Pat LaFrieda Beef Butchering Class

Last week, I was lucky enough to take someone’s spot in a meat butchering class held by Pat LaFrieda at The Kitchen, NYC. Pat LaFrieda’s meat is really famous in the New York region and they supply lots of restaurants their beef, lamb and pork. If you’ve had the black label burger from Minetta Tavern, you’ve had Pat LaFrieda’s delicious combination of short rib, skirt steak and brisket. Pat LaFrieda is a third generation meat purveyor and knows everything you’d ever want to know about cows – he was super nice and gave a really in depth tutorial on beef. Some photos from the class:

Pat brought in one of the hind legs of the cow (it was delivered the previous day from South Dakota):

Showing off some marbling:

The final product:

After Pat showed us how to butcher the cow, we sampled some beef tartare and put on our aprons so we could butcher a beef shank. We all set up at our stations with our aprons, gloves and beef shanks:

We had to cut around the bone to remove the meat and then we seasoned it with sage, rosemary, salt and pepper, and tied the shank together with twine:

Tying the beef with twine was actually the most difficult part – Pat taught us how to tie it but it was much more difficult for me than I anticipated….I had to watch him more than four times before I finally got the hang of it or created my own knot that passed as something similar to his.

The bone, after I was through with it:

I cooked the beef shank for our Superbowl party and it was so delicious – we made a lot of cilantro rice and ended up creating our own burrito bowls with homemade salsa, too! It was such a fun class and they’re doing more – I definitely want to sign up for the pork and lamb classes!