Copyright © 2011 by Joshua Applestone, Jessica Applestone, and Alexandra Zissu Photographs copyright © 2011 by Jennifer May Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Gunar Skillins All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York www.crownpublishing.com www.clarksonpotter.com CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Applestone, Joshua. The butcher’s guide to well-raised meat: how to buy, cut, and cook great beef, lamb, pork, poultry, and more / Joshua Applestone, Jessica Applestone, Alexandra Zissu. p. cm. 1. Meat. 2. Meat cuts. 3. Cooking (Meat) I. Applestone, Jessica. II. Zissu, Alexandra. III. Title. TX373.A67 2011 641.6’6—dc22 2010042079 eISBN: 978-0-307-95338-4 Design by Marysarah Quinn Cover photographs by Jennifer May Bottom two photographs in "Pig to Pork" by Dietrich Gehring v3.1 We dedicate this book to the farmers and their animals who make our work possible. CONTENTS PREFACE OUR STORY THE BACKSTORY THE ART OF BUTCHERY TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS LAMB PORK BEEF POULTRY SOURCING RESOURCES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX PREFACE RY TO CONJURE UP AN IMAGE OF A BUTCHER IN YOUR T MIND. You’re not alone if you can’t. Most Americans don’t interact with butchers much these days. They are a dying breed. You probably don’t even have a butcher shop in your town anymore. There might be a guy in a bloody apron lurking behind the scenes at your supermarket, but he rarely makes an appearance near the refrigerated displays of shrink-wrapped boneless skinless chicken breasts. The people who deal with boxed or industrially processed meats are not butchers. They have no skills. All they have to do is open a bag, drain the blood, and hand it to the customer. They’re just clerks with a propensity for knives. It used to be that every town had a butcher and in most there were two or three. The butcher shop was the place you visited weekly, or even daily, to pick up meat or gossip with the guy behind the counter—who was probably the son of the guy your mother gossiped with. This was the place where you got your Sunday dinner, your fresh ground for meat loaf, your holiday roast. The place where you could ask for a particular cut and after the (cid:50)rst few times have it become your regular order. The place where the butcher leaned across the counter with a slice of bologna for your child. Even if you don’t actually remember any of that, you do. It’s part of our collective unconscious. This was the type of place that in the spring of 2004 my wife, Jessica, and I set out to open. An old-school butcher shop with a modern-day twist—sourcing and selling only grass-fed and organic