Knowing Your Meat: Is It Cool?

Well, I will say that if it isn’t cool now, it’s getting cooler by the day.

The macabre mental images associated with the handling of dead animals aside, the public’s interest in knowing where their meat is coming from and desire for quality, chemical-free meat is growing. For one, the number of farmer’s markets across the country, where local meat is frequently bought and sold, has grown steadily since tracking began in 1994. Just looking around my town (Lincoln, pop. ~255,000), I can see that demand is up: We went from one farmer’s market to four in just the past few years. Other studies show that the amount of organic meat being purchased continues to go up. And the Organic Trade Association reported that organic meat sales grew faster than all other organic food sales in 2011. Perhaps the new study that shows the number of family farms actually INCREASED last year for the first time in decades is also part of this upward trend toward small-scale, organic farming and meat production. 

Another sign is the artisanal butcher shops that are springing up just about everywhere you look. From the Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley, Calif., to Local Pig in Kansas City to the Belmont Butchery in Richmond, Vir., people are rediscovering the benefits of having a neighborhood butcher shop and enjoying being able to get their hands on fresh meat from someone who is knowledgeable and very likely to be a trained chef. This means you also have a source for great preparation tips as well as someone you trust to introduce you to a cut or animal you’ve never tried before.

Then, in addition to selling excellent meat and whatever meaty concoctions they can dream up, such as pâté, head cheese, and endless brat varieties, butchers are offering classes that teach you how to do your own butchering. Who knew people would be so eager! These increasingly popular classes are not conducted in a dreary back room with chainsaws hanging on the walls, blood-drenched floors, and dim lighting. Rather, it’s a lot like a party. Beer, snacks, socializing. A downright jovial atmosphere. Think tailgating, only with knives. 

Whole hog butchering class at Local Pig in Kansas City, Missouri

So why this sudden popularity of learning to handle and cut your own meat? Did home cooks become interested after the classes became available or has this openness and demand been untapped for years? Maybe the importance of quality food became entrenched in some people’s consciousness to the point where this was just the next logical step toward having more control. Maybe someone is starting a value-added meat business such as a BBQ joint. Or maybe they just wanted to learn something new. It also doesn’t hurt that cookbooks on topics such as meat curing begin with an entire section on how to break down your own hog, encouraging us that before you can do this, you really should learn to do this. How else are you supposed to get the proper cut for an authentic Italian coppa?! 

Beef heart with watermelon salad

And what about the topic of organ meat, or offal? Consider this piece, just last week, on NPR’s food blog The Salt on how to cook beef heart. Or April Bloomfield, a rising star in the culinary world known for her taste in nose-to-tail eating, posing like a rock star on the front of her book with an adorable suckling pig slung around her shoulders as if it was a mink stole. As time goes on, it’s more clear to me that this is slowly becoming a national conversation, bringing the topics of home butchery and eating of (taboo?) organ meat into the mainstream. People are not apologizing for being curious about it or being willing to try it.

I think people initially became interested in the handling and source of their meat for lots of reasons:

• ·      to decrease their carbon footprint,
• ·      to encourage sustainable and humane livestock practices,
• ·      to reduce the chance of eating meat contaminated with dangerous bacteria,
• ·      to improve the quality of the meat they were putting in their bodies,
• ·      to waste less, or
• ·      to honor the animal better by being brave enough to face the whole creature, and with it, the cycle of life and death.

As you know, in my case, it’s also about having eaten my fill of the same beef, pork, and chicken cuts served up by “the industry” over the past 40-plus years. I honestly believe that eating this way for generations has dulled our collective palate, and I like to think we are experiencing a sort of re-awakening and connection. I mean, even if we all agreed that filet mignon was the best cut of meat ever in the whole wide world, and got to eat it every day, some people will still eventually start to crave something new. But it’s also true that you don’t have to be super adventurous to want better-quality food, and we’ve been heading that direction for a while. Interest in being closer to our meat source is just a more recent extension of that, and I think it’s something to embrace and be proud of.