Nose To Tail Cooking, Part 2

Last week, we learned how to cook buffalo tongue - a fun experiment with a tasty conclusion. Keep an eye out for more whole animal cooking/usage tips in the future! Who knows - maybe a Viking-style cup made of buffalo horn??

We know that using the whole animal is respectful and economical. But what does that look like in reality? There are really only so many tongues and hearts to go around - one per animal, to be exact, so organs and offal may not feed the masses if you only have a herd of 20 animals. However, is it helpful to understand how the animals are processed. For each animal that is harvested, we have to decide what "cuts" of meat to use. For instance, you can't get both pork belly and bacon from a pig, because they come from the same part of the animal - the belly. There are many cuts like this that contradict each other, so we have to make decisions about what we want to use from each animal. And, for each delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, tenderloin (only one of these per animal too!) there are 10-20 times that amount of meat that has to be ground or made into less tender cuts. It is important to understand how the relative scarcity of some of these products plays a part in pricing and cutting decisions on our part.

When we design 1/4, 1/2, or whole animal meat packages, we try to take this into account. So, for every pound of steak, you might receive 3-4 times that amount of ground meat or burger patties. It is all part of using and respecting the whole animal - plus, who doesn't love a nice burger?