Some people want to save the animals. Andrew Clendenen wants to butcher them.
“I used to live in the country, so I’d like to get that connection with the animal and know how to cut things up,” he said.
Clendenen and his mother, Cindy, enrolled themselves in a butchering class at the Milestone Culinary Arts Center on McKinney Avenue recently, where they learned to de-bone a chicken and a duck, fabricating their own cuts of meat. They thought it would be a fun thing to do on a Sunday.
Clutching his knife in front of a dozen classmates, Clendenen, a 29-year-old environmental consultant, chopped the wings off the chicken, dug into its abdominal cavity, removed some fat and began to tear apart the bird in search of it’s most usable parts: the breasts.
He didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but neither did most of the people in the classroom.
“It’s an acquired art, after a lot of practice,” Chef Andre Bedouret, who taught the class, said. “You can’t say I’m going to buy some ducks and de-bone them, and stuff them, and roast them, and expect to be good at it the first time you do it.”
Clendenen is part of a new breed of food enthusiasts and ordinary citizens attempting to take butchering, and sometimes slaughtering, into their own hands.
Dan Hale, a professor of meat science at Texas A&M’s Department of Animal Science, said this growing trend is in an offshoot of what he calls “story beef.” How the animal was fed and where it was raised is the story, and the consumer is made aware of it by the restaurant or butchering shop, before they chomp down on a piece of that meat. In the classes, chefs bring in everything from live pigs ready to be shot to a duck purchased at the Chinese market, as was the case with Bedouret’s class.
“People just like that tie back to the land,” Hale said. “That type of beef has been catching interest by a lot of consumers that have more disposable incomes to spend on food.”
Classes in New York City, San Francisco and the Hudson Valley cater to those who believe do-it-yourself butchering is an important part of the cooking process. Chef Ryan Farr in San Francisco offers whole hog butchering classes, and the Blue Hill at Stone Barns restaurant in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. has an on-site slaughtering house.
Brooklyn Kitchen in New York has offered butchering classes for the past year and a half and they consistently sell out, according to assistant manager Al Fair. She said the classes are usually full a month in advance. In order to keep up with growing demand, Brooklyn Kitchen opened a larger location on Nov. 16 specifically for classes.
“We’re hoping to alleviate the disappointment in the customers who were knocked out of classes in the previous year because of spacing,” Fair said.
Dallas hasn’t had the success of Brooklyn Kitchen yet. Milestone’s butchering classes are advertised as part of a continuing education program through El Centro College in downtown Dallas, unlike Brooklyn Kitchen, that sometimes advertises its classes as a Saturday “Date Night.” Bedouret, who’s also Milestone’s director of continuing education, said a lot of the students are increasingly just normal people, because chefs are sometimes too busy to take a class.
“We have a lot of people out there, foodies or food enthusiasts, that really love to cook, and they are spending a fortune and come to people like me for advice,” Bedouret said.
For people like Jennie Kelley, who also attended Bedouret’s class, the $198 price tag per class is worth it. She’s getting credit for the classes she’s taking and said knowing more about the animal helps her become knowledgeable and passionate about cooking. Kelley isn’t looking for a new career, but takes classes as more of a hobby.
“I just feel like, if I want to cook, I want to know it from every level,” Kelley, an SMU alumna who sings in the band The Polyphonic Spree, said. “And I think it gives you a better connection with the animal and increases the flavor.”
Bedouret, who started cooking as an apprentice in France at age 14, agrees with Kelley.
“It does connect them, and they have a better appreciation for the value of the meat that they work with,” he said.
Bedouret also said do-it-yourself cuts of meat allow a chef or foodie to control what goes into their dish.
“If you want to stuff your duck with wild mushrooms or pork you can do that,” he said.
But butchering at home could pose a problem if it isn’t done properly, Hale said.
“A lot of people have the idea that if it’s just a small backyard place than that product is going to be safer than if they bought it at a grocery store,” he said. “In fact, that’s not the case because all those grocery stores, and the meat processor itself, have very rigid controls.”
Bedouret agrees that butchering at home is sometimes less safe than buying a product that has been USDA certified. The argument for learning to butcher, he said, is more economical. While these classes are often costly, Bedouret said it is worth it in the long run.
Brit Stock, an SMU alumnus who took Bedouret’s class with his fiancé, said he believes that learning to cook properly can save people money as they get older.
“I think I should have done it earlier in life,” Stock, who has taken other classes at Milestone said, “Because you’re going to be cooking the rest of your life.”
Whether people are taking butchering classes to become better chefs, knowledgeable about meat or to save money, Bedouret said there is one benefit they can all share.
“When you do the butchering at home, you are allowed as many bragging rights as you want with your friends, neighbors or family,” Bedouret said. “People notice those things.”
