Butchering steer on the hoof demonstrated in cooking class

When Taylor Brink visited La Conner High School last Thursday, he was fully armed – and armored.

The butcher/meat cutter for Northwest Local Meats, the retail butcher shop for the Island Grown Farmers Cooperative, used all the tools of his trade to break down two quarters of a steer in teacher Peter Voorhees' cooking classes.

Before employing his knives and saws, Brink put on a chain mail apron to prevent accidental stabs and a Kevlar arm band and glove to ward off cuts. Then he tackled the steer that Voorhees had raised on his property.

Voorhees and secondary school counselor Lori Buher had been hoping to invite a butcher to talk about careers in the field. When Voorhees could not find a USDA-licensed meat processor to help process his two steers, he asked for a class demonstration instead.

"The shop I was working with can't hire and keep people doing this skilled labor job," he said. Demand has also increased, as people bought whole animals to secure their food supply during the pandemic.

Starting with the hind quarter – home to the sirloin tip, rounds for roasts and stews and tenderloin – Brink sliced off specific cuts while talking about his career journey.

He has done everything from fishing in Alaska and working in a sawmill to selling vacuums and cooking. When the Darrington High School grad got bored on his last job, he remembered how, as a cook, he had enjoyed portioning out steaks and cutting the prime rib.

"I realized I should cut meat!" he told students. Island Grown was willing to train him on the job.

"I started cutting and once I got my knife skills up, I broke down beef, started finishing meat and went on the slaughter truck," he explained. "I'm pretty much staying here until I get too old to do it."

"How old is too old?' asked student Acelynd Greening.

"It could be 35 or 45 or 50," he replied. "I work with a meat cutter who is 70 years old and another that is 78."

There were about 147,000 jobs for butchers and meat cutters in the U.S. in 2021, a number that may soon grow. In November 2022, the USDA awarded $223 million in grants and loans in its Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program. It aims to increase capacity for farmers who want to raise and pack meat and sell it directly to the public. Training a larger meat processing workforce is part of the effort.

La Conner High School doesn't train meat cutters, but through Voorhees' "International Foods and Foods of the Salish Sea" courses, students learn about the culinary and hospitality fields.

"Mr. Voorhees' courses complement more advanced courses that our students can take at the Northwest Career and Technical Academy if they find that culinary and hospitality is an area that they want to pursue," said Buher.

Besides culinary arts, the school also offers state-approved career tech education (CTE) in automotive, construction, computer science, math and American sign language. One vocational credit is required for graduation and school administration is committed to expanding its CTE offerings.

There's no textbook for meat cutting skills, Brink commented. "Everybody at Island Grown was so excited that I wanted to learn that they all wanted to teach me. I had to stop and wait and watch and listen and try to repeat what I saw."

He also studied USDA beef charts to find and identify the various cuts. Eventually, he says, he could just see them in the beef. "Through repetition, I started to get the feel for it. It is intricate and I had to be patient."

When beef is hanging vertically, Brink can break it down quickly, but working on a horizontal classroom offered a learning curve for him. Two class periods were required to finish butchering both quarters of beef. In seventh period, students Greening, Kali Adams and Armena Joe tackled the bones, trimming fat and small pieces of meat off the bones to use for hamburger.

By day's end, about 350 pounds of meat was cut, labeled and ready for consumption by the Voorhees family.

"Nice beef," Brink told Voorhees. "Good job."