Carolyn Fath
Tim Schauf (right) introduces the tools of butchering, including the boning knife in his hands. “We call them boners. Go ahead and giggle now.”
It wasn’t a cheeky question Ryan Matos asked just before six visitors gathered at Underground Meats’ processing facility on East Main Street on a recent Saturday afternoon. It was a cheek question.
“Do we get to take meat home?” said the former Madison resident, back in town for a few days before heading to his home in Berkeley, California. “Can I have the cheeks?”
Few instructors anywhere get that kind of question, but when a class is called “Whole Hog Breakdown,” it comes with the territory. Once a month for three hours, six students who pay $169 get hands-on instruction in how that whole hog becomes their breakfast, lunch or dinner.
“Let’s try not to bleed on each other,” instructor Tim Schauf says as he gathers the class around the butcher’s table for the first important step in the pork practicum – learning the tools of the trade. The supplies organized on the table look as if Michael Myers is preparing to hunt down Jamie Lee Curtis. There’s a bone saw, a long-bladed scimitar, a cleaver, a honing steel and a bone scraper. The workhorse of the bunch, though, is the boning knife.
“We call them boners,” Schauf tells the class. “Go ahead and giggle now.”
It would be hard to giggle at Schauf. With his booming voice, tattooed fingers that spell out “DEAD MEAT” and skill with sharp objects, he commands respect. He’s been at Underground Meats for 5½ years, currently in a position he refers to as “head sausage man.” He has a way of entertaining the class while making it perfectly clear this is a serious task that requires serious attention.
Not that the students are there for giggles anyway. These people are here to learn. A father and daughter from Kenosha want to learn more about butchering because the family hopes to have a farm one day. A bacon-loving firefighter from Stoughton wants to build on his meat knowledge. A former vegetarian wants to learn about any meat she hasn’t eaten before and is eager to try her first pork chop.
Matos is a food enthusiast who once lived in Rome and fell in love with an unsmoked pancetta-like meat called guanciale, cured pork made from the jowl or cheek (“guancia” is Italian for “cheek”).
“In Rome, they use it a lot,” says Matos, who plans to seek out whole hogs or heads to buy back in California. “I can’t find it in the U.S.”
There’s no jowl in sight when the 120-pound half-hogs come to the table. They’ve already been skinned and cleaned, with neither head nor tail still there. The Berkshire hogs come from an Amish farm near Fennimore. Underground staff likes them for their flavor, marbling and color.
The class learns primal cuts — the four basic sections of a hog that are cut further to be sold retail. Once they’ve learned techniques like a pistol grip on a knife and a steady, forward sawing motion, students pair off to quarter the hogs. From there, they learn the cuts within that quarter — how, for instance, the shoulder becomes the Boston butt, shank and country-style ribs. They learn well; what was once half an animal now looks like a carnivore’s jigsaw puzzle of pieces that would look familiar in any meat case.
Yet the tattooed teacher isn’t done with his lesson. He brings out a hog’s head, not to gross out his class but to remind them what this is all about.
“This is where you remember this was alive at one time,” Schauf says. “It had a jolly time running around with its brothers and sisters. We need to be respectful of that and use every part we can.”
That part of the tutorial provided the piece of meat that Matos had been most curious about. He got two cheeks (which Schauf agreed is the tastiest part of the hog), as well as some other packaged cuts Underground staff had ready for the students to take home. It was all enough to send Matos out the door with a treasure trove of hog knowledge and a big grin on his face — one that stretched from cheek to cheek, of course.
Primal cuts: The four cuts taught in the class are loin (which includes pork chops, loin roasts, Canadian bacon), belly (pork belly, bacon, spare ribs), shoulder (shank, Boston butt, picnic ham) and ham.
All about the butt: A pork butt, or Boston butt, comes from the shoulder blade, and the cut was once a New England specialty. “It’s not the ass of a hog,” Schauf says. The generally accepted story is that the name came from the barrels or “butts” in which the meat was once stored and shipped.
Workhorse knife: Schauf recommends a Victorinox Swiss Army boning knife, a relatively inexpensive buy at $35.
Butcher’s book club: Three books sit out at the Underground facility for quick reference: Butchering: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering, Whole Beast Butchery and The Meat Hook Meat Book.
Whole Hog classes: Underground has hosted monthly classes since 2011. The next classes are scheduled for Jan. 12 and Feb. 9. There is also a sausage-making class. More information: undergroundmeats.com.
