Eddie, thanks for this important post; we are going to nominate it as a finalist in our current blogging contest.

Although most of us reading this can’t make it in to Peoria Packing ourselves, we appreciate your vicarious experience and the questions (and realizations) it raises.

I’m going to crop the photo to fit our template, tinker with the headline for our format, and promote it on the home page today. Congratulations!

You’ve tackled a paradox I’ve been musing over since February when a woman at a dinner party got all squeamish and disgusted when I suggested that we ought to see where our meat comes from, ie: visit a slaughter house like a Gourmet article last summer described. This woman had just finished eating a few slices of lamb. It made no sense to me that she’d be so disgusted by the mere thought of where her meat comes from. also

I love that chefs are buying whole animals and using the whole animal, and I agree that letting none of it go to waste is how best to honor the animal. It’s probably the best way to feed our country’s meat craze but use a little less land, water, and animals to do it.

Finally, even though I don’t eat meat, I was surprised that I found the “offal” photo of outdoor meat rather pretty--I’d expected to be kind of shocked, but it seems more natural in that photo.

Thanks for a great article.

Thanks, Trista, for the kind comments. The offal photo is pretty mostly because the light was good when I took it.

And thanks, also, Kim for the nomination. I’m honored to be considered, and, as a new arrival to the site, flattered to be in the company of the many excellent writers you have contributing here.

As a vegetarian who used to work in the meat room as a meat wrapper for 3 years, I had to giggle at the notion of people really not thinking about or knowing how meat really looks! Back in the 80’s, we still had “hanging meat” and the butchers deboned and actually butchered meat! People nowadays don’t know what meat looks like before it is all cut up, cleaned up, and cryvacked and packaged. Maybe if more people really saw that meat was, well, animals! they might choose to eat more vegetables! WOnderful article. Thank you!

Great article! I live in Kansas where there are more meat packing plants then trees hehehehe.
We are so good at not looking at our meat. I am a food service manager for a private school, we served real chicken thighs, bone on. I was shocked that the kids refused to eat it because it still had the bones in it! Thanks chicken mcnuggets! They would eat it once we removed the bones. I am serving it again this year LOL! They will learn.

What a great and thoughtful post, thank you. Noting some of the comments above, I had no idea that people were so out of touch with food that they’d freak at a bone-in chicken thigh!

While it may not yet be a national trend, I have found an increasing number of people very willing to engage in a conversation about the source of their meat and how it made it to their plates. Due to the nature of my job, I talk openly with people about the slaughter and butchering process on a daily basis. In general, what seems to be of greatest interest is learning that best practices (low stress) lead to better taste and texture (i.e. it’s not just a feel good thing). Also, showing pictures such, as the ones you included above, are an important part of the dialog. Yes, people may wince at first but it makes us more human, I think, to understand and respect the fact that our food - whether flora or fauna - was once alive.

Funny, my kids seem to be less squeamish about their meat than many adults (including their dad). They think chicken tastes much better when it’s “on-the-bone” (mostly I think because then they’re allowed to eat it with fingers), and when I serve whole fish they want to see how the gills work, and wiggle the eyes around (putting my husband off his dinner). I think it’s good to come to terms with the fact that if you eat meat you are eating a real animal, just as any carnivore in nature does.

GO EDDIE!!!

Great article!I grew up in Chicago and my dad and I would go every other saturday to meat packing co.
I love it! You brought me back memories.
Thanks for this wonderful article.

and you can visit me if I can visit you:)

Welcome!
foodcreate

We grow our own meat and struggle with squeamishness from next of kin, our kids, random nearby folk who theoretically get it, but can’t understand how we’d do in our own. I want to know exactly how my meat lived and died, and this is the only guarantee. Thanks for a post that helps me put some logic behind my intuition.

Great post. I think it is very true that we have become distanced from the basic knowledge of meat production and butchering. Some of that, however, has to do with cost and ease of systems promoted by the meat industry and not the consumer. Fact is, I think industries efforts have led to our ignorance as consumers.

