Discover the Best Butchery Classes Near Me
One of the oldest trades that people still enjoy today, butchery is a detail-oriented craft that has been refined over thousands of years into what it is today. Butchery is the art of selecting, slaughtering, deboning, cutting, and preparing meat. A practice that relies on a combination of finely-honed skills and high-quality tools, butchery emphasizes getting the best cuts from the finest meats and stands in stark juxtaposition against the mass-produced industrial meat products of modern society.
Dating back over 400,000 years with the earliest documented butchery site in Kent, England, the philosophy of harvesting meat while minimizing waste has evolved with the human race. Butchery is now even considered an art form and independent butcher shops have seen a rise in popularity as society becomes more intentional about what they consume and how they source it.
Becoming an expert butcher can improve the experience of your homemade meals and help support sustainable farming. A butchery course can be a great way to perfect your skills so that you can create truly memorable farm-to-table food experiences, for both loved ones or customers. Whether you’re exploring butchery as a new hobby or profession, there’s much to be gained from practicing this ancient and intentional set of skills.
Why Should You Learn Butchery?
Butchery is a well-respected trade that can provide many benefits to those who wish to gain knowledge of the craft. It can make a great hobby, one where you are able to hand-select and personally slice your own cuts of meat, elevating your dishes with an artisanal flair.
Learning how to properly butcher is ideal for those with a focus on environmentalism as you can locally source your meat from sustainable and humane farms and minimize your waste by ensuring every usable part of the animal is properly harvested. You can develop a deeper connection to your food and the environment, ensuring your dishes are healthy, wholesome, and earth-friendly.
Becoming an expert butcher can also lead to cost savings. Being able to purchase large portions of meat directly from a local farm and butchering them into prime cuts yourself can allow you to stock up on meat for one or more seasons. Cutting out the middleman and handling the processing and packaging on your own can help limit your financial waste, as well.
A particularly niche industry, learning butchery can also open up new avenues for expanding your community and making friends. Local butcher shops are often central to their communities with expert butchers forming bonds based on trust and respect with their neighbors and local businesses.
This, of course, also makes it a great potential career path, especially with the cultural shift away from factory farming towards less harmful, more sustainable ways to source food. A quality butcher shop can be an essential business in any community, connecting ranchers to customers, and making farm-to-table practices more accessible.
5 Ways to Learn Butchery
Butchery requires no previous training or degrees and some of the experience can be gained on the job or through leisurely learning. Formal classes are also a highly-preferred option as they allow for fast and in-depth education. If you’re looking to get the most out of learning how to butcher, below are the best methods for studying this particular trade.
Formal in-person classes offer the most structure and are led by experts within the field. While not tedious work, acquiring the appropriate skills and knowing the best tools is paramount to becoming a successful butcher. Formal in-person classes provide both of these things while allowing students to be able to ask questions and receive feedback from talented instructors.
Live online classes also offer a structured, formal format led by an expert instructor. You can still ask questions and receive feedback during class but you have the added benefit of being able to attend from wherever you want. (Goodbye commuting!) You also have the perk of working (virtually) alongside other students, creating the possibility of making friends with similar interests.
On-demand virtual classes offer the most flexibility since you can also do them whenever you want. Stop and start the course when you need so that you can have more time to master a skill or take a break when necessary. These classes can easily fit into hectic schedules and, while they require students to supply their tools and materials (as most online classes do), they avoid headaches like traffic and parking.
Apprenticeships or on-the-job training are a common way to gain butchery skills. These paths typically require a larger investment of your time and, in the case of on-the-job training, potentially an entire career shift. Apprenticeships may be hard to find and necessitate establishing a relationship with a butcher you respect and trust first. While both apprenticing and learning on the job allow you to gain knowledge and hands-on experience from established butchers, they might be too large of a commitment for those just beginning to explore the trade.
Online video tutorials, like those found on YouTube, can be a helpful place to start. These tutorials can teach you how to break down an entire animal, properly dispose of leftover waste, and the best ways to store, package, and sell your meat. While they do allow you to learn at your own pace since you can start and stop whenever you need, video tutorials lack the option to interact with an expert in the industry and don’t offer the structure that many prefer from a learning environment.
