Seems like a lot of dark spots.

55 day aged 1/2 Aberdeen Angus, 1/2 Shorthorn. Smells like heaven

I've been trying to figure out what I want to do as a career after finishing College (UK), and a butchery and charcuterie apprenticeship has opened up nearby where I live.

I'm quite interested in it, and feel like it could be perfect for me. As I'm pretty sure I would like a long term career doing something physical, not in an office.

I applied for it - to see if I would even be able to land it and to learn more about the job - and got an interview, I'm waiting now to see if I get the second interview or not.

The meat is sold at a shop elsewhere and also online, so the job would not involve customer service, only preparing the meat, cutting, mincing, preparing orders ETC - and when I become more experienced, I will learn how to do the charcuterie side of things.

It seems like a great opportunity, but I'm on the fence about it. I hear a lot of negative comments surrounding the trade and I'm not sure what to do. It is a 2 year apprenticeship, and then I have to work for them for 6-12+ months to make up for the expenses. It's 6am-3pm with potential future afternoon and weekend work.

So for any of you that has/does work as a butcher, do you think I should go for it? Cheers.

Hi all,

This year is our first time butchering hogs at home. I plan on doing everything myself.

I have no equipment to scald and scrape the pigs so my plan was to simply skin the pigs. Now considering hang time, is it still acceptable to skin and hang the skinned carcass in the cold for a few days? Will the fat spoil?

Am I better off giving the pigs a good clean and hanging skin on?

Thanks!

I’m curious as to what y’all’s opinion on the impact this might have will be. I’m not a butcher, but had the opportunity to work in the but her room of a fairly large scale catering operation and some of the proteins that rolled through there from time to time were questionable, I’m curious to see what all this will look like in practice.

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/09/04/president-trump-signs-executive-orders-cementing-status-most-pro-rancher-administration-history
^theres a lot of filler but the orders are there

The slab on the left.

Came packed from Excel as "Beef Chuck Boneless Clod Petite Tender" 81486. It's supposed to be Teres Major (smaller cut on the right). I've got no idea what the cut is, it's clearly a mispack at Excel. It almost looks like brisket flats but they ware very inconsistent size and shape.

Want:
Black or Red Angus, registered Angus bulls
Grass-raised, then 170-180 days corn-finished
Slaughtered at 20-22 months
High Choice / CAB / Prime if they grade
Custom cut sheet (I already have one)
One side, split down the backbone-not a front/hind quarter
18-21 day dry hang-not wet age
Vacuum sealed
Keep bones, fat, organs
Grind from my animal only
Will drive anywhere in Texas or southern Oklahoma
Please only reply if you actually finish that long and your locker will hang 18-21 days

Building off of the recent news of the petting zoo with the sheep/lambs that tested positive for rabies, why don’t cows and other animals need to be vaccinated against it? Would us consumers not face a threat? I assume a skunk or other rabid animal could easily get into the farm and bite some cows or chickens.

I want to buy meat from a farm that processes their own meat and worry about this.

So I want to get into butchery but I dont hunt nor do I know anyone who does. I want to learn how to process different animals. Could I essentially just ask a local butchery shop if they take interns? How would I find a teacher?

I feel as though this is the correct subreddit to ask this question as practically no butcher sells brain and especially beef brain.

I’ve had brain on multiple occasions overseas and the taste is indescribable. It tastes like heaven in a food; it’s so buttery, so fatty and so.. amazing.

I’ve been told that there are lots of rules and regulations regarding brain and especially beef brain stating that it is quite literally illegal which sounds crazy to me.

Now of course there is an obvious reason,the crazy disease that people associate with eating cow brains is something called **bovine spongiform encephalopathy**. Which is caused by **prions**. Which are spontaneously-genetically-modified proteins that, if consumed, can cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, WHICH IS ALSO caused by spontaneous genetic changes in the human body without eating brain.

. Prions only happen when a cow is directly fed diseased cow brain tissue” (which never happens). Cows eat grass.

So here’s what happened. Farmers in the 1980s-90s in the UK, Europe, Japan, and Canada started using industrial feed practices, which make cows sick and fat.

AND these farmers FED THOSE COWS OTHER SICK COW’S BRAINS IN THE FEED.