I recently read an old N.Y. Time article about the end of traditional butchering. I remember one quote by an old-school artisan that it would take years to train a true butcher but a day to train a meat cutter. And meat cutters are all we have behind the meat counters at most stores - fancy or otherwise. I know this all too well because in researching a class we were teaching “How to buy your meat from a farmer” I wanted to discuss the cuts of meat you could get the processor to package. What I discovered is that store cutters and larger processors have gone to some pretty generic cutting practices. What would we know about that? Would any of us (or them as a matter of fact) know the difference between a blade roast and a seven bone roast (for example) even though they both come from the chuck and offer different tenderness and value? The point is, consumer ignorance (if that is the right word) has allowed an industry to transform a skilled trade into a profit driven system. It is worth considering what came first - our ignorance or their objective.

I remember as a child my mother teaching me these things. How one could by a blade roast (a cross section cut from the chuck) when it was on sale and bring it home to “butcher out” and create tender steaks, stew meat and some ends for ground beef all from within that one cut. She knew how to make good on a less expensive cuts - cows tongue and calf’s foot and the meals they would offer. These cuts are simply not in the meat case anymore. Look and ask and you will see the response.

Trying to find a seven-bone roast or blade (forget about the tongue or foot) or any butcher around here who could get it for me (I wanted to show my students how the chuck cuts and bone shapes varied the further it went down the back) was a feat onto itself. I had to convince a store to order in a whole pre-packaged cut (A-20 to be exact) bone-in and wait till someone who knew how to slice this cut came in. It was all so very complicated and caused a lot of confusion. First there was the two week wait for the “special cut” then the wait till the person who could cut it - and cutting it was simply running in through a saw, nothing fancy or akin to traditional butchering.

So what am I saying is, that even if you do want to use different cuts, even if you want to order your meat from a farmer, you better spend some time learning about the cuts that are available though not generally offered. What you will be offered is something that is generically referred to as a chuck roast - two, three, or four pounds and the like. Actually, trying to figure all this out gave me a headache but it was worth it. I was amazed how little the folks behind the counter know about meat. Really, if you ask most of them where those boned-out roasts or steaks come from on the cow they would not know. I have asked - they didn’t. Even the helpful folks at my local local store didn’t know . But I doubt they were taught the difference. Remember, most folks are cutters not butchers. Actually, when they get their big bags of beef in from the processing plants they are generally boned out except for the traditional steaks we are all familiar with. But seeing the bones is important. In fact, makes all the difference in the world if you are wanting to get a good, flavorful and budget friendly cut.

What most good old cookbooks will tell you is that to be a good consumer you need to have a basic knowledge of bone structure so you can tell the difference in the cuts of meat as they are offered in the butcher’s case. But most bones are removed so how could you tell the different between a pin bone or a round bone or a flat bone steaks (all steaks available from the loin end). As it turns out, the one with the pin bone will be the most tender since it is closer to the short loin but who would know any of this? Is anyone taught this? It will not be the meat cutters who tell you cause even they do not know.

Getting to know and understand your meat is not just an ethical responsibility (if you are inclined to eat meat) but a practical one as well. It makes you a better consumer and cook, it raises the bar for the industry who has dumbed it down for their ease and profit margins (traditional butchering takes skill and time). Maybe when we stop being so squeemish we will become better shoppers and, as a result, allow for the return of the old-skilled trade of butchery. Like almost all other trades, it has disappeared from our culture.

One other thing to mention, though buying your beef from a sustainable farmer is a great bonus if you can do it, it will not necessarily insure you will get great beef (or pork) or that you will get the cuts you really want. Generally the meat processor (who the farmer will ship it to) is going to cut it up the way most folks are familiar with and sadly most folks are not that familiar with cuts anymore.

I recently ordered on line a book called Cutting Up in the Kitchen by Merle Ellis that went a long way to explain lots of this. But just because you know it will not mean the meat counter will get it for you. Again, it is worth pondering what came first, the industries’ streamlining and dumbing down of a system or our own lost knowledge base.

So thanks, Eddie, for taking that trip. I would definitely be into it. These days all I can do is stand at the meat counter at the grocery store and imagine where those boneless cuts might have come from. I think they all think I’m nuts but I guess I’m just meat curious. This year I have a half a cow coming from a local farmer and I get to have it cut the way I want- yipee.

Eddie & others--I thought you’d all appreciate this thought from MFK Fisher in “How to Cook a Wolf”:

Why is it worse, in the end, to see an animal’s head cooked and prepared for our pleasure than a thigh or a tail or a rib? If we are going to live on other inhabitatns of this world we must not bind ourselves with illogical prejudices, but savor to the fullest the beasts we have killed.