The Good Rabbi's Blog

This class, thus far, is different from all the other classes I've taken. To start out with, it's much more production-oriented. Unlike the skills kitchen, where we composted most of our creations, or ate them ourselves, the butchery kitchen supplies two of the school's four restaurants, as well as the student dining, skills, and garde-manger kitchens. We receive orders, and we cut meat to fill them. The entire class takes place inside a refrigerated room so that there is no bacterial contamination while we work.

Another difference with this class is that we do our production first (that is to say, before the lecture component). Personally, I like it the other way around, but it seems to work. We have a demonstration of the type of cuts or fabrications that are new, and we then fabricate to order. There are basically five "stations" that we operate. There's the sausage station, the seafood station, the poultry station, and the "hoof" station (which really deals with hooved animals, not just hooves). In addition, there are a couple people who maintain the Tomb and the Crypt, which are our walk-in refrigerator and walk-in freezer, respectively.

I must say that it's sort of cool how we get this huge hunk of animal, and turn it into a smaller hunk of animal that is sometimes much more easily recognisable. Sometimes it's, well, butchered. One of the coolest parts about this kitchen is that we get to work with a cryovac machine. This is the machine that vacuum packs our finished product for storage. In some ways, this is like giving a guy a label maker. They'll label everything in the house. I can honestly say that I've cryovac'ed all kinds of stuff, from meat products to shop towels. I'll hopefully have some pictures up soon..