America's Next Top Butcher?

If this show really did exist, I would definitely not make the cut (no pun intended.) Yesterday was the end of my nine day segment of meatcutting, and I was more than ready for it to end. Don't get me wrong. I learned a lot about meat, but butchery is not my forte. The other day, my meatcutting instructor came over to check my veal cutlets which had some holes in them. (FYI - Veal cutlets are not supposed to have holes.) He checked them and said, "It's okay. We'll just send these to the Pope. I hear he likes holy cutlets." At least he was able to make a joke out of my failure.

The class focused on the primal cuts, breakdown, and merchandising of poultry, beef, veal, lamb and pork. And we thoroughly covered every topic. I saw enough meat in the last 9 days of class to push me to the verge of becoming a vegetarian. The other day, my instructor put me in charge of the meat grinder. I processed around 150 - 200 lbs. of ground beef. That's a lot of hamburgers. And last Thursday, we covered lamb. A whole lamb. And here's the picture to prove it:

My instructor broke the lamb down into its primal cuts and then subprimal cuts so that we would have a better understanding of where each of the cuts of meat come from in the animal. The instructor performed comparable breakdowns of beef, veal, and pork over the course of the class, but we didn't start with the whole carcass. (Thank goodness!) Each day we gathered around the meatcutting tables for a breakdown demo, and it looked something like this:

Following the instructor's demo, each of us was allowed to break down one of the primal cuts or clean up a subprimal cut. On the day we covered pork, each of us broke down a pork loin from start to finish. We cut off the tenderloin and boned out the rack to yield a boneless pork roast and some baby back ribs. Here's a picture of me and my partner ready to get started:

On the last day of class, the instructor asked each of us what we would remember the most from his class, and almost everyone said they would remember either the lamb carcass or the picture below. Yes, it's a frozen pig's head. On pork day, my instructor showed us each of the primal cuts of the pig to give us an idea of how the animal fits together, and he also felt that it was necessary to show us a pig's head. I'm pretty sure it was only for effect.