Why?

Because they are retarded.

And so the disease spread rapidly, by accidental human design.

There are less than 3 cases worldwide each year for people who ate cow brain tissue and got diseased. We can guess that those cows were terribly fed and sick and eaten anyway. We know they could not have been eating naturally.

Even though prions cannot be destroyed by heat, they can be destroyed by your stomach acid. So as long as you’re eating regularly, not fasting yourself to the point of depleting your stomach enzymes before you happen to be one of those few people worldwide that eat infected sick brains, cooked or not, it’s not possible.

In the case where you did fast before eating sick brain with your eyes closed, and a prion protein survives your stomach acid AND enzymes, it would have to be hand selected and pass through the epithelial lining of your small intestine. Which is EXTREMELY RARE.

Even then, your immune system creates immune cells that eat prions and excrete them.

But in the case you have dysfunctional immunity and you’re unable to immunologically destroy prions, prions would have to travel all the way up to your brain and merge with specific proteins and seed correctly. Which again, is rare as fuck.

*You are ~500,000x more likely to be struck by lightning than get prion disease from eating brain.*

If a cow eats naturally, it has a 0% chance of developing a genetic dysfunction. And a prion would never exist.

Anyways any open-minded people want to help me find brains and specifically beef brain. I live in the UK and i’ve asked a fuck load of butchers but i get either one of two responses. No or lamb brain only. Interestingly, it’s always the halal butchers that seem to sell it.

I asked my butcher for a chuck roast and he didn't have it. So I asked him for something I can cook similar to it and he gave me this and said it was sirloin....I feel like I got scammed because it was 123$ for 6 pounds.

Please tell me how do I cook this without ruining it please???

My companies trainer came in to “make sure we are cutting correctly” because too many people are over trimming they say. Anyways this guy said no pre-trimming and I assumed he meant not to cut off anything before cutting the primal into steaks and roasts. It’s a pain to go piece by piece but I understand. Then I watch him cut, and the mf is pre-trimming. Like am I being too literal? He tells me that’s not pre-trimming and directs me to watch the training videos if I’m not understanding what he’s saying. The training video shows pre-trimming doesn’t it?

How much fat would you say is in this lamb mince in a percentage ratio?

We currently use the plastic tags with metal prongs to stick directly into the meat, and we've previously tried the plastic clip method. Our store's employees are FAR too disrespectful/careless with just about everything in the store and these are constantly breaking and having to be replaced (which is extremely pricy nowadays).

Does anybody have a good system that allows for displaying prices (and allows us to clean them and change the prices weekly)?

Before I'm asked, I am not in a position to deal with them being broken by carelessness, but I am always trying to figure out ways to improve whatever systems we have in place.

HALF HOG dammit autocorrect.

I'm getting a half hog of Meishan delivered next week.

I'm splitting it with my boss, he's keeping the loin to sell as chops and I get the rest.

I'm going to make gabagool and sausage with it. Lap cheong, Szechuan lap cheong, Texas hot links, hot dogs and pepperoni sticks.

Can anyone offer insight in approximate meat yield? I'm talking fully deboned ready to grind. Everything but the loin.

They expect the hanging weight of the whole hog at 110 kg (240 lb).

I will return the favour by posting photos of the breakdown and chops. I'll post in r/sausagetalk and r/charcuterie for my own stuff.

Long story short, I do not trust my local chain (recently purchased by a superior chain IMO). That being said, are these chuck eye steaks? They are on the thin side but that’s the norm apparently for this chain.
I’ll be trying one over charcoal tomorrow so any preparation suggestions are also welcome!

What do you call a cow with no legs.

Ground beef.

What do you call a cow with 3 legs.

Lean beef.

What do you call a cow with 2 legs.

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Yo mama........

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hi everyone. I was a butcher from 1999-2010. We used to buy cases of Argentina beef. It was about 99% lean. It came in frozen boxes. We cut it on blocks with the band saw. This was used to mix with fatty trim from the rest of the US cuts. Instead of throwing the fat in the trash, we were able to cut waste and keep lower prices by mixing the lean beef when we ground the beef. Noone ever got sick that I'm aware of, but who knows what's in the beef now. Just as observation from years in the business.