I have seen a demo live and a few online references and articles. Supposedly the method drastically reduces the need for major chopping or cutting by separating major muscle groups along their natural separations or "seams" [the membranes or bursa that allow muscle groups to contract or relax and "slide" by other muscles] and then just cutting their attachments - typically at joints, plus boning and harvesting culinary quality fat and organ meats as you go.
The result is a relatively clean, disarticulated skeleton and clean meat separated into the various muscle groups ready to be cooked or stored [eacjh of which the French insist do best cooked in separate ways!]. Pretty fast and impressive to watch an expert "unzip" an animal like a pig.
Aside from a stout, relatively short, and wickedly sharp boning blade, as I recall the other tools used were a fairly flexible, longer, narrow bladed knife for some deboning, and a t-handled loop of what I assume was braided and teflon-coated stainless wire was used to loop over bones such as ribs and then pulled to along the bone to separate the meat [bone].
The resulting muscle meats were then rolled and tied for roasts, sliced across the grain to create steaks [including butterflying some for uniform thickness], ground for various uses including sausage, etcetera.
Bottom line: how you butcher probably determines which tools will work best.
Edited by dweste (11/10/11 05:03 AM)
Previous Topic
Index
