Noix de Jambon

After working with Dominique and the Chapolards on the farm for a few weeks, I finally got their system down. On Monday, we would receive nine or ten pig carcasses, fresh from the abattoir. Each day of the week, we would break a couple carcasses and slowly deplete the pork supply hanging in the walk-in refrigerator.  In their place, were our conversions of traditional French charcuterie offerings such as pâtés, blood puddings, paupiettes, graton, and fricandeaux. All of these products, along with fresh cuts like chops and roasts, would be sold at one of the four weekly markets the Chapolard family attends. By the end of each week, the walk-in refrigerator would set empty and delicious charcuterie would be on French tables all across the South of France.

That’s what I call nose-to-tail!

The Chapolards offerings can be sorted into four categories:

• Dried Products:Noix de Jambon, Coppa, and Filet sec

a ham hanging in Kate's closet.

• Fermented Sausages:Saucisson, Saucisse seche, and Chorizo

French Salami before hitting the fermentation cabinet.

• Cooked Products:Pâtes, head cheese, roasts, Graton, and blood pudding

Cooked blood pudding.

• Fresh Products: various fresh sausages, roasts, ventreche roulee, and kabobs

• and of course, the breadwinner of any charcutier,  the Jambon de Bayonne.

Here’s the problem – Jambon Bayonne is incredibly hard to produce on a large scale. The hams take up a lot of space and they occupy that space for a year or more. In addition,  it's an absolute crapshoot every time you open one up. If any of the meat inside the ham, specifically next to the thighbone, is traumatized before or during slaughter, you have essentially created an 18-month-old stink bomb full of deadly bacteria. Any excess blood left in the ham can also lead to rotted flesh.

Being a charcuterie-making French family,  the Chapolards naturally made Jambon Bayonne. Dominique estimated 20% of the Jambon Bayonne his family produced was inedible by the end of the 18-month drying period. He decided this spoilage had to end. After some research and experimentation, he discovered the family should cease making Jambon Bayonne and instead use those hams to make Noix de Jambon.

Noix de Jambon before the tying and smoking stages.

To create Noix de Jambon, Dominique isolates whole muscles from the ham and dries them individually.  This reduces the hang time from 18-months to just six weeks.  It also allows him to pick out traumatized protein and other unwanteds that could potentially be hazardous to preservation.

Noix de Jambon is one of Dominique’s best selling items at the farmer's markets. Sliced thin, it is perfect for aperitifs or as a substitute for ham in your favorite recipe.

POS Meat Grinders

POS - P.O.S.adjective, slang

1. An acronym commonly interpreted as “piece of shit.” It can be used to describe something as worthless or invaluable.

You know those days where nothing goes your way? The average Joe’s bad day might consist of running out of coffee, getting a speeding ticket on the way to work, and violently puking on his boss after a bad a batch of tuna from the night before…I’ve never done that; I just have a random imagination. You know, one of those days you wish you could crawl back under the covers and hit the reset button? Let me tell you about one that involved neither speeding tickets nor bad batches of tuna:

Did you know the job market is tough for a butcher in Texas? I’ve been applying to shops with no success.

None. Hell, one even told me to apply, then told me they had no room after I applied. Frustrated by the lack of work – or maybe just plum stir crazy from being cooped up in the house - I decided I needed to release some frustration and do what any normal butcher would do on a Saturday night: make sausage.

Now given the right tools and excellent pork, this process can take very little time in an outfitted shop and can turn out some damn good sausage. This Saturday night “home” test run would give me a good idea if I could make the same end product without $100,000 worth of commercial sausage making machinery. Armed with two different meat grinders, two sausage stuffer attachments, a package of fresh hog casings, and my knives, I felt like there was no way I could fail.

The entire family was out of the house. I had the kitchen to myself. I dialed in my soft jazz playlist on Spotify, sharpened my boning knives, and began to de-bone the pork shoulders. At this time of uncertainty in my professional career, I really needed a moment like this. There, cutting away on some pork in my kitchen, jammin’ to some Miles Davis, I knew I had picked the right profession. This butcher thing is pretty awesome.

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Well, that was the high point of my night. I wish the rest of the evening was equally appealing, but it went downhill from this point forward.

Tonight, I was giving the hand-cranked, Weston grinder a shot. You last saw this guy used when I made tamales. It made quick work of the slow cooked meat and I would definitely recommend it for that task, however I do not recommend it for raw pork cubes. I bolted it to a cutting board, then after a long brainstorming session, I bolted it to a folding chair to stabilize it.

Yeah, I'm not sure what I was thinking.

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After running a pound of meat through it, I had to stop and clean the plate. The holes were so clogged with pork sinew that nothing could pass through. Again, I tried to grind pork cubes and once more it clogged and was inoperable.

Dang, I realized I had an POS grinder and only 1 pound of ground pork to show for my efforts.

Did I mention I had cubed 24 pounds of pork and it sat bagged and stacked consuming all the free space in the fridge?

Yeah, I needed to get this pork ground and cased before the family got home and… produced a chicken from their rear end, if you get my drift.

Next to Plan B: the Kitchen Aid Grinder/Stuffer Attachment.

Previously, I had ground a pound of beef for a meat loaf with this easy mixer attachment and I thought I could do the same with the pork cubes. This attachment was smaller and it would take more time to run 24 pounds of pork through, but I was relieving my frustration and the methodical repetition of feeding meat into the hatch would be soothing.

I cannot describe how slow and exasperating this process was. Back at Fleisher’s, the grinding and mixing was done in roughly five minutes and that was in 50 to 100 pound batches. After 3 hours, I had only managed to grind five pounds of pork and nearly burned up the motor on the Kitchen Aid mixer.

