Butchering sheep at Mado *Graphic Picture Alert*

Here at Making Chicago Home, we eat meat. The following post will include some rather graphic pictures of sheep being butchered. Not killed (the farmer did that for us) and not skinned (the farmer took care of that for us, too), but it will contain pictures of people deconstructing and breaking down a whole sheep – two of them, actually, and you should be warned that it can be graphic.

That being said I feel that it is necessary to address that I am not trying to offend anyone. This post relates to the goal of “making Chicago home” because it is a Chicago event undertaken by Chicago chefs who go through this process every week to put the freshest local meat on the table. It is as quintessentially Chicago as it is quintessentially Denver, San Antonio, Richmond, New York, etc. – pretty much anywhere where they butcher animals and eat them.

I should also mention that as a person who eats meat, I find that there is nothing wrong with me being involved in the process from getting animals  from farm to table.  I want to be more connected to the process and would much rather eat meat knowing the farmer who raised it and knowing that it had a full, happy life. Plus, the process of butchering is really interesting and encourages people to eat every part of the animal, like they do at Mado.

A special thanks to Rob and Allison Levitt, executive chefs at Mado, who allow me to help out in their kitchen and to Rich Hawley, my mentor in the kitchen who is constantly pushing me to be a perfectionist. Thank you.

Part One: Meet the sheep.

(PICTURES, ARTICLE ON NEXT PAGE!)

This is a 5-year old sheep weighing over 60 lbs. As you can see, the sheep comes to Mado whole, but skinned. My guess is that the farmer keeps the wool to make yarn from it and that that yarn is probably made into thick, warm sweaters for the winter time. Rich said that most farmers kill their sheep by using a stun gun first then slitting their necks. It is important to let the sheep bleed out so as cut them we do not have to risk blood going everywhere.  Rob said that he loves buying local, even if it is more expensive, because when he goes to pick the sheep up, he can shake the hand of the farmer who raised them – I think that every chef in Chicago should be doing the same thing.

PART TWO: DECONSTRUCTING

The first thing that has to be done is to cut through the bone and deconstruct the sheep.

Rob starts by separating the neck and head from the rest of the body. This gives him extra room on the table to work with the rest of the sheep. He used a bone saw to cut through the vertebrae and muscles and had to apply a lot of pressure and elbow grease to get through all of the tissue.

As Rob cuts pieces of the sheep off, he places them in the plastic tray you see above. Two “sheep prep chefs” then take the pieces out one-by-one and cut out much of the “silver skin”, or sinews that bind the muscles together and cut pieces of fat off of the sheep. Everything gets used. Fat is used in making sheep’s liver pate, stock, and to flavour other dishes.

So above we have some lean muscle (bottom), two kidneys covered with fat (left) and ribs (right). Rob explained to me that it is unusual to see kidneys wrapped in their original fat casing because in most cases, inspectors have to take the fat off the kidneys to inspect them. Since these sheep went straight from farmer to chef, this process gets skipped over. But no worries, before the kidney is used it will be cooked thoroughly and is not harmful to eat. In England it is common to see people and buying and consuming kidneys (esp. lamb’s kidneys!) and steak and kidney pie is probably one of my favourites! Yum!

Rob had Rich and I disconnect the heads from the necks and cut out the tongues. To cut out the tongue, you should genly pry the jaw open and cut from the inside. My sheep was being particularly stubborn and would not open up. Instead I turned the head upside down and slid a paring knife into the hollow cavity right under the front jaw. From there I followed the curve of the jaw to nicely remove the tongue, which you can see in my hand in the picture above.

If you ever have the privilege of butchering sheep, I recommend you take time to marvel at the tongue. Toward the front it is really smooth but at the back is a rough patch of raised bumps, much like a cat’s, which is used to grip food and for cleaning. You can also see all the glands in the bottom front of the tongue which are pretty interesting.

To remove the head from the neck you have to first dig your fingers into the back of the jaw and feel where it ends. Then with a boning knife, follow the vertical path of the jaw up to the neck. You will feel the very first vertebrae and can uncover it easily with your knife. You may run into a lot of “silver skin”, or sinews, that need to gently be slit apart. Then work your knife in between the first and second vertebrae and continue cutting through the muscle and fat at the back of the neck.

If you think you cannot eat the neck, think again, it was actually really plump and had a lot of good meat on it. The cheeks did, too!

PART THREE: PREPARING THE MEAT

Preparing the meat to be cooked is really fun. Rob bestowed upon  me the honour of making the rubs and basting juices for his meats. In the above picture I am rubbing the leg meat down with a combination of olive oil, orange water, black pepper, garlic etc. I cannot give away all of his secrets for a delicious rub! :-)

Rich and I also got to inject the meat with a basting liquid made from garlic, molassas, brown sugar and water. The goal of injecting the meat is to inflate the entire muscle with the tasty juices.

I did not ask Rob why they tied up these leg parts or what they were going to do with them, but they sure look like they will produce something tasty!!

At the end of my time at Mado I had a new appreciation for the neat, pretty cuts of meat I bring home from Green City Market: It takes a lot of time and effort to break down an animal by hand! Next week we are butchering pigs again, so wait for the next article on that.

Happy meat eating!

Dev xx