Mike Perry has been a butcher since he was16.  As he says himself, with a hearty laugh, that was a long time ago.

His family business, Perry & Son has been serving loyal customers in Alveston, just outside Bristol, since 1985 and Mike prides himself on keeping the old skills alive as well as sourcing all the meat he sells from within a 35 mile radius of the shop.  More often than not, though, the meat is far more local.  For most of this year, Mike has been buying in his pigs from a farm just one mile down the road.  Beat that for low food miles!

On one level, he looks like the stereotypical ‘jolly butcher’ but he’s so much more than that.  This is a man who cares deeply about the quality of the meat he’s selling and it is important to him that it is not only local, but the absolute best he can lay his hands on.  He is concerned about the decline in the number of craft (or master) butchers due to supermarket monopolies, but at the same time he is heartened by the increased focus from celebrity chefs on the older, cheaper cuts of meat.  As supermarkets don’t do more interesting cuts like beef (or pork) cheeks, customers are moving back to traditional butchers to get the cuts that are being promoted.

I visited Perry & Son as part of South Gloucestershire’s Local Food & Drink Festival 2008.  During the festival month, various producers open their doors to the public for open days and demonstrations.  Perry & Son had four butchery demonstrations scheduled for the month and I managed to grab the last place available for pig butchery.  I should warn you now, if you haven’t already guessed, that there will be pictures of carcasses and meat ‘in the raw’ behind the jump…

Ten of us crowded into the back room of the butchers shop, and watched with fascination as Mike set to work.  Hanging on an old metal hook was half a headless pig, while the other half stretched out over two metal tables.   Pork is my current favourite meat so I was quite delighted about this and spent a happy few minutes refreshing my memory on pig anatomy.

There were no fancy tools.  Just a wickedly sharp curved boning knife, a rather fearsome looking machete (which I later learnt was a steak knife), a saw, and a chisel with hammer.  No chainmail gauntlets either.  As Mike said, you only get cut when your knife is blunt or you can’t see the blade.  And he’s quite right.  With these few tools he proceeded to break down the pig half in less than an hour whilst answering all of our questions with unending good humour.

The first step was to remove a healthy layer of fat from inside the carcass.  This stripped away cleanly, bringing the plump kidney along with it and revealing the tenderloin (or fillet).  With a few sure strokes of his knife, Mike lifted the tenderloin free–from its snug home under the spine–and laid it on the table in front of us.  I’m afraid that my first thought was that it looked exactly the same as the ones from the supermarket.  Oh, the shame of it!  But it did.  I think that I was just so surprised to see meat suddenly appear from what looked like a mass of bones.  When we first saw the pig–or sow, as I realised on closer inspection–it was an unpromising mass of bones.  All I could see was spine and ribcage.  And then, as if by magic, a mountain of meat began to build on the table beside me.

Separating the mid and hind primals.

Next, Mike cut the pig into three large pieces or primals.  Fore, mid and hind.  He dealt with the mid section first and with a cut and a quick saw, separated the belly from the loin.  Having inadvertently bought a belly with ribs still in place, I asked him how best to go about removing them.  I really wish that I’d taken a video of this as it was so cool.  There are two ways to go about it.  Make incisions down each side of the bones and cut them away from the belly.  Or… tie a slip knot in butchers twine, loop it around the end of a rib, slide a knife handle into the loop for leverage, then rip the string up towards you.  It’s really hard to picture without a diagram or video… I’m sorry.  With a little bit of a twist at the far end of the belly, the bone will pop out… bone clean.  There is a third, and even easier option:  take your belly of pork back to your butcher and ask him to de-bone it for you!

Sawing the belly free from the loin

Initially the loin wasn’t very recognisable as it was encased in skin and bones, but once Mike cut it into three more workable pieces, you could sort of recognise it.  As he continued working, a French-trimmed pork loin appeared before us.  Mike sawed it off the backbone and then reattached it with roasting bands so that the meat could still be roasted on the bone for flavour but could be carved easily with a nice presentation at the table.

I was really surprised at how much he thought about the customer’s needs, but it makes good business sense.  If you make things easy for your customer then they’ll come back again and again.

The rest of the loin rapidly turned into pork chops on the bone, cut away from the bone to create pork loin steaks, and a completely boneless pork loin roast.  All done so deftly and with such pride.

