Butchering Question

[Jennifer L.]

I've butchered lots of poultry and a couple of dozen rabbits, but never anything larger. Today, due to unfortunate circumstances, I've been slowing going through the process of trying to save as much of an 800 pound heifer as I can.

The thing is, stuff that is nothing on a rabbit or turkey is quite a lot on a cow. My question is meat that is on the flank, stretching from the ends of the ribs to the start of the round: Does this normally get ground into hamburgher? There's a lot of fatty connective tissue involved with this meat.

I don't have a grinder, and really nothing in the way of butchering equipment for an animal this size, so I figure on "parting her out" and either freezing now and canning later or something like that.

Another question is, she was not bled out. She died from getting trying to leap a stall partition and getting stuck, then getting pounded on the head from another heifer who thought it was great sport. Because of that I thought taking her to a butcher might be just throwing good money after bad, and that I'd try it myself. Butchering a cow is actually something I've always wanted to do, just not a $1200 heifer . . .

Oh, something else: her internal organs were neatly packaged in a fatty tissue bag. Kind of. Can that be rendered for tallow or should you only try and save the "leaf" type fat (what I always think of as suet).

Thanks.

Jennifer

[nehimama]

I don't know the answers to your butchering questions, but I'm awfully sorry you lost a valuable heifer in this manner. You never know what animals are going to do!

NeHi

[farminghandyman]

the flank can be made into many types of cuts, but hamburger is a good choice for it, some times fajita meat strips, there is what is called skirt steak, it can be tenderized and used for chicken fry type steaks, I many times just grind it into hamburger as many times were hamburger short by the time we re-butcher,


the kidney fat can be rendered, I have never done it but I don't know why it could not be done, there is a lot of fat there normally.

it would have been good to have got her bled, I never had unbled beef, I have had a lot of deer that was not bled very well.

there is a lot of information here at this site,
http://www.askthemeatman.com/
supplies
http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/index.php
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/te...navAction=jump

[gimpy]

stew meat, stir fy, steaks, corned beef...you can essentially do anything you want with the meat, it'll probably be a little tough, but long low cooking can take care of that. As far as the fat in the belly goes, I think you are talking about the omentum. I forget the chef's name for it, but it tends to be a rather rich fat and highly prized for wrapping around dry roasts.

It's a little late for butchering this particular heifer, but a butchering kit is nice to have on hand. Just today I got an email about a kit for sale. I have one and have used it for years and really like the knives. The saw it comes with is poor quality, but you can't beat the price for good knives
http://budk.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_12+PGKC059

[big rockpile]

Debone it cut it up for Steaks,Roast,Stew Meat.

Flank Stew Meat.

big rockpile

[JHinCA]

Dh tells me there are videos on beef butchering on youtube. He watched a 6 part series that was very helpful titled Beef Carcass Break Down.

[texican]

If I was going to can any of the meat, I'd do the parts that normally would have been ground into hamburger. As you probably know, the canning process will tenderize the toughest old shoe leather chunks of meat.

Hope you've got a large freezer. If you already have frozen stuff in there, you might want to layer the frozen bags with the fresh meat bags... otherwise it might take a day or two for the meat to freeze properly.

I've never heard of anyone rendering down the 'gut bag'... reckon if a person was hungry enough, and had plenty of time, it could be done. If so, I'd render separately, in case off smells get imparted. The leaf fat should be fine, as long as the stomach/intestines contents aren't spilled on the meat.

If you have any way to age the beef, it would be worth the trouble. I had to butcher a cow during the summer, and had no way of aging... and it was quite a 'chew-fest'.....

[agmantoo]

Since the animal was not bleed out here is a suggestion that I use with venison. For the larger cuts, get a large container and place the meat in same. Cover with ice and store in a safe shaded area. Remove excess water and replenish the ice as it melts. The ice and the water will hold a desired temperature for aging and at the same time the excess blood with be soaked from the meat into the water. You can do this for a week to ten days, just keep removing the water. This process will let you better manage the task at hand since you will not have to refrigerate the meat that is not prepared for freezing/canning. With the quantity of meat you have to deal with just de-bone the best cuts and keep all the scraps and unknown cuts of lean meat and white fat for burger. Each main muscle is covered with a thin silvery skin and you can use that thin skin as a guide to separate each muscle. Once you have these muscles apart just cut crosswise to the grain and package for freezing. You have too much meat to hand grind. Find someone that processes venison and ask them to grind your burger. Double grind the burger for better results. Adjust the fat to lean ration to meet the time of burger your family enjoys. All this is a big task and unfortunately you will probably have to be somewhat wasteful with some of the organ meat and fat in order to get the work done.

[Jennifer L.]

Thanks, everyone. Boy, you folks really came through with the answers.

I checked Googled omentum and another name for it is "caul fat". I cooked it down last night in the oven and the fat seems fine from it. Not really sure that I want much of it anyway, just some suet for a fruitcake next month, but it was the first thing I got my hands on out of her that looked like it could be used for something so it went into the pail. I froze up the kidney fat.

And I cooked up some of the flank meat and chewy is the word for it. I bagged most of it and put it in the freezer without doing anything else to it. I have an idea that the dogs might get that when I thaw it out--there's just me here and there is still have half of a cow left from last January, so no sense me eating the worst cuts on this heifer.