With so many learning options to choose from, there are plenty of chances for you to explore butchery. Assessing your current schedule and preferred learning styles will help you decide which choice is best for you.
In-Person Butchery Classes
In-person classes offer the most structure and access to highly-skilled experts. Being able to troubleshoot in real-time is especially beneficial for a trade like butchery. More and more butchery classes, both demonstrative and interactive, are popping up nationwide as the butchery trade becomes more in demand, so odds are there’s an in-person class near you.
If you’re located in Los Angeles, Chef Eric’s Culinary Classroom offers a 12-week Master Chef Program. While this French cooking-based course covers more than just your basic butchery skills, the very first class is solely focused on an introduction to kitchen and knife skills that will be fundamental to developing your butchery techniques. You can then expand upon those skills in the remaining classes, learning how to make sauces and mastering the art of cooking vegetables, potatoes, pasta, and even breakfast foods.
Breaking Beef: An In-Depth Tour of the Steer is a butchery-focused class held in Chelsea, NY. Hosted by Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, the butchers leading this demo class will walk you through breaking down a whole side of beef, from neck to tail. They’ll cover all the cuts that come off of a steer and will discuss livestock agriculture practices. You’ll learn how to properly shop for the best meat and how best to cook each cut. (Plus, there are samples!)
Dickinson’s Farmstands Meats also offers Whole Hog Butchery where expert butchers will break down a whole hog and walk you through the different butchering techniques. This class will also cover techniques used in charcuterie and preserving meats like salting, brining, dry-curing, fermenting, and smoking. Students will get hands-on experience preparing different items in various cures. (Special note: A sweater is recommended for all classes at Dickinson’s as they are held in their 60-degree cutting room.)
Located in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is Hog Butchery Demo, put on by the Institute of Domestic Technology. Celebrity butcher Jered Standing will lead students through the butchering of an entire side of a Heritage-breed pig sourced from a California ranch. The class will include delicious snacks, wine, and a take-home bag of 4-5 lbs of pork with cooking instructions.
If you’re located in Chicago, the Chopping Block’s Culinary Bootcamp 1 allows students to explore the experience of a professional culinary program without the lengthy time commitment. This five-day course teaches all the fundamental methods of cooking including whole fish, chicken, and beef tenderloin butchery. Students will plan and produce a menu together that incorporates all the skills they learned throughout the week and will go home with a strong foundation of fine-tuned cooking skills.
For those in the Pacific Northwest, The Melding Pot in Seattle hosts a variety of butchery-related classes. Butchery 101 + Sausage Making will teach students the essential cuts of the resurging art of butchery. Refreshments and small bites are provided, and students will take home a selection of great cuts. Primal Cuts 101 (Pork) focuses solely on pig butchery techniques. Students will learn recipes, the proper casings to use, and how to slice the best cuts of pork. Both of these courses are conveniently located in the Central District near the Pratt Fine Arts Center.
The Local Butcher Shop in San Francisco also hosts several classes in their North Berkeley location. In their hands-on poultry butchery class, you’ll learn the anatomy of birds and how best to butcher a chicken. Each student will try their hand at butchering two chickens and will take home their cuts. They also offer a Half Hog Butchery Demo, a class that explores the anatomy of the pig and covers topics like sustainable agriculture practices, eating from all parts of the pig, and how best to support local ranchers. Each participant will take home 9-10 lbs of Llano Seco pork and tips on how best to cook their cuts.
Sutter Meats in Boston, MA hosts a two-hour course called Pork Fabrication that is equal parts demonstrative and interactive. A highly-skilled butcher will break down one side of a locally-raised pig and discuss the attributes of each cut of meat and how best to prepare them. Topics covered will include seam butchery technique and whole muscle utilization, and each student will take home generous cuts of pork to cook at home.
