*Bull Shoot, Part One

Nobody has ever accused me of being mainstream, boring or static.

Maintaining my usual propensity for shenanigans,  I included “hang out in a butcher shop” on my list of goals for the summer. I figured the experience and lessons learned would be fun, not to mention that knew I was going to be needing a bit of “Dude Time” to counterbalance my surroundings, ie:  A lovely, genteel and well-mannered inn. One cannot subsist on Eggs Benedict alone, so by golly, I hung my ass waaaaay out there for an adventure!

I had the good fortune to find a butcher shop owner who did not mind taking me in for a few days of casual learning of the business. Cameron, of The Butcher Shop in Eagle Point, OR, saw the opportunity as potentially beneficial for both of us and took off like a pinball with the idea. Showing Sandy and me around the place, I learned that hanging with Cam and hearing him talk about his shop is like going on a roller coaster with Bono and Ted Nugent. You get pulled in by his electric personality and his excitement, you are stoked by the promise of good things about to happen…and it all revolves around dead animals. The guy can  talk about his business all day long and he loves what he does (he’s quite the rapper, too!).

I arranged to spend three days with the crew, during which time I was offered the rare opportunity to ride along on a kill truck, which is a mobile unit set up to handle farm slaughters, then transport the meat and remains back to the shop for processing. I could not wait, although I had a few teeny hesitations about the kill itself, as I have been away from bloody situations for quite a while.

Truth be told, surgery was starting to get to me, namely the invasive nature of it all. In my final days doing cases, I would frequently turn green under my mask, as if the time away from the hospital between call shifts lessened my tolerance for it while I was away. Undaunted, I was stoked for the opportunity and made sure I ate well every morning, just like a good resident should do.

My lead man at The Butcher Shop was Brian, Cameron’s partner. Probably not any older than me and able to juggle a great deal of duties, I observed very quickly that he was the one to watch. With a lot on his plate, he multitasks as fast as a manic depressive but with the grace and composure of a Buddhist monk. He is le maître de tout ce qui est des viandes (the master of all that is meat). Moving from sausages and jerky to curing, smoking, roasting, butchering and slaughtering, he admits that there is little he cannot do with product, but he can always learn more. He is modest, too. Stylin’.

Brian got me to work filling bins with house made pepperoni sticks. I got to wrassle casings and a huge machine that made the hand crank gadget I used in culinary school look like  a playground toy. With flashback visions of I Love Lucy and her chocolate factory escapades at the conveyor belt, I tried not to screw up. My goal was simple: Don’t dump product on the floor, bust casings, or worse- Have to find an alternate storage place for filling if things went south too fast. Brian was merciful and patient, not setting my machine too fast so I could keep up and save myself a case of gout.

Not embarrassing myself too horribly, I passed the first test called “Can she tie her shoes, or is she a total bimbo?”.  Soon thereafter, they let me get a hold of a knife set and let me wail away on meat. TJ, Jim and Brian went into the coolers, where meat is hung to age for at least a week or two, and retrieved halves of carcasses. These massive bovine specimens are suspended from hooks on pulley wheels that ride on rails hanging from the ceiling.  Not unlike a series of railway switching stations, the route started at the kill truck loading door and ended in the meat cutting room. The black iron setup is quite ingenious, effective and probably  as old as the industry itself. Proof positive that simple is better.

A half a cow is huge. Its no small feat to dispatch and process one, no less to get it off a meat hook and turn it into cute little medallions for a chef. In the meat room, the process begins with quartering the half, and that means a hand saw. Yup, you heard me. One hand grabs a meat hook to stabilize the carcass, and the other one uses a huge hacksaw to cut through the rib that divides front end from back, about rib number 6 or so. It is caught by a helper before the lower portion hits the deck, then tossed onto the saw deck. Seeing just that part of the process left me feeling like I was a total sissy. I felt hugely underpowered to even attempt it, and for once in a rare moment, I was glad to play the Chick Card and let some big strong man do the heavy lifting. Once on the band saw, the guys break it down into primal cuts and the pieces are tossed to the other guys for fabrication into service cuts or ground meat. Guess which part I got to do?

When I took Chef Melinda Casady’s knife skills class at OCI last fall, I saw her take a knife in hand like a murderess and bone out a roast. Never having seen a knife held in “I’m gonna stab you like OJ!” position before, I thought she was just giving us all a terrible lesson on who not to screw with. None of us do because we adore her, but that is a different matter… With a hook in my left hand and a boning knife held blade down like an ice pick, I was shown how to move around a hunk of meat, pull traction and basically do orthopedic surgery. It was physical work, dangerous, too. Though I got the guys to admit that their metal body armor aprons would really look killer with the right pair of heels at a dance club, it was a piece of equipment to be taken seriously and not to be forgotten at home. Such physical effort is put into wailing on a carcass, the workout is amazing and its no surprise to me that these dudes are in awesome shape, as opposed to the pudgy old farts I used to see at the meat counter in the grocery store when I was a kid.

I set to work doing meat for ground product. “Ya can’t screw it up.” they said. What a relief it was to know that I was not going to be ruining a high dollar cut of meat like filet mignon. Yes, I was a little worried that my stellar skill of slicing steaks into wedged door stop shapes was going to be exploited, but thankfully, I was not saddled with such a task. With TJ, Jim and Brian all zooming about, they threw me pieces of leftovers and coached me on how best to bone out legs and pelvis parts, shoulders and even cheeks. After five straight hours of Jen The Ripper, my right hand was so incredibly exhausted. I look on Chef Casady’s skill as a butcher with new found respect. One cannot sissy-ass around a carcass, and delicate surgery it ain’t.

The next day, I got to tear down lambs, elk and a black bear. Yeah, you heard me. Legendary for going rancid quickly and tasting like the wrong end of a dumpster, black bear is not a popular game meat for straight consumption. I got to bone  out the bear for processing into pepperoni and sausage. With every bit of it’s own fat stripped, the charcuterie was supplemented with pork fat… from the magical animal! The second best part about it was that I got to brag about it on Facebook. I mean, seriously, how many people get to do this at work on a daily basis?

I missed the kill truck on the second day, as Cameron asked me to make the crew lunch using anything from the meat case and the produce stand out front of the shop. With a boning knife, a cutting board and a really shitty grill (sorry, Cam, it does suck pretty bad), I tried to be a little conservative with my choice so as to not waste awesome product. There would be absolutely no forgiveness for Kobe NY Strips coming out like a hiking boot. I did my best to whip out an olive, cherry tomato and oregano stuffed chicken breast, a chopped Israeli salad and grilled vegetables with whatever the shop had on hand. It felt like a Top Chef Quickfire Challenge where they say, “By the way, all you have is a votive candle to prepare your protein”. I got food out, they ate, it was a bit of fun, but hardly, and I do mean hardly my best product ever.  I will redeem myself, though…

Please stay tuned for part two of Bull Shoot… “The Bison Babe”.