Butchering Christmas

John Friel

This column is probably the least stylish part of the Style Issue. But since this is also the de facto Christmas issue, allow me to reminisce about the oddest present I’ve ever unwrapped.

Last year, my daughter and son-in-law surprised me with a gift certificate entitling me to a class in hog butchering at a charcuterie, i.e., a shop specializing in prepared meats—bacon, pâté, sausages, etc.—made predominantly from pork.

The gifters are big fans of the company’s products, especially the bacon, sold at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, farmers market. I must have seemed hesitant; they gave me the option of backing out. But a brief rumination delivered the usual logical conclusion: What the hell? Why not?

My gene pool includes Midwestern farmers of grain, poultry, beef and hogs. And I’m a confirmed carnivore, comfortable with the knowledge that innocent fish, fowl, crustaceans, ruminants, reptiles, rodents and amphibians, wild and domesticated, have died for my dining pleasure.

However, I was hazy on the beginning steps of turning living, breathing creatures into meals. I’m still not intimate with the ugliest parts, where the living and breathing abruptly end; slaughtering is another skillset entirely.

So I wasn’t sure how I’d react to this particular backstage experience. It’s one thing to know intellectually, theoretically, how such stuff works. The visceral reality is quite another. But there I was, face-to-snout with half (apparently it takes two classes to go whole hog) of a large porcine corpse, tail intact, hair singed off, head detached and sitting near its former junction point, eyes removed. Despite its plight, the visage still greeted our small class (just five students) with that familiar cheerful piggy grin.

The charcuterie’s website states, “It is important to us that we get to know our farmers and honor the animals they’ve raised. A healthy animal is a tasty one.” Similarly, a good friend, an avid hunter, always pauses to respectfully thank the deer he's just dispatched. Our butcher/teacher said our smiling subject “had a good life. He was well taken-care-of. He just had one really bad day.”

We got to work. Under close supervision, wielding bone saws, cleavers, mallets and knives large and small, we reduced our subject to hams, shoulders, ribs and chops. Fortunately, it proved more engrossing than gross.

Afterwards, the instructor served us a “butcher snack” of parts hitherto unknown—heart, liver and kidney—plus more familiar fare, like slivered loin, sausage and bacon. He kept saying things like, “Brains are awesome!” We had dismantled the head, which yielded a surprising amount of meat, but did not sample brain—or tongue, which was also declared “awesome.” I’ll take his word on both.

I left with three pounds of pork and lots of the aforementioned bacon, which is wonderful albeit pricey. Most bacon is delicious, but not like this. Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

I also came home with a funky odor in my nostrils and clothes. Not a bad smell, really, just unfamiliar. It wasn’t just “our” pig; it was all the meat hanging, curing, smoking and awaiting processing throughout the shop, scraps and glands in the trash, the slippery residue everywhere. The smell of death? Yes, but also of life.

So that’s my oddest, and favorite, not-very-Christmassy Christmas story. But maybe it’s more stylish than I thought: My classmates were all foodies, Gen Xers and Millennials, who deemed it fashionable and smart to know where one’s food comes from and how it’s handled. Pork cheeks are chic.

Our porker rests in pieces. I honor his sacrifice. He did not die in vain. GP

John Friel is marketing manager for Emerald Coast Growers and a freelance writer.