Saw a master butcher break down a whole hog at the county fair and changed my whole approach

I was up at the Iowa State Fair last month and stopped by the pork tent where this old guy was breaking down a whole 300 pound hog. He wasn't using any fancy powered saws or anything, just a straight boning knife and a handsaw for the spine. I've been a butcher for 12 years and always used a bandsaw for splitting the backbone, but that guy did it cleaner in like 4 minutes with a manual saw. He told me power saws create heat that ruins the meat close to the bone and that's why his chops always had better color than mine. So I tried it on a 200 pounder at the shop yesterday and honestly the meat looked way better and I had less waste. Has anyone else gone back to old school methods and seen better results?

3 comments

3 Comments

spencer98126d ago

Read somewhere that Japanese butchers use the same manual method for their high end wagyu...

avery_ross26d ago

Read something similar, @spencer981 - heard they use a technique called "yakiniku" for breaking down the fat evenly. Never seen it done but sounds pretty intense.

spencer_owens5825d ago

Gotta admit @avery_ross, that caught me off guard - yakiniku is actually a grilling style, not a butchery technique. They use shabu-shabu slicing or suji knife work for breaking down fat in wagyu. Ever seen someone do the hand-trimming on a full ribeye? It's wild how precise those cuts get.