OSSO

I arrived mid-morning on Monday to Osso Carnicería, strapped down with my backpacks and sweating profusely. I had gone from the extreme cold of Denmark to extreme humidity of Peru, and I was starting to question if I’d packed correctly. 

As I entered the shop, Renzo Girabaldi stood next to the counter chatting with some patrons. God, I was nervous. I mean, this was the guy I had wanted to work with for over three years. He and Dario Cecchini were my idols and the key reasons I became a butcher. And here he was, standing before me and offering the opportunity to apprentice with him for a few months.

A peak into one of the dry aging containers in the carnicería.

I didn't need to be anxious - Renzo was very welcoming. After he finished his conversation, we ventured upstairs to the roof where his office was located. After conversing a bit, Renzo laid out his suggested two-month plan. 
- an intro week on the cutting table in the butcher shop
- two weeks in production, making hamburgers, chorizos, and other value-added products.
- a week ghosting Osso’s CFO Alejandro, analyzing logistics.
- two weeks of working at the adjoining Osso Restuarante
- two weeks working at Dondoh, a new restaurant collaboration of Renzo's.

When it came to accommodations, nothing had been planned prior to my arrival. Renzo and Alejandro went to work on a place for me to crash. In the meantime, I’d have to sleep at the butcher shop - not the first time that had happened. 

Renzo had to jet - literally.  He had less than 48 hours in Lima before he departed for a culinary gig in Moscow for 11 days. I’m thinking I’m at the right spot.

I went to the front counter, knife bundle in hand. The rest of the afternoon, I’m jumped in where I could help, mostly removing fat from pig skin. Renzo is a nose to tail man as well - he believes in saving every single little bit of fat. The hard fat is sent into hamburger production. The soft fat, the one that is usually thrown away or declared “too much work to remove” by some, is converted into Manteca de Cerdo, or Pork Lard. Renzo uses it all.

When dealing with dry aged meat, you have to trim off the outside surfaces - mostly dried meat and mold - in order to see the beauty hiding within.

My first week was spent in the shop, working around the large wooden cutting table. I was under the direction of César and Jose, Renzo's two main butchers. Every morning we started by setting the case - I took note of all the cuts, trying frantically to remember all the names in Spanish. My usual tasks were cleaning tenderloins, skirt steaks, and chorizo displays. Once the shop case was merchandised, we begin breaking down carcasses to fulfill the restaurants’ needs as well as wholesale orders. 

José reminds me of some of those super quick butchers you see on YouTube: he can cut a mile a minute because he has done it a million times. He has been kind enough to share some his cutting "secretos" with me. José has taken a liking to my set of F. Dick knives. My large flat honing steel is now the preferred one at the table, and my boning knife stays busy, even when I'm on lunch break. 

One of my morning tasks at Osso has been to restocking the sausage treys. Every shop displays their meat a little differently so I've tried to learn quickly - I still am having difficulties deciphering between the eight different sausages.

The guys at the cutting table realized I knew my cuts and that I knew a decent amount of Spanish. They wanted to learn English. By the end of my third day, my nickname had become “teacher.”

Or Jack "Sparrot." Not Sparrow.

Massive ribeyes headed to the restaurant.

I've enjoyed breaking out my Spanish again, but damn, I didn't remember it being this difficult! It doesn't help that my brain has a little Danish, French, or Italian rolling around in there.

I am fascinated by the setup at Osso, especially all the dry aging facilities. Cèsar demoed the famous sake-infused dry-aged ribeye on the DonDoh menu. After cleaning up the strip loin, he wrapped the entire hunk of meat in dried kelp leaves, then tied it up using medical netting. Cèsar carefully saturated the netting with just the right amount of sake before storing it in the dry-aging cooler.

César working the medical netting over the kelp-covered strip loin.

 
My second week was supposed to have been in production, making massive amounts hamburgers and chorizos. José and César pulled me up to the shop every morning - maybe they enjoyed my insanely sharp knives, or I was actually helping out.

I hope it was both!

Osso, just like the many European butchers I've met, deals with a bunch of quality pork meat. To supply super markets with artisanal chorizos, you need to have a lot of it!

This company has an incredible brand and top notch packaging!

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Sidenotes:
Save the Gringo 1:
After a trio of nights in the butcher shop, Renzo and Alejandro fixed me up with my own pad - a small single room in La Molina, roughly a thirty-minute walk from the shop. I walked for the first week, but the humidity and the insanely cheap cab fare finally won me over. I'm very appreciative of the room. They didn't have to help out some gringo stranger from Texas, but they did.

