Pasture to plate class: lamb style

I teach classes in butchery to folks interested in getting closer to their own food, in a visceral way, so to speak.  Christian, in the picture above, is getting married, and this lamb is for his wedding reception.   He's brought three friends.  He selected a spring lamb and off we went. 

These are the tools that we used during this class.  from left to right:  Sharpening steel, .22 rifle, meat saw, (bottom row) boning knife, skinning knife, butcher knife (top right) paring knives, marine K-Bar knife. 

Christian shot the lamb to stun it, and then cut its throat to drain the blood.  After that was done we used a singletree that I made (you can see it at the top of the first photo in this post) to hang the lamb for complete drain.  It was then skinned, eviscerated, and the organs carefully inspected and packed for use in haggis. 

After that we broke the lamb into primals and then into the retail cuts, covering how to french the ribs, debone the legs, and various options for the other cuts.

I do this class with minimum tools and equipment, and it's aimed at people who are raising their own animals or who are interested in the process to evaluate whether they'd like to raise their own.  All four of the participants of this came away with hands-on experience and the skills they'd need to property slaughter and inspect meat for their own table. 

Oh yea -- Congratulations, Christian!