CleverRoot

1 6 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t DURING THE MONTH OF MAY, the Los Angeles Times offers a plethora of culinary-related activities during its annual Food Bowl, inviting participants to visit farmers markets all over the city, eat their way through an outdoor street- food market in Downtown L.A., attend a panel about industry women in leadership roles, and much, much more. Given the sheer variety of choices, I opted for a more intimate event that was perhaps the most hands-on, as well: a pork butchery workshop at Electric City Butcher. Tucked in downtown Santa Ana's 4th Street Market, a hall filled with food stalls and specialty food stores, Electric City Butcher opened four years ago to sell meat cuts, sausages, pâté, bacon, and almost every other mouthwatering meat product imaginable. For those who want to go behind the scenes of the process their food goes through before it ends up on their tables, the butcher shop offers classes ranging from the aforementioned pork butchery workshop to duck charcuterie and sausage-making. While I've butchered a few pig parts in my time, I'm always willing to learn from the mas- ters, so I arrived to the class with an open mind and a hungry stomach. There, half of a Duroc pig—along with its head—awaited us on the worktop table. Electric City Butcher sources its pigs from two Northern California establish- ments: Stemple Creek Ranch, where animals are 100 percent grass-fed, and Rancho Llano Seco, which specializes in grain-fed pigs. Under the instruction of Electric City Butcher co-owner Michael Puglisi and Steve Sabicer, who teaches classes and runs the business' sales and marketing department, we first learned the difference between primal, sub-primal, and fabricated (or secondary) cuts. "The five primal cuts are what the whole hog is broken down into for the first cuts: the Boston butt [Editor's note: This cut is located nowhere near the rear], the picnic shoulder [which is located nowhere near a picnic], the loin, the belly and spareribs, and the ham," Puglisi said. After the sub- primal cuts are further broken down, they're sent to restaurants and retail stores, while the fabricated cuts are sold to the consumer as chops, tenderloin, bacon, and other household meat products. We soon transitioned to the next lesson: un- derstanding which equipment to use. Electric City forgoes any type of electric saw in favor of an 8-inch boning knife, a 10- to 12-inch scimi- tar knife, and a meat hook. The boning knife features a flexible curved blade that allows the user to cut away meat from the bone in thin, precise cuts, while the scimitar knife is a heftier curved blade used for cutting up larger pieces of meat. A saw is only needed to cut through large bones like the spine. As Puglisi and Sabicer began to break down the pig piece by piece with occasional assis- tance from class attendees, they were careful to point out that they practice "whole-animal" butchering, meaning they aim to use as much of the pig (or other animals) as possible to minimize waste. Sausages, pâté, head cheese, and other products are made with the parts of the animals not butchered as cuts. As a meat eater, I firmly believe carnivores should be aware of where our meat comes from and how it's processed. The level of transpar- ency seen through hands-on experiences like this class allows us to form a closer connection to our food while promoting small businesses and local farms and reducing food waste. As a bonus, our participation in the class was well-rewarded: On top of learning the ins and outs—literally—of whole-pig butchery, each attendee took home several pounds of freshly butchered pork and a few fresh sausages. I'll take that over a report card any day. ■cr MEAT ABOUT TOWN From Pork to Fork WIELDING A KNIFE WITH ELECTRIC CITY BUTCHER IN SANTA ANA, CA by Jesse Hom-Dawson / photos by Dustin Downing Participants in a recent butchering class at Electric City Butcher were presented with half of a Duroc pig. The pig is first divided in the five primal cuts before each part is broken down into sub-primal and fabricated cuts. Electric City Butcher co-owner Michael Puglisi with Steve Sabicer, who runs the company's sales and marketing department in addition to teaching weekly classes. Electric City Butcher in Santa Ana, CA, practices whole-animal butchery, which means all parts of the animal are used in everything from pâtés to sausages to prosciutto. All products are available for sale in its storefront. ham spareribs/belly picnic shoulder Boston or shoulder butt loin

• Cover