Virtual Butchery Classes
Online butchery classes have their pros and cons. The flexibility to attend from wherever you want and, with on-demand classes, whenever you want is an obvious perk. Learning from the comfort of your own home in your favorite pajamas can make the experience even more enjoyable. There’s also no need to sit in traffic or struggle to find parking. While you generally are required to source your supplies and tools, online butchery classes still have the benefit of an expert instructor and the hands-on experience that in-person classes offer.
Virtual Building Blocks: Chicken Butchery and Cookery is an informative online class held by The Chopping Block Lincoln Square. Held via Zoom, this two-hour class will educate students on how to select quality poultry, properly butcher and prepare a chicken, and will cover several different cooking techniques like braising, roasting, and sauteing. Students will be provided with a recipe packet, equipment list, and class syllabus upon registering.
Similarly, The Chopping Block Lincoln Square also hosts Virtual Building Blocks: Fish Butchery and Cookery. Designed for lovers of aquatic culinary delights, this class will cover selecting fish, how to identify flat and round fish, techniques for breaking down a whole fish, and various cooking methods. Also hosted via Zoom, a moderator will make sure that all your questions are answered by the chef either during or after class.
Private Group Butchery Classes
Are you looking to provide a one-of-a-kind event for your team? CourseHorse also coordinates private group butchery classes that can be customized to fit the needs of your business or organization.
While there aren’t currently any private group butchery classes available, there is a virtual steak workshop where students will select their cuts of meat (with guidance on how to select the best cuts from the instructor) and prepare and cook a delicious meal. Topics covered in this class will include the best cooking techniques and temperatures to ensure you get a mouth-watering final product every time.
If you have your heart set on a butchery-only private class, it can still be provided! You can reach out through the contact form on the CourseHorse site to learn about the available options. With no booking fees, confirmation within 24 hours, and the ability to adjust your group size within 72 hours of your scheduled class, CourseHorse makes scheduling a breeze. Plus, with extra benefits like multiple supported platforms and having your supplies shipped directly to your group, organizing a private group class has never been easier.
What Will I Need to Learn Butchery?
Butchery is a craft that requires a particular set of tools. Safety is of the utmost importance for any skill involving knives or raw meat, and the below list covers the fundamental supplies you’ll need to begin slicing and dicing your own locally-sourced cow, chicken, or pig. These tools are typically provided when you take an in-person butchery class but they’ve been listed below in case you want to butcher your own meat at home.
- A boning hook is an essential tool for any butcher and is an extension of your non-cutting hand that helps to prevent accidental injuries. It will make you a more accurate butcher while protecting your fingers and hands.
- A breaking knife is used to cut large sections of meat into smaller, more manageable pieces. Anything between 9-12 inches is best as larger knives limit your accuracy and can lead to more injuries when you’re a beginner.
- A boning knife, typically around five inches, has a flexible blade that is long and thin. It is primarily used for cutting through ligaments and connective tissues to separate meat from the bone.
- A butchering steel is a long rod of steel, ceramic, or diamond-coated steel that is used to sharpen dull blades.
- Used to hang meat, a gambrel is a lightweight steel hook frame that will also spread the animal’s legs apart, making for easier cuts.
- A meat saw helps break an animal down into its primary cuts, dissecting larger muscle groups into steaks and roasts. While these come in a variety of lengths, a 25-inch meat saw is recommended for beginners.
- Cutting boards are a requirement for any butcher. These come in a variety of materials and are primarily used to protect your knife edges from hard stainless steel surfaces or to protect your tables and countertops from unwanted cuts.
While not an exhaustive list, these seven essentials will help you get started while you learn the foundational skills needed to become an expert butcher.
Is it Difficult to Learn Butchery?
While butchery is a trade that requires a specific set of tools, knowledge of the anatomy of animals, and safety techniques for dealing with raw meat and handling knives, it isn’t actually difficult to learn. Butchery is mainly the practice of developing highly-specialized cutting techniques while being mindful of minimizing waste. By learning more about sustainable agriculture and how to form relationships with local ranchers and farms, you can fine-tune your craft so that it honors the age-old traditions of butchery. With enough passion and dedication to learning, anyone can become a skilled butcher.
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