Save Gringo 2:
It was about this same time I noticed an alarming number of bug bites on my arms and legs. For weeks, I had heard about "chinchas" or bed bugs down in South America - that was my first thought! I mentioned it to Renzo, and 15 minutes later,  a company employee whisked me away to a public health clinic down the street to get treated (turns out it was an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite). Again, Gringo in trouble and Renzo saves the day - incredibly generous.
 

The Carnicería crew getting together for a group picture after my first week in La Molina.

I don't know what it is about staff meals, but I love them. Perhaps its the regathering of the troops to break bread together - the bond of a shared meal. At the Reata, I loved the tacos that the guys served up after the doors closed for the night. Fleishers staff meals in Red Hook were always spectacular thanks to Jason V. Here, a pan-fried potato stuffed with boiled eggs and minced chorizo meat. As with every staff meal here, there is rice and some sort of flavorful and fresh juice.

Gascon Fricandeaux

Frícandeaux, sliced and served with cornichons, onions, and whole grain mustard.

Gascon Fricandeaux is a type of cooked meatball consisting of pork, potatoes, onions, and liver. I discovered this provincial French dish on my first culinary adventure  across the pond. Somewhere between the Kitchen at Camont and the Chapolard farm, I learned to reproduce my own fricandeaux - I credit my wonderful teachers, Kate Hill and Christiane Chapolard

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INGREDIENTS:

1 kilo - pork meat (shoulder, belly, or cheeks with a decent amount of fat)
100 grams - blanched pork liver
100 grams - peeled and cooked potatoes
100 grams - white onion
14 grams - salt
2 grams - black pepper
caul fat, soaked in warm water

NOTE: To procure some fresh caul fat, check with your local butcher shop or slaughterhouse. If you don't have a local butcher shop, quit your job and start one!

Caul fat soaking in warm water 

DIRECTIONS:

1. Grind pork meat, cooked potatoes, onion, and blanched liver in a grinder. Mix thoroughly.

2.  Add salt and pepper (14 grams of salt and 2 grams of pepper per kilo of meat).

3.  Mix to homogenize. The farce (meat mixture) is ready when it becomes sticky.

4.  Make a ball of the farce (meat mixture), roughly 250 grams and knead with your hands to extract any air pockets.

5. Dunk the meatball in a bowl of water to keep it moist.

6. Drape caul fat over the ball then trim. Tuck excess under the ball. 

7. Place meatballs in a baking dish.

8. Place a water bath in a separate pan below the baking dish.

9. Cook at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 hours

10. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate.

11. Serve chilled.

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Still a little confused?

Check out the video below.

A quick recipe video on French Fricandeaux by Jack Matusek of Raw Republic Meats. https://jackmatusek.com/

Creating the Manifesto

This is the last of a 3-part series.  You can catch up by reading Road Trippin' Across Europe (Prolog), Origins - part 1, and Meating Fellow Revolutionaries, part 2. 

We were up early the next morning and ready to begin the formulation of the Manifesto. Michael had outlined five key points he wanted to touch on in our mission statement:

• Tradition
• Quality
• Education
• Craft
• People

For each of these subjects, Michael had assigned a speaker who would lead the discussion for 15-20 minutes after which we would begin a group discussion. All the speakers were experts in their respected fields.

TRADITIONS:

The “traditions” segment was lead Henning Wiesinger, owner of Steensgaard Farms, a Danish nose-to-tail farm, slaughter facility, and butcher shop.

They do it all under one roof, from “seed to sausage”.

He discussed how the connection between the farmer and butcher has become lost, but fortunately, Steensgaard has been instrumental in preserving this traditional method of butchery.  The unique aspect of Steensgaard is their method and ideology of harvesting. Their animals aren't transported to a distant slaughterhouse - they are harvested right on the farm using a state of the art harvest facility.  It is the farmers who know the animals and lead them to the slaughterhouse where they go in a special enclosure until they are slaughtered. This ensures the lowest possible stress levels to the animals. Once slaughtered, the carcasses are immediately hung up and broken down while still warm, ensuring a quality product.  It also provides close cooperation between the farmer and butcher by creating opportunities for them to work together on meat quality and product development.

After Henning finished, we came together as a whole and tried to outline a statement on traditions.

We honor the valuable traditions of butchery.

It might seem very simple, but you have no idea how much discussion and thought went into that sentence.

