Slaughterhouse Live
David Barzelay/eatfoo.com
Ryan Farr gives a whole-pig lecture. More Photos >
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: October 23, 2009
TO celebrate their 30th birthdays, Christian Rusby, a sustainability consultant in Seattle, and his twin brother, Jake, a college student, decided to get blood on their hands.
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Samantha Tripodi takes a class at Avedano's Holly Park Market. More Photos »
They enrolled in a hog butchering class offered every few months by a farmer, Bruce King. With classmates looking on, Jake hunkered over a 120-pound castrated pig with a .22-caliber rifle pointed at its skull and, coaxed by Mr. King, pulled the trigger.
They severed the animal’s arteries, burned off hair, peeled back skin, and, elbows deep in entrails, carved through bones with a fine-tooth saw.
The experience did not whet the appetite. “When it first dies, you touch it and it’s warm,” recalled Christian, who said he lives in a largely meat-free home. “You hesitate.”
For some diners, belonging to a farm co-op or buying groceries from a greenmarket is no longer enough. Taking concepts like nose-to-tail eating a step further, a new generation of carnivores is learning to butcher, and in some cases, slaughter their own animals — think of it as do-it-yourself meat.
Butchers, many of whom have achieved a kind of microfame, now teach classes in cities like New York, San Francisco and London, as well as in affluent agricultural areas like the Hudson Valley. In many cases, the student butchers are sailing the prevailing currents of contemporary food culture — local, sustainable agriculture, farm-to-table eating — to their logical end-point.
But D.I.Y. butchering also allows self-conscious carnivores — who in the past were candidates for vegetarianism — to justify their flesh-laden dinners. By learning to slaughter and butcher, they say, they can honor their pigs and eat them, too. (Some vegans, however, are not amused.)
Sarah Sluis, 24, recently attended a class taught by Jeffrey Ruhalter, a butcher at Essex Street Market in Manhattan. Ms. Sluis, a magazine editor, said she had lived in a vegan house during college where she was immersed in debates about whether eating meat was humane or necessary. Taking this class was one way to prove to her antimeat friends, and herself, that she could face the ugly realities of eating meat.
“I feel like if I’m going to eat meat,” she added, “I don’t want to eat stuff that I haven’t had to work for.”
Mr. King has been farming for only three years, but he has already started capping reservations for his classes in hog and turkey slaughter (for one class he had space for 10 and 45 showed up). Many of his students are either serious foodies like the Rusbys, or former professionals like himself who have gone back to the land.
Tom Mylan, formerly the head butcher at Marlow & Daughters restaurants, has teamed up with Brooklyn Kitchen, a kitchenware shop and cooking school in Williamsburg, to teach three different butchery classes and is planning to increase his teaching space sevenfold by the holidays to keep up with demand.
Students can also enroll in an eight-week apprentice program with master butchers at Fleisher’s, an organic meat purveyor run by Joshua and Jessica Applestone in the Hudson Valley.
The program began about six months ago, but it has quickly became a darling in food circles, despite its $10,000 price tag, which just covers the costs, including practice meat, Mr. Applestone said. He said the program was intended to pass on ancient skills, not turn a profit, and has drawn interest from lawyers and a music executive interested in butchery as a second career.
The success of the programs is built, in part, on food writers like Michael Pollan, who have said, essentially, it’s O.K. to satisfy your pork-chop cravings if you limit your intake and turn away from industrial meat practices, as well as chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Dan Barber, who have featured slaughtering and butchering as an intrinsic part of the food experience.
Mr. Ramsay famously portrayed the slaughter of pigs on his television show in England a few years ago, which outraged animal-rights activists in that country. Mr. Barber, who has included the on-site slaughterhouse (at least the outside) on the public tours of his restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, has said that patrons generally tell him that knowing that animals were slaughtered on the premises adds to their dining experience; giving them a new level of connection to their meals.
And yet, for student butchers, absolution can still feel a long way off, especially when butchering class can make you look like an extra for “Saw III.”
