Welcome!

Hello everyone,

This is the first posting to the Butcher's Info Blog.

This week was an interesting one at the Culinary Institute of America. Chef Michael Pardus suggested I start sharing some of the daily info that goes on in the meat room at the CIA so I started this blog. My new class fabricated a bunch of beef shanks. It is always fun to show this basic fabrication to people that have never done it before. We also took a look at some dry aged beef striploin from Master Purveyors in the Bronx. The students were amazed that something that looked so bad on the outside could result in such fine steaks. It was dry aged for about 5 weeks and had a smell that reminded me slightly of Prosciutto.

This Saturday afternoon I created 10 lbs of Bratwurst in our kitchen at home. I went down to Fleischer's in Kingston and picked up our old hand crank stuffer. The recipe was a basic combo of fine ground fresh pork, salt, white pepper, mace, ginger, paprika, nutmeg, sage and a little sugar. I have to admit I didn't really follow an exact set recipe other than the fat to lean ratio and the salt. Typically I use 3 oz of salt to 10 lbs of meat for all my basic fresh sausage recipes. They came out just fine and we'll be grilling them tomorrow! I also made some potato salad and some slow cooked sauerkraut.

Well hope you enjoy this and many more postings.