Black Earth Meats

I had done some research to prepare for my new job, but I still wasn't sure what to expect when I stepped out of the morning rain and into Black Earth Meats for my first day as a butcher's apprentice.  Eight hours later I stepped out into a sunny afternoon, tired, sore, and delighted with all I had learned.

I've worked a few different jobs.  I like learning about things, and I'm a firm believer in learning by doing.  When I interviewed to be a butcher's apprentice for Black Earth, I told them upfront that I had no experience with meat cutting, but that didn't bother Joe, the manager.  They'd train me from the ground up, he said, and wouldn't have to un-teach me any ideas that disagreed with the ethos of the company.

That was important because, in a lot of ways, Black Earth Meats stands apart from the national norms regarding meat.  One of the company's goals is to be a "proof of concept" for a butcher business that promotes a more sustainable, humane, and healthy way of consuming meat.  Black Earth eschews preventative antibiotics and genetically modified feed, and tries to embrace a more reverent attitude toward killing and eating animals.  For Joe, my agreement with those principles outweighed my inexperience.

In addition to being a rookie meat cutter, I didn't have a whole lot of experience with meat eating.  I'm no vegetarian- I'll try a bite of just about anything you put in front of me.  However, I never established my favorite cut of beef, and I never learned the difference between New York, hanger, strip or skirt.  Fine meats were for big gatherings and special occasions, and they were always good, but spaced far enough apart that differentiating was never a concern for me.

I expect that will change soon.

In my first eight hours, I'd learned about a lot of new things, from dry aging and curing processes to mangalitsa pigs and belgian blue cows, and even the use of beef suet for skincare.  But I was also discriminating between beef clods and briskets as they were being tossed at me from across a stainless steel table, and starting to piece together the puzzle of how a cow comes apart into different things, and what those different things can become.

So I'm writing here to chronicle the de-mystification of meat as I experience it.  More to come.