QUALITY:

Adam Danforth, a James Beard award-winning author and butcher from Oregon then spoke on the topic of quality. Adam is an advocate for consuming older animals – these animals have more time to develop complex flavor in their meat. He also emphasizes flavor over texture, while the rest of the world buys the exact opposite. This discussion then led into another concerning the long-term sustainability of meat. The earth cannot support 7 billion people who eat meat every day. Adam's solution: eat less, but better meat.

Again, we converged for group discussion. The main point in this session was ensuring that superior quality was maintained through the whole process, from seed to sausage.

We insist on transparent and honest meat.

 EDUCATION:

Michael lacked a speaker for his point on education. Moved by my non-traditional path to butchery, he asked me if I would be willing to speak on the subject the night before.

Me?

I was the youngest butcher there and had little experience compared to the old guys who were born with blood stained knives in their hands.

But I wasn’t going to turn an opportunity like this down.

After a quick lunch break consisting of some incredible beef cheek tacos, it was my turn.

I’ve done a lot of public speaking in my life. I even spent a lot of time acting as a kid and I’ve got two state titles to prove it. But, this was different. This was my career.

I’m not going to lie, I was nervous.

After a quick prayer, I took my place at the head of the room and began to tell my story: The revelation in my Entrepreneurship class at TCU, the slaughterhouse down in South Texas, selling my car to pay for a three-month apprenticeship at Fleishers in NYC, as well as my time in France and Italy.

The discussion that followed centered around setting up a cost-free international apprenticeship program among the butchers involved in the manifesto, with me as the example and guinea pig.

We promote the exchange of knowledge and expertise.

CRAFT:

Dominique Chapolard and Kate Hill handled “Craft.” While Kate talked about the Chapolard system and butchery in France, Dominique went to work on a half carcass, demonstrating his skills. Many butchers hadn’t seen a carcass broken-down with this method before.

We represent a craft that is the joyful expression of tradition and innovation.

PEOPLE:

Olga Graf and Akina Kai, two design thinkers from Berlin, were charged with helping these butchers think “outside the box.” They led a discussion revolving around the interactions between butchers and consumers.

We lead the conversation about responsible consumption of meat.

After Kate and Adam had tweaked the wording a bit, the Manifesto was ready to sign.

One by one, we were called to sign the document. A roar of applause filled the hall as Michael, the last to sign, finished his signature.

This was the first step in the organized meat revolution. As a craft, we have grown tired of the unethical practices and inferior products from large industrial meat companies. We have set in place guidelines by which we can organize behind.

Yes, it probably didn’t seem like much to you as a reader; however there was a lot of thought and conversation behind those five lines.

I’m sure they will be modified and changed at the next summit, but until then, it’s a start.

After a long day of discussion, carts of beer were rolled in. Everyone started breaking out his or her products for sampling.

Meating Fellow Revolutionaries

This is the second of a three-part series… Catch up by reading Road Trippin’ Across Europe  and Manifesto Origins.

In the beginning, I was just an extra – tagging along with Kate and Dominique.

Man, I was damn lucky. What ended up happening in Copenhagen in the confines of Folkets Madhus on that late August weekend changed not only my life, but potentially butchers across the world.

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We journeyed into the industrial side of Copenhagen on Thursday afternoon. The streets were lined with soccer fields, communal gardens, and countless bicyclists. Nestled between a couple of old warehouses laid our destination: Folkets Madhus.

There we were met with open arms – Michael Museth introduced us to his team and gave us a quick tour around his impressive facility. Folkets Madhus is comprised of:

• a large commercial kitchen,
• a dining hall for catering events,
• a sausage preparation room,
• an incredible teaching kitchen,
• and office space available for rent to similar businesses.

Did I mention the Cold War-era bomb shelter out back? Or the organic garden on top of the bomb shelter?

The Cold War era bomb shelter behind Folkets Madhus.

That night, we had a traditional Danish meal of stegt flæsk med persillesovs  and got acquainted with Hendrik and the Viking contingent of the Butchers' Manifesto.  In case you are wondering what stegt flæsk med persillesovs is, it is fried slices of pork belly with a parsley sauce.

The next day, butchers slowly trickled through the front door. They came from various points in Europe and North America: butchers from Oregon, Canada, London, Amsterdam, Gascony, Poland, Germany, Denmark…. and of course Texas.

Michael welcoming those from close and afar.