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David Barzelay/eatfoo.com
Ryan Farr gives a whole-pig lecture. More Photos >
Sign in to Recommend
Sign In to E-Mail
Single Page
Reprints
Share
Close
LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: October 23, 2009
TO celebrate their 30th birthdays, Christian Rusby, a sustainability consultant in Seattle, and his twin brother, Jake, a college student, decided to get blood on their hands.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Slide Show
Do-It-Yourself Steaks and Chops
Enlarge This Image
Claudine RL Co
Samantha Tripodi takes a class at Avedano's Holly Park Market. More Photos »
They enrolled in a hog butchering class offered every few months by a farmer, Bruce King. With classmates looking on, Jake hunkered over a 120-pound castrated pig with a .22-caliber rifle pointed at its skull and, coaxed by Mr. King, pulled the trigger.
They severed the animal’s arteries, burned off hair, peeled back skin, and, elbows deep in entrails, carved through bones with a fine-tooth saw.
The experience did not whet the appetite. “When it first dies, you touch it and it’s warm,” recalled Christian, who said he lives in a largely meat-free home. “You hesitate.”
For some diners, belonging to a farm co-op or buying groceries from a greenmarket is no longer enough. Taking concepts like nose-to-tail eating a step further, a new generation of carnivores is learning to butcher, and in some cases, slaughter their own animals — think of it as do-it-yourself meat.
Butchers, many of whom have achieved a kind of microfame, now teach classes in cities like New York, San Francisco and London, as well as in affluent agricultural areas like the Hudson Valley. In many cases, the student butchers are sailing the prevailing currents of contemporary food culture — local, sustainable agriculture, farm-to-table eating — to their logical end-point.
But D.I.Y. butchering also allows self-conscious carnivores — who in the past were candidates for vegetarianism — to justify their flesh-laden dinners. By learning to slaughter and butcher, they say, they can honor their pigs and eat them, too. (Some vegans, however, are not amused.)
Sarah Sluis, 24, recently attended a class taught by Jeffrey Ruhalter, a butcher at Essex Street Market in Manhattan. Ms. Sluis, a magazine editor, said she had lived in a vegan house during college where she was immersed in debates about whether eating meat was humane or necessary. Taking this class was one way to prove to her antimeat friends, and herself, that she could face the ugly realities of eating meat.
“I feel like if I’m going to eat meat,” she added, “I don’t want to eat stuff that I haven’t had to work for.”
Mr. King has been farming for only three years, but he has already started capping reservations for his classes in hog and turkey slaughter (for one class he had space for 10 and 45 showed up). Many of his students are either serious foodies like the Rusbys, or former professionals like himself who have gone back to the land.
Tom Mylan, formerly the head butcher at Marlow & Daughters restaurants, has teamed up with Brooklyn Kitchen, a kitchenware shop and cooking school in Williamsburg, to teach three different butchery classes and is planning to increase his teaching space sevenfold by the holidays to keep up with demand.
Students can also enroll in an eight-week apprentice program with master butchers at Fleisher’s, an organic meat purveyor run by Joshua and Jessica Applestone in the Hudson Valley.
The program began about six months ago, but it has quickly became a darling in food circles, despite its $10,000 price tag, which just covers the costs, including practice meat, Mr. Applestone said. He said the program was intended to pass on ancient skills, not turn a profit, and has drawn interest from lawyers and a music executive interested in butchery as a second career.
The success of the programs is built, in part, on food writers like Michael Pollan, who have said, essentially, it’s O.K. to satisfy your pork-chop cravings if you limit your intake and turn away from industrial meat practices, as well as chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Dan Barber, who have featured slaughtering and butchering as an intrinsic part of the food experience.
Mr. Ramsay famously portrayed the slaughter of pigs on his television show in England a few years ago, which outraged animal-rights activists in that country. Mr. Barber, who has included the on-site slaughterhouse (at least the outside) on the public tours of his restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, has said that patrons generally tell him that knowing that animals were slaughtered on the premises adds to their dining experience; giving them a new level of connection to their meals.
And yet, for student butchers, absolution can still feel a long way off, especially when butchering class can make you look like an extra for “Saw III.”
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