating a product – lard – that is very neutral in general. Some people do it outside, and I don’t blame them. I’ll likely stick to the oven for the heat control, and I found that any nausea is quickly forgotten once you’ve gotten on with using the stuff.

I found a lot of methods of storing the stuff. Many use jars, which unless you have a straight sided jar seems like an annoying idea to me when it comes to trying to get lard out. I also have had bad luck breaking jars in the freezer. One cool idea was muffin tins to get individual portions. But I swooned when I read about pouring it into a cake pan of some kind, so that it can be cut into butter-like sticks, and wrapped in convenient portions – which is what I did, illustrated in the photo top left.

So thank you, lard, for filling a void in my life I did not know existed.

Butchering Moose 2009

11.15.09
I truly wish I could provide a play-by-play of butchering a moose for those out there who are interested in how to tackle it – or rather, how I tackle it. This was the second bull to butcher of the year, and the reality was this time around that I was on duty trimming and cutting for 6 hrs and just wanted to be done with it. So no photos. Maybe next year I’ll line up a volunteer to shoot some of the specifics.


In an effort to not be totally useless, some general items that apply:
- Any dried out exterior is trimmed until all that’s left is fresh meat. My least favorite part of the process.
- All muscle groups are separated and connective tissues removed, no exceptions. Generally my job.
- Muscles are separated by type: tenderloin, loin, blade, round, rump, etc. Also generally my job.
- About half the animal ends up in burger, much of it from the front quarters. Luckily, I hunt with people who like to eat mostly burger. We take most of the rest. We have a home-built heavy-duty grinder to do the job – and it’s a time consuming job bagging and wrapping it. A young bull might yield 100-120lbs of burger.
- The hind quarter is rich in what we call ‘cuts’ or ‘anything-that-isn’t-burger’. All cuts combined including heart, tenderloins, etc generally add up to about half the meat yield [other half burger].
- Once each muscle is trimmed, it generally left whole, as we like to choose in the kitchen what we want to do with it. Didn’t grow up cutting this way – ended up here as I got more serious in the kitchen.
- All of our meats are bagged in plastic, then wrapped in butcher paper, labeled by broad muscle group. Tried and true method of avoiding freezer burn. The only meats we’ve had freezer burn have been single wrapped from a butcher.
- The consensus in our broad group of hunting friends is that no butcher [at least none that we've tried] will produce an end product as good as you can do yourself. IF a butcher does game, they’re slammed at this time of year, and short on hands. Understandable. IF you get your actual animal back [say you shot a calf moose, and get bull moose back - not understandable], it’s usually single wrapped and prone to early freezer burn, and vastly more likely to have nasty crap in it [including hair, none of which is acceptable]. And IF you get the animal you shot back, and it’s not full of clot, hair, and nasty shit, then sometimes you end up with 80-90% burger and a few roasts. Speaking from experience. There’s a reason we do it ourselves.

Grinding pork

05.03.09

Better the spoon than my digits, no? The grinder has to learn to play with others.

A friend and I cut 3 sides of Berkshire hog yesterday, and one thing I was resolved to do was to grind my meats that day in one big shot rather than to do so each time I was making sausage, or needed ground meat for any other use. And I’ll be honest: I buggered up many a sausage/forcemeat/etc grinding pork with a hand grinder. The plate and blade would get full of sinew. So I’d use a larger size plate – which led to gross crunchy/sinewy bits in the sausage that was, frankly, disgusting. I was guided to grind pork cold – almost icy. Grinding cold back fat with a hand grinder ain’t so easy. I searched online about how to grind pork. I failed, over and over.

So I borrowed my dad’s monster grinder [modded w/ a powerful motor], and learned 2-3 things that are key to grinding pork. Things I wish I knew a year ago:

  1. pork sinew/connective tissue and grinders don’t get along. If the knife had a hard time with it, we trimmed it. We had to go through all our trim and edit. It added up to very little extra work, and very little trim loss – but made grinding possible without binding up the blade. Next time, we’ll simply lose the tough sinew as we go.
  2. the ring that tightens the die/plate to the blade needs to be tight enough so that crap can’t get behind it and bind stuff up. My theory is if you do point 1 well enough, this may be far less important.
  3. cold meat grinds better. This I knew. And was not as key as the other two items, but it helps.

So now, when it’s time to make sausage, I will pull a pack of fatty ground pork ready to rock, and save a heck of a lot of work. Should have done this last year. Live and learn.

Blamin’ it on Jamie Oliver

11.27.08
A little gross? Yeah, I know. But if Jamie Oliver can publish photos of a slaughtered lamb and a boar split in half in his ‘Jamie’s Italy‘ book, I figure I could post this with clear conscience.

Wild, sustainably raised, milk fed, finished on alfalfa and native grass, drug-free, free range, local, and harvested stress-free at its peak of quality. Looks pretty good on paper. Just not so much in the picture.

But the picture’s important – to me it is, anyway. It reminds me of the nasty bits associated with meat-making. And as much as nasty can become healthily normal with exposure, it’s still nasty. But it’s part of the deal, and somehow we’ve gone from a culture of a family member doing the slaughter, to having a butcher do it behind glass at a grocery store, to buying boxed, packaged, portioned, pre-cooked, pre-sauced meats at M&M meats. Yikes.

