It’s true when they say “if you don’t use it you’ll lose it”. I had butchery class in culinary school but since then have never really worked anyplace where I needed to, or had much opportunity to do butchery. Recently finding myself with much coveted time off and not sure how to use this valuable asset, I decided to…delve further into the world of work with some continuing education! NCChoices is a North Carolina based initiative to promote sustainable food systems and access to pasture-based meat production, processing and marketing. Recently they held a regional workshop as part of the Carolina Meats Conference at Asheville-Buncombe Technical College in Asheville, NC where I participated in a butchery clinic.

The featured presenter was butcher and author Kari Underly.

Kari Makes Her Point

Kari is the author of the recently released “The Art of Beef Cutting”. Kari not only grew up in the meat business, but literally in the cutting room. As a child she said she stood on milk crates to be tall enough to reach the tables in her father’s specialty meat market in Indiana. After completing a butchery apprenticeship she became a journeymen meat cutter. Eventually she took a position working for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association where she worked on various projects focused on finding new ways of fabricating cuts to provide more value-added cuts for consumer selection and producer/retailer profitability. When I was in culinary school there was no such thing as a “flat-iron steak”. Kari was instrumental in creating this recently popularized cut. Why when it wasn’t previously known, has the flat-iron soared in popularity? Kari credits the fact that it’s cut from the second most tender muscle of the steer: Kari is now the founder and owner of “Range, Inc” a company that specializes in research, education, and marketing of fresh meat.

The butchery clinic was held in the large bright demonstration auditorium of the college of culinary arts at A-B Tech. The auditorium was filled with culinary students, chefs, meat producers and processors who were there to learn from a master butcher. In the course of her eight-hour presentation, Kari focused primarily on breaking down a side of a locally raised steer, first into the primal cuts, subprimal, and then the finished fabricated steaks, ribs, chops, and roasts that are commonly found in the meat department of your local grocery store. In the remaining two hours she then discussed and demonstrated the fabrication of both a pig and lamb carcass.

This little piggy went to market…

For decades, The National Association of Meat Processors (NAMP) has published the NAMPS Meat Buyer’s Guide. Originally created as a uniform sourcebook of meat fabrication so that meat buyers for the military could easily specify their orders based on a numerical-based system. It has since become the common sourcebook for meat specification. Unfortunately it is written in heavy “technicalese”. Kari says that the idea for The Art of Beef Cutting came about as a result of all the questions she would routinely receive. Among the issues is the fact that some butchers and processors use different terms for the same item in various regions. Another issue is the fact that some ethnicities prefer one cut over another which sometimes requires meat to be fabricated in a specific manner during the butchery process. Unable to find a resource to which she could refer people for the broad spectrum of questions she often heard, Kari decided to become the official resource by writing The Art of Beef Cutting. Originally intended as a textbook style manual for culinary schools and meat cutters, it’s actually a great resource for anyone who wants to better understand a butcher’s meat case. Clear descriptive text combined with photography of each cut as well as commentary on ethnic uses of various cuts helps to make it suitable for the home consumer as well as a food professional.

Trivia Time:

• Lamb is the animal closest to beef in physical structure and fabrication.
• Genetically-speaking, pigs are the closest to humans in their structure, which is one of the reasons that pig valves are often used in heart-valve replacement surgery.