Detroit — With Robert F. Kennedy’s recent confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, the “Make America Healthy Again” rhetoric seems to have grown, and with it, general food skepticism nationwide. People are finally looking into where their food comes from.
So I took a hog breakdown class, provided by local farm-to-table restaurant and butchery, Marrow, determined to unravel the mystery of what happens before it arrives on my plate, with as much transparency as I could possibly get. Butchery as an art is a foreign concept to me, aside from vicariously living through the works of Anthony Bourdain. Whether it eases my mind or forces me to eat halal, the hog will be broken down, photographed, and analyzed.
Farm-to-table means what exactly? I’m here to find out.
The warm glow of Marrow’s butchery beckoned me in from the frigid cold. I was checked in and offered a drink. At the far end of the restaurant, near the empty kitchen, lay a long wooden table, and on top of it, half of our muse. Our canvas was a 260-pound Heritage breed hog from Modreske Farms in Allegan County that lay drained of blood, dehaired, and scalded, ready to be divided up into sections, trimmed, and cooked.
Bella, one of the butchers helping with the breakdown demonstration, emphasized that you have to love these animals to do this practice, and that a happy animal equals happy meat, which of course equals happy chefs and happy customers. This wasn’t the sick work of animal murderers. This was, dare I say, joyful?
A little after 6 p.m., the blades come out. Butcher’s don’t have the same attachment to knives as a chef, purely due to the rate of damage that steel undergoes when rubbed against bones all day, but their arsenal is just as curated. Every blade and saw has its purpose. Six-inch razor-sharp boning knives, scimitars, hand saws, bone-dust scrapers, bench scrapers, and knife honers adorned the table. The hog was about to go under the scalpel.
I don’t know what I expected, but in some way, I expected a bloody, gory mess with butchers covered head to toe in blood and guts, but I was happily surprised. In lieu of bloody white aprons, they were dressed in Carhartt overalls, perhaps a Detroit butchery staple.
The butchers introduced themselves: Cody, Kev, Bella, and Em. Our success, or failure, was now in their hands and in the hands of our listening skills. They would demonstrate on the first 130 pounds, and we would hack away and probably destroy the other 130 pounds. But to learn, one must fail. Hopefully our failure would still be usable.
Out of the 260 pounds of hog, very little went to waste, maybe 10 to 15 pounds of the lot. Aside from the silver, a thin whitish membrane that is removed from the meat, glands, and other non-usable parts, almost everything had a use. The foot, known as trotter, can be used for their homemade ramen broth along with bits of the head, neck bones, and tail.
The jowl can be used for guanciale for carbonara. The hock for collard greens or ham hock soup, shoulder and butt for pulled pork and carnitas. They hate waste at Marrow. Cody, the butcher leading the breakdown, was visibly sad when the head didn’t arrive on this particular hog. Most restaurants have no use for the head, but they do here. The loss was felt. It was genuine sadness, but also genuine care for not only the animal but the practice of butchery and the integrity of sustainability.
The tenderloin is one of the first cuts removed from the hog. Disconnected from the belly between the fifth and sixth rib by Cody, and with a slight trim from Bella, the tenderloin was handed to Kev to cook.
I wanted the farm-to-table experience in as much transparency as I could possibly get, and besides from seeing this now dead hog breathing, I was getting there. I was bouncing with anticipation. The breakdown continued while burners could be heard igniting in the background. It wasn’t easy to disconnect the spare ribs from the baby back ribs, at least when I attempted it, but Cody made it look relatively easy. The years of practice were apparent.
Within say 25 minutes, Kev and the pork made their return. He presented a dish of tenderloin and two different types of caramelized onions laying in an onion jus topped with pecorino romano and fresh parsley. Simple but delicious, tender but bold.
Trusting meat can be tricky, and for most places, we never know what that meat is or where it came from. Beef, pork, even crab is all too often all too ambiguous. But here, I knew. I knew exactly where this meat came from, what it was, and how it got to my plate, and that was my first sense of meat enlightenment. It was quite possibly one of the greatest bites of pork I’ve had. I eagerly anticipated Kev’s next creation.
The breakdown continued with more cuts than I could possibly hope to mention. The butchers picked up rhythm, trimming rib chops, loin chops, separating the butt from the picnic, dividing up the shoulder, showcasing the “money muscle” coppa, and slicing secreto steaks. This kind of food is a noble craft.
The final hour was left to us students. We attempted to hack, and saw, and slice our way into some usable cuts, most of which would assuredly end up as sausages. Regardless, it was oddly satisfying. The ribs were a bear to cut through, but I felt a great sense of pride after slicing some rib chops with close instruction and affirmation.
This class may not be for the very squeamish, but I do encourage everyone to see what I saw for themselves. Knowing the hows and the whys of gastronomy is an essential part of food transparency.
If you ever pick up the scimitar or bone saw yourself, you will at least look at that display case a little differently.
I’ll be sourcing my pork much more carefully from here on out, and I know just the place.
Noah Juuhl is a food writer and photographer based in Sterling Heights.