How to butcher an antelope.

10.01.08
How to butcher an antelope.

First, acquire an antelope. Mine arrived this morning at 06:30, wrapped up all nice.

Next, cut and trim as fast as you can before the temperature warms up and the wasps unleash their fury on you. This required that I start in the dark – a choice working environment when using knives. If the birds you attract look like they’re going to help you cut meat, thrown them a bone.

There, you’re done!

No more butchering posts, promise.

12.04.07

Today was the 5th big-game animal of the year, and I’m glad we’re done. It’s a lot of darn work. In the photo: calf elk cuts. Front to back: loin strips & tenderloin, then a pile of blade and shoulder, then a pile of round and rump, then a pile of sirloin tip and boneless shank. They were all laid out ready to be portioned, bagged, and papered so I figured I’d de-glove a hand and steal a quick photo.

By the end of this one, I was finding it fairly easy to recognize the cuts by looking at them. That’s new for me. Some are easy, but some are not-so-easy.

And I promise – no more butchering posts for many months.

Why is this relevant, you ask?

12.03.07

This is relevant because it is a nearly 7′ wide set of oil paintings of an area of Italy that is very dear to our hearts. It’s on the road between San Giovanni d’Asso and Montisi in Tuscany, and painted by the very talented Thaneah Krohn. For they who have been, the mountain in the back is Mont Amiata. This lovely piece now greets me as I write my blog posts, which also makes it relevant. It’s relevant from a foodie aspect as it is the ‘terroir’ that produces white truffles & pecorino. Okay, maybe that’s reaching. Maybe I’m just excited to finally have it!!!

I spent a good portion of my day butchering. That’s one tiring job – making me realize my day job is a breeze. We cut and packed two animals today. One left for tomorrow. So much butchering. But I dare not complain. Not only because I get to enjoy the results, but because it’s fleeting. Soon it will be over [tomorrow], and I will get to enjoy [not] the terrible cold, slippery roads, and loads of snow. I’ll try to enjoy winter more this year, honest.

Pear Pie and Home-made Vanilla Ice Cream

10.16.07
My experience with pie is limited. Other than the fact that I’ve made a fair number, I really only have used the crust recipe on the box of Tenderflake. And although I’m a huge fan of anything that boldly displays ‘pure lard’ – this will be my last time with Tenderflake. Why? Well I plan on making topless pies, to reduce the fat and up the fruit per slice – which means one box of Tenderflake makes 6 pies. That’s a lot of pies. What if I just want to make one? The answer, as to many questions in life: butter. I always have butter on hand. One can make crust of butter. Future pie crusts will be made of butter.

I realized during this project that my love for pears really lies in Bartlett pears. There are many other fine kinds, but when I smell these, it brings me back to cleaning cases of them for my mom’s preserves and pies when I was a kid. And when a food brings back fond childhood memories, it’s gonna be tough to beat.

Recipe? Make the dough listed on the back of the Tenderflake box. Add fruit. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake. I used cake flour as recommended, and actually cut the lard in with knives. I usually use my food processor, but my guess is this would overwork it. I was right. The knife gig makes for some very fine crust. My mom’s pear pie is better, but this is a fine second.

As with most days, my kitchen endeavors are not limited to one item. Earlier in the day, I purchased a 10lb shank piece of pig leg for just under $10. Awesome. I removed the skin, deboned it, separated the muscles from each other, trimmed it, and cut into rough 2-3″ dice. While mucking about, I noticed there is a huge difference in the leg muscles’ fat content in pork. The center shot shows my hand touching some very lean reddish meat. And to the right, some seriously marbled pieces that remind me of some photos of Kobe I’ve seen recently. The vintage 70′s Creuset has the bone and the b-grade cuts [read: lean] ready for Texas style bbq. The Emile Henry pot in the foreground containing the lovely fatty pieces turned into a Vietnamese kho. Oven at 250F for a few hours, and it makes me wonder why I don’t just forget everything else and just live off slow cooked pork. Really.

My 30th Birthday

09.16.07
My dishwasher full of dirty dishes smells fantastic. I know. Gross. But it’s true.

Today is my 30th birthday. My dinner guests just left, and I’m extremely tired. I was up at 04:00 to go waterfowl hunting again this morning. Maybe not the wisest thing to do before hosting 15 dinner guests. 40 more geese and 13 ducks this morning, followed by lots of butchering. My bird-cleaning chops are getting quite polished. More on this later.

I had a wonderful birthday. Last night I had some good friends and family over for a wonderful dinner, and we enjoyed the wine in the photo below. A very nice Pauillac. I have good friends. The photo on the upper left is the starter of lightly cooked shaggy mane [in butter] on a pan-bread with some liquid the mushroom releases when cooked, topped with a wild chive.

The theme for my birthday was ‘braised and bordeaux’d’. I will post more soon on this, but we’ll just say for now that it’s the reason my dishwasher smells so good.

I will try to catch up in the coming days. So much food. So many wines. So tired. But what I will take the time to scratch down is a big thank you to all who were very kind to me in the past few days, including my lovely wife. The rest of you know who you are. I really appreciate all the thoughtfullness, generosity, and love.