Just shoot me!

Usually, sausage meat is ground then seasoned before being ground a final time to ensure a thorough mix of seasonings. Was I going to run the five pounds of ground pork back through back the Kitchen Aid?

Hell no! And honestly, I don’t think the meat needed to be ground a second time. Those home grinders almost emulsified it.

I poured in my seasonings and massaged it into the ground meat with my hands. Back to the Kitchen Aid mixer I went, hoping the sausage stuffer would work better than the grinder….

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Let me just save all you DIY sausage makers out there some time:

1. Don’t use either of the grinders I’ve listed.
2. Don't use either of the stuffers I've listed
3. The Weston grinder might have worked, but I believe the blade was too dull.
4. The Kitchen Aid grinder attachment… would be better off in the trash.

Yes, it’s possible to grind meat with both appliances. I know all you Paul Bunyan’s are griping and calling me a pansy, because you all can do it while pounding home-brewed moonshine.

Well, I can’t.

With over 4 hours into this project and not a single link of sausage to show for it, I made the remaining seasoned meat into patties for morning breakfast and ordered me a super grinder and sausage stuffer from Amazon.

Sausage patties

I let you know how they work.  Until then, If you have any questions, comments, or you know exactly what I did wrong and want to email me and call me an idiot, hit me up!

Packin' Pork

All I have been talking about for the last three months is how good the pasture-raised pork is from Fleishers.

• How it tastes like pork is suppose to taste.
• How breeders are breeding the fat back in after the anti-fat stigma of the 70s.
• How modern farmers are raising these animals on open range and supplementing their diets with tubers and apples.

So the family mandate was in. They wanted me to put up or shut up. Mom had scheduled a tamale making class for when I got home so I thought it would be perfect timing if I packed some pork back to Texas for Christmas tamales. Just one small problem, well, actually one big problem, how was I going to get all of my belongings and the pork packed in my suitcase?

I never got rid of the boxes I originally shipped my stuff up to New York in. They actually turned out to be multi-purpose, standing in as chest-of-drawers, a nightstand and a dining table. So flipping the boxes upright, I crammed in all of my earthly processions: espresso machine, cook books, cutting boards, boots and bedding and shipped them back to Texas via the neighborhood UPS store. That left me with my carry-on for the plane and one 55lb. box of pork as checked baggage.

Let me pause here to itemize the contents of my checked baggage: two 13 lb. Boston butts, four Frenched pork chops cut 1” thick, and one large hog’s head perfect for tamales.

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I wish I had one to show you here, but I don’t. Just try to picture this scene in your head if you will:

I sauntered up to LaGuardia’s Southwest Airlines check-in and presented my documents for boarding. I then hoisted my box of pork onto the luggage scales and waited for my baggage claim check. It was at this point that Miss LaGuardia informed me that I must use "Southwest Airline approved boxes" for my belongings. Ok, no problem. So there on the spot I begin to unpack and transfer my pork to the approved shipping box.

Lets just say that Miss LaGuardia’s eyes moved to “alert” status when the lovely pink chops surfaced. By the time I was transferring the hog’s head, she was on full "Silence of the Lambs” alert. But the best part was when I reached down and grabbed my knife roll, looked up at her and said,

Ma'am, I’m a butcher and I am going to pull out my knives now.

I just wanted to let you know.

After a gasp then a pregnant pause, her relieved expression showed she now comprehended that indeed I was not Hannibal Lector, but an actual butcher. With the color returning to her face, Miss LaGuardia waved off security and finally handed me my baggage claim check. (Something tells me she is going to let the next guy in line slide with his cardboard boxes.)

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My flight from LaGuardia to Chicago was easy, but the last leg into Austin seemed like it would never end. I was more than ready to be home, so I pre-maturely unbuckled “before the plane had come to a full and complete stop.” I grabbed my carry-on and quickly located my pork box at baggage claim. As I went to the outside curb for pick up, I spotted the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. There she was. Waiting curbside for me. Black hair, black eyes and fluorescent hunting collar. I dropped everything as my Remi ran to me for a good ear scratchin’ and face lick.

Home, sweet home.

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Final Note: I’m back in Texas for a bit to re-group and plan my next leg of my carnivorous journey. In the meantime, I will be holding some jerky and sausage making classes. If you are interested, send me a message in the “contact me” section.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and eats well this holiday season. I sure will!

Empire State of Mind

  Three months in the big city have come and gone and I find myself once again back in the Lone Star.

Damn, it feels good to be back!

My last week in New York was a whirlwind. I had final exams at Fleishers, one of which required me to break an entire steer in a single day. In case you were wondering, I broke that bad boy down with hours to spare thus finalizing and passing the 12-week Fleishers’ apprenticeship with flying colors.

My last Friday there, the Fleishers staff presented me with my course completion certificate and an amazing knife roll from Victorinox. The knife roll is ridiculous. It holds all nine of my knives, plus my honing steel.

It was bittersweet leaving New York.  Already, I am missing my Fleishers family and our intimate family-style lunches. I will miss Chef Jason in the kitchen and all of his patience with my endless culinary questions. I will miss butchers Jason, Josh and Anderson in the cutting room and all of their wisdom and knowledge imparted to me over the last few months. And of course I will miss my fellow apprentice, Timmy, who always kept things interesting. “Guy” and I had some good times and I will treasure our beer-infused conversations about Chicago's  supremacy in everything from pizza to subways.

To the Fleishers Family,

Gracias and vaya con dios.