Butchering & Processing

The pale-eyed pompano staring at you through the curved glass seafood counter gives a warning to the wise buyer. And god only knows what the inside of Brad Pitt's creel smelled like at the end of A River Runs Through It. The difference between a fishy-smelling fillet and a restaurant-quality dish is...

Most hunters dream of gray, cold days on the stand. In the early season, however, this is hardly the case. Where I hunt in Mississippi, early season temps regularly hover in the nineties, while flip flop weather isn’t out of the question come Christmas. Even in the late season you can forget dry...

As all hunters know, the real work begins once an animal is on the ground. After a successful shot, the arduous task of gutting, quartering, transporting, and processing commences. And while many folks choose to get their hands dirty and do the processing at home, others prefer not to do it or...

My daughter pointed out that science has disproved many things. “For instance, Daddy, the rule ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c.’” I could only laugh and agree. However, science offers a few simple guidelines in the care and handling of meat that can ensure animals harvested become delicious, healthy...

At its most basic, sausage is the simple combination of meat, fat, salt, and casing. But to make a good sausage—one that rivals anything you might find at the butcher shop—the devil is in the details. Here are a few tips to help you avoid some of the most common sausage-making mistakes. Not Keeping...

One of the first steps after a successful deer hunt is skinning your deer, after which the skin itself often becomes an afterthought as you attend to the important process of filling up the freezer with meat. Sure, there are services you can send your deer hide to and pay for it to be taxidermied or...

One of my favorite things about acquiring my own wild meat is that it comes with an added bonus: fat. Many hunters overlook wild game fat and dismiss it as they would most stuff from the gut pile. Wild game fat has great value, though. Duck fat, for example, is treasured by foodies and some folks...

For some hunters, adding domestic fat to venison is taboo. For others, it’s a necessity. One thing is for sure (and no more evident than here at MeatEater): at-home butchers have a wide range of preferences regarding fat content and there are no set rules. Here are some of our thoughts on adding fat...

The English language does little service to tripe. The dictionary tells us that the word means guts or entrails used as food. Alternatively: nonsense, gibberish, worthless, rubbish. Offal does no better. One must spell the word rather than say it to get their point across. How to convince the wary...

My first in-person experience with dead deer was when I was a kid and saw a few does hung up on a meat pole with their throats slit. I asked why their throats were cut, and I was told: “to bleed them.” I didn’t start hunting until much later in life, so I just tucked the whole experience away in my...

Adam Crockett lay death-still and unblinking as a doctor pushed a needle into his right eyeball and withdrew built-up fluid. With that task complete, the doctor at the Cole Eye Institute in Cleveland pushed a second needle deep into the back of Crockett’s eye, all the way to the retina. Stopping...

Like so many Americans during the pandemic, I’ve found myself eager to try new things in the kitchen. Recently I wanted to make venison chorizo and andouille sausage, but I had one problem—no pork fatback. So I wondered, can you make sausage without animal fat? A sausage without fat isn’t a sausage...