Category: Butchering

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Chicken Butchery – Notes

Here are the notes made from the chicken butchery workshop.

The Chicken can be cut into the following pieces or combination of the elements below.

Diagram of butchered chicken

A sharp knife is essential as is good knife practice. Hitting a bone can blunt a knife easily so re-sharpen every 10/15 mins.

Bend the chicken to find hidden joints.

Photo of butchered chicken

Recipes:

Chicken Ramen – Ingridents

  1. Stock made from the chicken carcass and root vegetables, make up to 1.5L
  2. Shichimi Togarashi Seasoning (instructions to make are below).
  3. Chicken breast x2
  4. 1 Onion (red or white)
  5. 3 Spring Onions
  6. Ramen Noodles
  7. Parsley

Method

  • Cook and drain the ramen noodles and refresh in cold water, add to bowls and put to one side.
  • Heat up stock to boiling and add sliced onion and add 1/2 of the spring onions and a pinch of Shichimi Togarashi.
  • Meanwhile, grill the chicken that has been marinated in a light coating of shichimi Togarashi until cooked through, rest and slice on the diagonal.
  • Assemble in order: Noodles, Stock to cover, chicken, the rest of the spring onions, parsley and a final pinch of Shichimi Togarashi.
  • Enjoy ๐Ÿ™‚

Shichimi Togarashi 

  • 2 tablespoons red chili flakes (note: shichimi togarashi is HOT, use less red chili according to your heat preference)
  • 1 tablespoon dried orange peel
  • 2 teaspoons white sesame seeds
  • 2 teaspoons black sesame seeds
  • 1 teaspoon sanshล or sichuan peppercorns
  • 1 teaspoon ginger powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon poppy seeds
  • 1/2 sheet quality toasted nori (seaweed) , crumbled

Method

  • In a dry skillet, lightly toast the white and black sesame seeds, sichuan peppercorns and poppy seeds until fragrant, being careful not to burn them.  Transfer to a bowl and let them cool completely.  
  • Place all of the ingredients along with the nori in a spice/coffee grinder and pulse until coarsely ground (be sure it’s coarse and not a fine powder).
  • Store in an airtight jar.  For optimal flavor use within a few weeks.

It was great to see you all, Thanks for coming ๐Ÿ™‚ Tom

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Wild Boar Butchering & Sausage Making

Follow up information from the basic butchering and sausage making workshop. Remember that if you having a go for the first time, don’t worry you are not doing it professionally, so if you end up with lots of cut up hacked bits of meat you can send it all through a mincer and use it for sausages, or you might ace it and end up with a beautiful piece of loin or rolled shoulder for roasting. Whatever way you do it, it will be delicious!

Butchering Tools

  • Large Hacksaw/Butchers saw.
  • boning knife (medium length thin and fairly flexible) make sure it is extremely sharp.
  • A chopping knife, or a carving knife will do, for cutting up chunks for mincing.
  • Chopping board(s) that cover the length of the meat.
  • Wet Cloth/Sponge for wiping your blade.
  • Knife sharpener/steel
  • bowls for mincing meat, funk (waste) meat, bones, somewhere to put cuts to one side to create space for working.

I have this fantastic, and very old, resource that quickly identifies the different cuts of pork/wild boar and what you can potentially use them for. It is also the same partitions that I cut up the boar in (depending where you go you can be shown different combinations/uses).

Recipes

Resources:

Skins AKA “Casings”You can purchase skins online or from larger supermarkets and butchers. The largest useable is Ox they are used for making salami sized products.

Hog/Pork Casings are for the larger “banger” sized sausages.

Sheep/Mutton Casings are for chipolatas.
MincerHand Cranked, Electric or get your butcher to mince it to your required ground.
StufferHand Cranked, Electric (Most electric Mincers will adapt to stuff) or use a filling funnel with the end trimmed to roughly the diameter of the sausage you want to make and use the handle of a wooden spoon to stuff manually.
Ruskyou can buy commercial rusk very cheaply, you can use ground up childrens whole grain cereal or make your own from breadcrumbs 70% semolina 20% and plain flour 10% you want to add roughly 5% rusk to the volume of meat Including seasoning.
Saltyou want to add 10g fine salt to 1kg of sausage, more if you rather, but no less.

Here are the recipes and in each case the quantities are enough for 1kg of meat.

Herby ones.

  1. About 20 sage leaves
  2. 20 chives
  3. 5 sprigs of thyme stripped from stalk
  4. 1tsp of Marjoram or a small bunch
  5. fresh ground black pepper.

White pepper (my personal favorite as it shows off the meat)

  1. 1 heaped dessert spoon of white pepper.
  2. Extra salt to taste.

Spiced Apple Sausages

  1. 100g apples
  2. 1 tablespoon of calvados brandy (more if you like)
  3. 2 tsp of mixed spice
  4. 1 tsp lemon zest
  5. 2 tsp of brown sugar
  6. 1tsp ground black pepper

One last favorite thing to do is to make some sausage rolls with puff pastry and simply splatter with english mustard, combine with a cup of tea….heaven!

Most of all i hope you had fun and took some new skills and knowledge away with you.

Tom