Binns Brigit Legere - Whole Beast Butchery

Attempting to thank on a couple of pages family, friends, and colleagues who have helped me in my life is an impossible task. I am very fortunate for every laugh, tear, and piece of bacon we have shared together. Thank you all for your support, guidance, and hungry bellies.

Cesalee, you are an amazing mother, partner, and loving wife. I am very proud of everything we have created together and excited for what tomorrow brings.

Mom and Dad (Hulyn and Ron Farr), thank you for raising me with unconditional love and for your unwavering belief in me. (I do know I was a little shit.) I look forward to raising my son with the same compassion, support, and love that you gave me.

Lauren (Lauren Farr), you have been my partner in many crimes and many BBQ meals in KC. I am proud to be your big brother. Bonapatche!

Mema and Pop (Carolyn and Hughie Habighorst), waking up before the sun rose to get a jump-start on breakfast is one of my favorite memories. My love for food began with the amazing people we met, the restaurants and diners where we ate, and the places we traveled.

Grandma (Guyneth Farr), as a child enjoying your cherry pies, buttery toast, and perfectly cooked eggs created memories of simple perfections. Those moments were realizations that food is much more than just substance. Thank you for showing me less is more. And a deep thanks for not locking me out of the house when I let all the rabbits free from their pens.

Autrey, Hogan, and Leffler families, thank you for your love and your welcoming arms, for embracing us into your family. The endless good times and wonderful Southern hospitality are very dear to me.

Devin Autrey, you are truly an inspiration as a friend, man, and chef. You always followed your heart and your stomach; your life has truly been a model for so many.

Cole Mayfield, you are a very good friend and a talented chef. Your approach to life and food with the utmost passion and love is commendable. Your meticulous recipe testing and tolerance of my BS for all these years have been invaluable. Thank you.

4505 employees past and present, your support, dedication, and continual enthusiasm have helped us find our place in the culinary world. Thank you immensely.

Marc Leffler, you are a funny and talented man. Thank you for your one-liners, laughter, and endless help building the 4505 brand.

C.H.E.F.S. staff, all of you and all the students helped me find my love for teaching and gave me the opportunity to build our company. Thank you.

Huge thanks to all the ranchers and their families for the endless work raising amazing animals. Mac Magruder, Don Watson, and Lee Hudson, thank you for the beautiful steers, lambs, and pigswithout your wonderful animals, none of this would be possible.

Lulu and Dexter and all the amazing staff, farmers, and volunteers at the CUESA Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, your dedication to the community and to providing for others is an inspiration (and you are all great friends, as well).

Kent Schoberle, you do great work, sir. Thank you for your continuous dedication.

Thank you, to the talented staff of Chronicle Books: Vanessa Dina, your dedication and ability to see the beauty of butchery while keeping the functionality clear in the design is sheer talent. Lorena Jones, thank you for humoring me and believing in me. Your determination and boldness are paving the way and setting an example for so many.

Brigit! Your hard work and love for good food has elevated our professional relationship into a friendship that will last forever.

Ed Anderson, your ability to capture the beauty of every cut and technique has added an element to every picture that is rarely captured. You truly have skills, sir. Thank you.

Thank you Carole Bidnick for your endless work making all this happen.

To all the film and production crew, it was a pleasure working together. Thank you.

Thank you to the Bay Area! Your beauty, bounty, and personality are something very special and are the key ingredients in 4505 Meats.

To everybody who has supported me since day one: I owe you the world, and I love you all!

Im excited to share my love of butchering and passion for whole-animal utilization. With this book youll learn how to break down a whole animal and utilize the entire carcass. I am going to cover the basic cuts and explain everything you need to get started.

The great thing about whole-animal utilization is that there are many different ways to approach breaking down the animal. In Whole Beast Butchery, I show you some of my favorite techniques. Because Im a classically trained chef, my view of the animal is based on the end result. I look at how every single piece of the animal can be used and consumed without any waste. Thats why my approach is sometimes a little unconventional; its my own point of view, and it reflects how I developed my style. Once you have learned the basics, you can develop your own. My tutorials will help you reach that point by showing easy ways to break down a whole animal or a section, whether youre a home cook or a professional working in a restaurant.

You can use all these techniques as a foundation for doing your own butchering, but dont think that means you can replace your local butcher. Butchery and whole-animal utilization are arts that are often handed down from generation to generation and take years to master. Throughout my career, Ive been inspired by the men and women who have chosen this honorable profession. I would never suggest that we dont need butchershey, we need a lot more butcher shops and opportunities for butchers!but by using this book, you can do some of what they do.

We also need to support our local farmers and ranchers. There are probably more than a few sources of grass-fed animals in your hometown, but it might take some digging to find the family-run ranches that produce them. Do the digging.

Start by chatting with your local butchers. Go to the farmers markets and delicatessens. Find these farmers and ranchers. Talk to them and make friends. Buy local, and help small businesses and family farms grow. This is what its all about.

Butchering in this country has broken out of the restaurant kitchen and moved into the home. This trend is a result of several major changes in our society, including a stronger desire to live up to higher moral and ethical standards, concerns for the safety of our food supply, and a renewed spirit of self-reliance. Now that the givens of our daily lives are in jeopardyour economic security, the dependability of our food supply, and the safety of our generous natural resourcesraising our own food affords us both a sense of security and a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. Even if we cant raise our own animals, many of us want to know how the animals we consume were raised and what they were fed.

Home butchering is the logical next step for those who raise their own vegetables and chickens, preserve the bounty of the land and field for off-season meals, and care deeply about what they feed themselves and their families. When you decide to butcher a whole animal or a part of one by yourself, as I hope you will, you are almost always going to be buying that animal locally. By doing so, you are supporting a local business as well as your community: If you buy a pig raised by your neighbor on his farm or from a rancher outside of town, he will have more money to spend, some of which might even come back to you. One thing is certain: That farmer or rancher can now raise more animals, raise them well, and supply more concerned consumers with better-quality meatmeat they can trust as well as enjoy.