Q: How did you choose this career?
A: I was originally a chef by trade, working in restaurants, but I decided I wanted to grow my experience in working with food. Coming to Pete’s has allowed me to do that.
Q: What sort of training is involved?
A: It’s all hands-on training. You used to be able to take a butchery course, but if you want to become a butcher now you need to find someone to teach you. It’s really hard to find a good meat cutter these days; it’s not taught in schools, and kids don’t generally think of it as something they want to learn. I’d say it takes three years of daily practice before you’ve really got a handle on it.
Q: What’s it like the first time you’re faced with an animal to be butchered?
A: It’s neat but it’s also shocking at first. Once you wrap your head around it, once you can apply your skills and experience to knowing where to cut, it’s easier. Then you can think of it as so many steaks or roasts.
Q: What’s the most challenging cut you’ve worked with?
A: I’d say something big, like a hip of beef. They weigh 35 to 40 kilograms—almost 100 pounds. That can be daunting.
Q: What cuts come from a hip of beef?
A: You’d get about six cuts from a hip of beef, mostly roasts. The hip and leg are less tender, so they need a longer cooking time. You get the more tender cuts from the middle of the animal, that’s where the tenderloins, ribs—the cuts that need less cooking time—come from.
Q: I read once that someone who likes sausage should never watch it being made. What do you think?
A: Well, we make good sausages. We use all good meat here, mostly trimmings from the meat we’ve butchered—you won’t find any of the “mechanically separated” meats you see listed on commercial sausages.
Q: Any you’d recommend for the BBQ?
A: The British bangers, a traditional English sausage, are quite good, and so are sweet Italian sausages. Lots of people have heard of having “bangers and mash,” and a good summer twist on that is “bangers and baked,” because you can do it all on the grill.
Q: What about something for the BBQ that’s a little out of the ordinary? Something non-traditional?
A: I’d recommend pork tenderloin. It’s a great piece of meat: juicy, tender, flavourful and inexpensive; it’s by far my favourite cut of meat out of any cut of chicken, beef or pork. It’s so versatile: you can grill it whole on the BBQ, put it in stir-fries or shish kebabs, or cut it into medallions and serve it alone or over a salad.
This article appears in May 11-17, 2006.