PrintButchering A Whole Lamb, By Slow Foods NYC
[Photos: Chichi Wang]
Marrying honest food with a great cause, Slow Food NYC hosted a lamb butchering class this past Sunday at The Institute of Culinary Education in downtown Manhattan. Proceeds from the class benefited the Slow Food NYC Harvest Time program, which supports student gardens and food education programs at schools in East Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg. Led by Master Butcher Rudi Weid, the class used lamb sourced from the pastures of Three Corner Field Farm in Shushan, New York.
Last month at the ICE, I had watched as Weid butchered an entire half side of beef. This time around, seeing Weid take break down a lamb was significantly less daunting. Only eight months old when slaughtered, the lamb weighed a mere forty-five pounds. It's easy to get mired in the numerous parts of a steer, whereas the diminutive size of the lamb carcass made clearer the distinctions between the shoulder, rack, loin, leg, and foreshank.
Following the ceremonial beheading of the lamb, Weid proceeded to butcher the animal into primals and sub-primals before separating the cuts into roasts, chops, and stewing meat. The lamb was so fresh that Weid left a majority of the skin on and due to its youth, the bones were milky-white. Whereas conventionally raised, grain-fed lambs come with a fatty exterior, our pasture-raised lamb possessed only a thin layer of fat.
Offal lovers were in for a treat. The shiny, glossy liver was taken from the lamb, after which Reid reached into and extracted a large globule of fat. Digging, he produced a singular kidney (the corresponding kidney was never found, much to the chagrin of the audience).
Wielding a seventy-year old butcher's cleaver that was owned by his father, Weid needed just a few accurate hacks to separate the ribs into perfectly portioned chops. When de-boning the legs, Weid explained that a few miniscule glands in the legs must be removed prior to cooking, or else the glands would cause the flesh to have an "off" flavor. The presences of these glands was something that I'd never known, but had tasted on many an occasion.
Following the fabrication of the meat, each cut that Weid had carefully butchered was then auctioned off to benefit the schools. The shanks were bought for twenty-one dollars, whereas the chuck chops and rib chops were sold for more than forty. A boneless shoulder roast brought in a hefty seventy-four dollars.
For years, Three Corner Field Farms has been providing pasture-raised lamb to their customers at the Union Square greenmarket. As Weid's lamb was auctioned off to the highest bidders, samples of another lamb (also from the farm) were brought out for our eating pleasure— all the cuts I sampled were tender and flavorful. The liver was some of the freshest-tasting I've ever eaten, but my favorite was the lamb fries (a euphemism for the testicles), which were battered and deep-fried. Slightly chewy with a sweet and meaty flavor, the fries were the perfect ending to a delicious educational experience.
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16 Comments:
I eat meat and all, but that first photo is too much. Would be better after the jump.
LiveToEat at 12:27PM on 11/10/09
lol. its too much put it away! dare i see what the animal i eat looks like before it is butchered and put on little styrofoam trays and wrapped in plastic! hideous! cruel!
vinnyger at 12:37PM on 11/10/09
I am with LiveToEat on this one. Not all serious eaters come here to see dead animals, there are the random veggie foodies ya know. I hopped on while I was eating my lunch. This has happened a few times in the last few weeks, won't make that mistake again.
sunshine6 at 12:58PM on 11/10/09
I bet people who are grossed out by that picture eat feedlot beef, factory pork and battery chickens. Those are all fine because they come in neat little styrofoam trays. But don't let them see the carcass of what was a happy, healthy, pastured lamb. That's too outrageous.
SqueezeBottle at 1:13PM on 11/10/09
Again...we're having this discussion again?
BananaMonkey at 2:27PM on 11/10/09
I'm completely grossed out by this. Yes that was one happy lamb, but now it is one dead, skinned lamb. Your audience also has Vegans/Vegetarians/Animal Rights activists because this blog is filled with interesting content, insight, and places to visit. Yet, I find this post to be somewhat inconsiderate of your outreach.
bettyb at 2:42PM on 11/10/09
@bettyb and others: We believed that this was an interesting look at how an animal most of the world eats is broken down into its components. While we didn't believe the picture of the whole lamb to be offensive, after we received the first two complaints, we immediately moved it after the jump so that it would not appear on the same page. The post is titled "Butchering A Whole Lamb," giving some indication of the photos that appear within.
Carey Jones at 2:53PM on 11/10/09
Things are generally interesting, insightful when they are also informative.
I absolutely respect anyone who wants to be vegan, vegetarian or an animal rights activist in WHATEVER fashion they choose to do so. I cannot condone them whining because some parts of food are less pleasing to their eye. Guess what...by showing people how animals are raised and slaughtered under humane conditions convinces them to be more thoughtful about the ways in which they purchase and consume meat...then this is doing you and your political ideals a service.
I cannot believe people have the audacity to complain because a free website does not conform to their own personal political beliefs, but rather, conforms to it's own mandate. If I complained about everythign I found icky on the internet I'd have to quit my job and cut back on my sleeping hours.
Yes...it's a dead animal. People eat dead animals whether you like it or not. They are curious about it and they want to see where their food is coming from. You can't possibly be that precious about it because you're not a meat eater. What is disgusting to you is just that.
Or perhaps you'd all like to write with the hours you choose to eat while browsing the internet so that the editors at Serious Eats can cater to your whims?
BananaMonkey at 2:56PM on 11/10/09
*would not appear on the front page.
Carey Jones at 2:57PM on 11/10/09
@Carey Jones - Please keep posting articles like this. These are the kind of topics that keep me coming here. I find Chichi's contributions have been the most interesting and informative this site has offered lately. This site covers a lot ground foodwise and that's what is fun about it. I don't complain about all the retro junk food or the cake mix reviews so let me have my Nasty Bits, Seriously Asian and butchering articles.
SqueezeBottle at 3:15PM on 11/10/09
Looks a bit like a dog.
redfish at 3:23PM on 11/10/09
I didn't mean for this to get out of hand and all political. I thought the photo was too much for the homepage, which is viewed by a lot of people, some of whom probably don't want to see a skinned lamb whose face it turned up like it's looking at the camera. My comment was directed at the SE editors who completely caught my drift and moved the more explicit photo after the jump.
Keep SE's weird and nasty bits! But the more extreme photos should be saved for the full article, for the animals rights people and those who are just casually scrolling through on their lunch breaks.
LiveToEat at 3:23PM on 11/10/09
@LiveToEat: As always, we appreciate the feedback!
Carey Jones at 3:25PM on 11/10/09
Those of us who use an RSS Reader still had to deal with ALL of the photos arriving in the post. Please think and put this type of stuff behind a cut in the future.
CorporateMonkey at 3:38PM on 11/10/09
This post is wonderful. It helps us get closer to where our food comes from and how people have eaten throughout history. We have become such food retards over the course of the past 50 years. No one is making you eat meat, but you should applaud those that do for being inquisitive and wanting to know just where their food comes from.
grimmak at 4:41PM on 11/10/09
Yes yes, after the jump makes lots more sense.
sunshine6 at 12:25PM on 11/11/09