Lessons in Butchery: part I

Finally the time came to realise one summer-long fantasy of being shown how to butcher meat. This has nothing to do with any kind of bloody carcass attraction, nor am I intending to form a new career path - it's just something I've been wanting to do. To be able to cook and eat good meat is something great - why not start from the very beginning?

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get to know it personally but I do know that the cow leg pictured above used to belong to a happy beast roaming the Hereford fields. When I say beast, this is no exaggeration. Isn't it strange that we are so used to herding and tucking into creatures of which one leg I could barely lift? The sheer body of it was surprising.

We actually started with lamb - a whole one, so I could see how the body works. Once you know that, you can transpose it to pig or cow, simply adjusting for size. The head, feet, and stomach are removed at the abbatoir and the heart cut open to inspect for disease. Apparently, although heart-diseased animals cannot be eaten, there are other illnesses which might be discovered that have no drastic affect on the meat. These include asthma and emphysema. I thought it rather endearing to imagine sheep wheezing around the countryside like old smokers.

I am not going to now attempt a blow-by-blow account of how our lamb was cut apart, because after one lesson I am surely not the authoritative voice and plus the Guardian has beaten me to it. Anyway, it is not the instructions which stayed with me but perhaps they don't need to - as JW my butchering mentor put it, these animals seem like they were made to have this done to them. This becomes evident as so much of the practice is what is known as 'seam' butchery - exactly what it sounds like. The bodies are sewn together by fat and tendons which keeps them springy or sturdy when alive but on the table, unbelievably allows for them to be easily prised apart. There is very little sawing or hacking involved which makes the process natural and incredibly satisfying.

A lamb is small so somewhat more realistic than anything else to imagine butchering in a home kitchen -- a student kitchen, though? I wonder if there would be enough room in the freezer.

I'm afraid the cow won't get much of a mention - its raw thigh is already the headpiece of this post. By that point I was probably sweating. A hight point however was on musing about my steak tartare obsession being able to slice off a small piece and savour the redness. I really wish I had a mincer at home. Perhaps now if I hadn't made it clear I was fairly obsessive about food I might be mistaken for some kind of serial killer taking out human angst on meat and therefore it might be time to leave...with the knowledge that I have a stuffed and personally-wrapped lamb loin to do something with and a cheeky piece of bone to scoop the marrow out of.