Michael constantly made sure we felt comfortable and at home – he even showed us a pork shoulder without a purpose in cold storage.

In a room full of butchers, that pork shoulder didn’t have a chance!

I immediately broke out my knives and removed all the bones.  I scored the skin on the opposite side and Dominique took over from there.  He gave the shoulder some salt and pepper as well as a beer to braise in. Since Michael had casually talked about Texas barbecue earlier in the day – I felt it was a perfect time to break out my great-grandmother's recipe.

Some good Texas BBQ sauce coming to a boil.

While I prepared the sauce, Dominique took a pork tenderloin, covered it in mustard and placed it in the oven. Then he decided it was time for my final test under his supervision: Pâté de Campagne.

Taking the unused scraps and unwanted pieces of meat, along with potatoes, onions, and blanched liver, we made good use of Michael’s commercial kitchen. Two hours later, I had four beautiful terrines of pâté resting, waiting to be appreciated by my new meat friends and connoisseurs.

French pâtés ready to hit the oven.

Not to be outdone, the Danes got busy in the kitchen as well. Gustav, a Danish master butcher the same age as I, prepared Rullepølse – rolled pig belly with sage, tied, put into a mold and boiled.

Gustav going to work on the pork belly

Absolutely amazing flavor!

As the crowd gathered, I shook hands and got to know some of the guys. Who would have thought I would run into a familiar face, but there was John Ratliff, owner of Ends Meat in Brooklyn. I originally met John back in NYC when I was apprenticing at Fleishers. He had given us a tour of his shop where he produces a wide variety of Italian-style charcuterie. He and his shop were one of the driving forces that originally led me to France to learn charcuterie.

The meat world is so small!

John Ratliff of Ends Meat, Brooklyn, NY

That evening, all of the butchers gathered around the large table in Folkets Madhus to officially begin the summit. Michael told his inspirational story and his motivation for the gathering.  One by one, people stood and formally introduced themselves until it was time to “break bread.” After a few beers, Michael suggested we head to bed to rest up for the long day ahead of us. Slowly, the crowd of butchers drifted across the street to an indoor soccer pitch (field), crowded with yellow, single person tents.

It's not the Ritz, it's the Yellow Tents

to be continued...

The Butchers' Manifesto Origins

Hendrik Hasse, author of Crafted Meat.

This is the first of a three part series...

It all began in Germany with Hendrik Haase. Hendrik is a food activist, designer, and part owner of Kumpel & Keule, a nose-to-tail butcher shop in Berlin that is completely constructed from glass.

Kumpel & Keule, the German butcher shop made from glass.

Talk about transparency. You can literally see everything that happens in this butcher shop. They even have little glass windows in each production room so butchers can offer samples to onlooking crowds.

A glass door into one of the rooms at Kumpel & Keule allowing for the utmost transparency.

In case you were wondering, Tyson, Cargill, and other industrial meat companies don’t share the same "clear" philosophies when in comes to meat processing facilities.

Two years ago, Hendrik traveled the globe and collected information on the best and most progressive butcher shops he could find - from Dario Cecchini and Kate Hill all the way to Salt & Time in Austin, TX. His published findings are in his book, Crafted Meat, an all-important catalyst for the future.

Michael Museth, founder of The Butchers' Manifesto and Folkets Madhus.

Now jump to Michael Museth in Copenhagen, Denmark. Michael  was the visionary.  He had talked about creating an international meeting of butchers - a place to share wisdom and grow the craft. Late last year, he picked up a copy of Hendrik's book.  He was inspired by Hendrik's portrayal of these craftsmen in an artistic and heroic way. Michael scrutinized, that across the world, the time-honored craft of butchery was being gutted by large corporations making inferior  products on a massive scale. Michael saw a trend developing too.  Just as he longed for the homemade sausages he had grown up with as a child, consumers were starting to drift away from commercially processed, tasteless sausages and meats. He realized it would be up to him to unify the craft butchers of the world and save their age-old skills.

Michael started by sending emails.  He visited shops and spoke with butchers. Some called him crazy – even Hendrik himself didn’t believe Michael could pull off such a lofty goal of globally uniting butchers and their craft. However, after eight months, Michael had convinced twenty-five butchers to make their way to Copenhagen to discuss their plight, swap good stories and recipes and create change.

Radical.

(1st of 3 parts, continue reading)

For those interested in a meat revolution, you should read Hendrik Haase' book, Crafted Meat. It's available through Amazon.

Crafted Meat, by Hendrik Haase