Texican, yes, I have a lot of freezer room. I was going to get a pig in there but there was an accident and I didn't get the meat. BUT, I had defrosted the freezer. So it's more incentive to get as much of this heifer in there as I can.

Agmantoo, that's a great tip about the ice soak. The meat I cooked last night has kind of a liver smell when it's cooking, but it's faint, and I didn't notice any off taste when I ate it. I like the soak idea, though, and may try it when I get going today. I'm lucky that the weather has recently (finally!) turned cooler here. It's not ideal butcher weather, but it's better than the summer. Had this happened in the summer I'd never have attempted any of it.

Gimpy, I ordered that kit, thanks! I've had a boning knife out in the barn for years, but this summer it fell tip first on the concrete and that broke the blade. So I need something out there for the emergency situations where jack knife won't do it. This kit will stay out on top of the hot water heater and I hope it doesn't ever get used.

All together, it's been a really bad week for me. My milk hauler who also raises my heifers got into a bad accident and is in pretty bad shape with a severe head injury. It's been a week and he hasn't woken up from it yet. So it doesn't look good. He's been a great friend and I miss not seeing him every other day, like I have for the past 8 or 9 years. So not only is it that, but all of the heifers had to come home 28 miles from his place as fast as I could manage it. The place wasn't set up for them and won't be for awhile so they are crowded in with the cows. This heifer died less than 24 hours from getting home.

Edited to add: the pig accident? The processed pork was in the cab with John when he rolled his milk truck, so that was some more loss. Admittedly, small potatos, but I ended up paying the processing cost on it without getting anything back. Figured it wasn't the butcher's problem that the accident happened.

Jennifer

[gimpy]

Originally Posted by Jennifer L.

Gimpy, I ordered that kit, thanks! I've had a boning knife out in the barn for years, but this summer it fell tip first on the concrete and that broke the blade. So I need something out there for the emergency situations where jack knife won't do it. This kit will stay out on top of the hot water heater and I hope it doesn't ever get used.
Jennifer

the case is plastic so you probably wouldn't want to store it on top of a hot water heater or do you mean a stock water heater?

[Jennifer L.]

Originally Posted by gimpy

the case is plastic so you probably wouldn't want to store it on top of a hot water heater or do you mean a stock water heater?

My milk inspector will tell you I already store too many things on top of the hot water heater the way it is, so I suppose it could go somewhere else.

Jennifer

[michiganfarmer]

Originally Posted by Jennifer L.

My milk inspector will tell you I already store too many things on top of the hot water heater the way it is, so I suppose it could go somewhere else.

Jennifer

milk inspectors are all the same ,arent they?

[Jennifer L.]

Originally Posted by michiganfarmer

milk inspectors are all the same ,arent they?

Must be. I know they are important, but grrrr. Sometimes they really get to me.

Hey, I've got another butchering question. Bruised meat. Do you only remove the obviously damaged muscle (mashed fibers) or do you have to go out any distance from it. This heifer had some horrendous blood spots under her hide around the sirloin, but the actual spot of meat that looked like the problem was only fist sized. Is it enough to just remove that spot?

So far this afternoon I deboned one hind leg and down as far as the first (last) rib. Still have to get that in the freezer.

Jennifer

[agmantoo]

Make cross hatch cuts through the area in the meat and soak in cold water overnight. A little salt added to the water will help. The blood will soak out.

[Christiaan]

You can kosher the meat to help get the blood out. It involves soaking in salt water, then fresh. Not sure of the proportion of salt to water.

[Jennifer L.]

OK, thanks, everyone. That should get me through this. The weather is looking a little warmer this week but I think I should have time to get most of her in the freezer. This has been a fast hard lesson in home butchering for me!

Jennifer

[hotzcatz]

We did an emergency butcher when the neighboring vegetarian's pet steer got a broken leg and we had a lot of the same issues with that project. First time butchering a cow and we really weren't prepared but had to do it anyway. The carcass wasn't bled out properly since with the broken leg we couldn't move the steer out of the small dry creek bed he was in and couldn't get anything in to lift the carcass to bleed it. Some of the meat turned a weird green color and smelled pretty high but most of it was okay. Mostly it was which part had been bled out which made the difference. The meat tasted a LOT better after aging it for ten days in the refrigerator.

We cut up a bunch of it for stew and canned quarts and quarts of it. We also didn't have much room in the refrigerator or freezer so we put a lot of it under brine. Put salt in water until an egg floats and then submerge the cuts of meat completely. It can stay in there for several days if necessary. We added spices, sugar and flavorings and made jerky after brining it for awhile. It almost tasted like bacon when it was done.

Butchering the steer was quite the project and we still have beef in the freezer and quarts of stew meat in the cupboard but now when we slaughter a wild pig it doesn't seem like half the effort it used to.

[Jennifer L.]

Hotzcatz, yes, you know the situation all right! I'm going to end up brining the second front quarter, following Agmantoo's idea. It's been hanging for a few days and I was surprised at how much blood continues to pool. The last few days I've been reading up on brining and smoking, etc, and this seems like a good way to treat it. The rear quarter won't be a problem at all with being improperly bled, the way things look.

Jennifer

[gimpy]

Did the kit arrive? Mine did yesterday