I won’t go into all the details of how the fore and hind primals were broken down, but it was a stunning display of skill and it didn’t surprise me to see that everyone who attended the demo left laden with bags of delicious pork.  I think we were all pretty hungry after seeing a mountain of meat appear before our eyes!

Part of the mountain of meat produced.  You can see the kidney at the very front, a French-trimmed loin roast, the tenderloin, some chops and chump steaks.

It was an utterly fascinating visit and I was really sad to leave.  The other half of the pig was still strung up by a trotter and I was absolutely itching to get an apron on and try butchering it myself.  But rush-hour traffic waits for no woman, and clutching my bag of porky goodness, I legged it.

A week later I ventured back to have a one-on-one lesson in the art of butchery.  I was a little nervous, especially as I’ve had a couple of knife-related blunders over the past week, but an opportunity like this doesn’t come along very often, so I was thrilled too.

After a quick Health and Safety talk, I donned white coat and striped butcher’s apron and approached the wooden butcher’s block and my very own pig half.  Mike explained that thie carcass was a lot stiffer than the one he used for the demonstration, so I shouldn’t feel bad if I found it hard work.  Well, that was reassuring!

What was far more reassuring was being told that I wouldn’t be allowed to work on the more expensive cuts of pork.  As I’d been having visions of having to buy the entire carcass if I messed up, I relaxed quite a bit and was far more able to enjoy myself.

When I went to pull away the fat from the cavity of the carcass and free the kidney I discovered what Mike meant.  The fat was immovable.  I couldn’t even get my fingers under it to begin with, but after wiggling the boning knife around it a little, I managed to make an end and finally the thick fat sheared free.

I sawed the carcass into the three primals and we immediately set the hind primal (leg) aside as that was going for sale in the shop.  Sawing a carcass is very much like sawing wood, except that there are far more interesting things to look at on a pig.  I got to split the mid-primal into belly and loin next, which was harder than I anticipated.  I also learned that I am rubbish at drawing straight lines, but Mike was there to protect the loin from my greedy lines.  I squared off the belly for sale in the shop and felt very proud of myself.

Lastly, I took the fore primal, sawed off the trotter, and separated it out into shoulder and foreleg.  This was earmarked for sausages, so Mike said I could mangle it as much as I wanted to!  I didn’t completely mangle it, but certainly the foreleg looked a bit… patchy, by the time I’d butterflied out the bone.  Boning the shoulder was a bit easier, but I was a bit thrown by the shoulder blade suddenly rearing up and out in what felt like a spur, before coming back down.  I cut the shoulder into a couple of joints which would have been good enough for the shop and felt even more proud.

By the end of the morning I was beginning to think that butchery was a pretty cool job and wondered aloud why more girls don’t go into it.  Mike laughed, told me to set my knives down, and took me out to the cold store.  Great big slabs of beef hung from their hooks, each a mere quarter of a cow.  Each piece weighed roughly 200lb.  Now, I don’t consider myself a weakling, but the sight of those huge pieces of meat was enough to disabuse me of any silly thoughts of becoming a proper butcher.  There was absolutely no way that I could shoulder quarter of a cow, go up and down some steps, turn a corner and then dump it onto a butcher’s block.  I suspect I’d simply crumple to the floor, which would be less than dignified.  (I do reckon that I could handle a pig though.  Are there any butchers who only do pork and lamb that want an apprentice?)

After all of that, I just had to buy some meat that I’d butchered myself.  So I came home with a kilo of pork belly that is now happily curing in the spare fridge to become some very special pancetta.  I boned it myself and even took out the little bits of gristle.  I did ask Mike to skin it for me as I wanted to leave plenty of fat on the meat.

I’d like to say a big thank-you to Mike and his lads for the demonstration and also for being so kind and generous as to let me loose on a valuable bit of meat!  I had a wonderful time, learned lots and I certainly won’t shy away from de-boning meat now that I’ve done it successfully.  I’d also encourage anyone with a passion for meat to look out for demos, or maybe even just ask your local butcher if you can have a go.  The worst they can say is no!

Perry & Son Family Butchers

4, Greenhill Parade
Alveston
Bristol
Avon
BS35 3LU

Tel: 01454 413486