Best budget processing setup for white in a home kitchen

[bburke292]

Looking to start processing white in my homes kitchen any suggestions or tips/tricks to get started? Tired of paying and waiting for the processor in town. I am finally ready to start need some help!

 

[EdP]

Watch some videos, buy a small grinder. Maybe not the smallest but one size up. Sharpen your knives. Don't over think it. Start to finish the wife and I will do an animal in 3-4 hrs including clean-up. I cut and she grinds and wraps. Cut roasts larger than you think they need to be because they shrink a lot in cooking. A kitchen scale is handy to have to help keep package sizes (ground or stew cuts) the same size.

 

[fishslap]

Victorinox knives. Cheap and very good. Get the filet for silver skin removal and upgrade to the wusthof 7” later when you have the money. Well worth it if you like to remove all of the outer silver skin from cuts. Get a few sizes of the victorinox boning. I like the breaking knife for cutting steaks. Sharpeners of your choice. I use a mix of stones and electric. I picked up a sharpal ceramic honing rod last year for touch up and well worth it.

Large plastic cutting board. I use an 18”x 30”.

Kitchen scale.

Grinder will be the most expensive. I use an LEM # 12. They have sales. I’m sure there are cheaper options. If you have a kitchen aid mixer, you can get by with the grinder attachment.

Vacuum sealer. I use an LEM. I cheap vac sealer can be frustrating but we got by on a foodsaver for years.

Large plastic bowls, tubs etc. but sized to fit in the fridge or coolers. I butcher in the kitchen and nest the bowls in ice water so i can keep the meat cold that I just trimmed before i move a full bowl to the refrigerator or cooler. I’d look to invest in a couple meat lugs if you can. I have LEM a few shorter and taller versions.

You can search this site for the general components above and read up on details.

Have your recipes and preferred meal sizes in mind when butchering. Get familiar with general cuts. Here’s how I process:
-Neck: Two “roast” size pieces for deer. I do bon appetite’s braised short rib recipe for these.
-Backstrap: I leave these in small sections for grilling.
-Front shoulder: Separate the flatiron steak. Keep a larger section of the shoulder for a shoulder roast if you want (we don’t). Trim the rest and divide into your grind and/or stew meat. We do more grind than stew.
-Rib, Belly, Diaphragm: Grind pile for us but you can read up on the other names for these cuts and options.
-tenderloins…you know hat to do with these.
-Shanks: I used to do bone in rounds for osso buco but now I just do boneless shank packages and grind the rest. I use a meateater blade roast recipe for shank also. I like high quality grind so I’d rather braise most of the shank than grind.
-Hind Quarter: Here’s where I’m probably different than most guys. I break it down to the smallest whole muscle pieces that have no silver skin within them then trim off all outer silver skin. I then steak everything I can except the eye of round and maybe a small roast not worth steaking. When cutting steaks, cut against the grain and thicker than you think since they spread out when laid flat (test a few). I don’t label as specific cuts but if I have any with some facia/silver skin left in them I’ll just put them in a pile and put “tougher” on the label and use appropriately. If you want to keep a whole roast, up to you. All trim is cleaned up and in the grind pile. Note for small steaks we use them for kabobs, slice for stir fry, stew if we don’t keep other stew meat, etc. For all other steaks, we grill after 30min in a ziplock bag w/ 1 tbs soy, 1tbs red wine vinegar, 2 tbs olive oil, 2 tsp Montreal or other steak seasoning.

That’s the short of it.

 

[sndmn11]

Dear Lord don't skimp on the grinder. We were haled back by a MEAT under 1hp grinder. We dreaded grinding time because it would get clogged up. We bought a LEM 1hp big bite and it's turned an hours' long process into 15min