The CAP TIMES – Wisconsin invests in small-scale butchers as demand for local meat rises

Wisconsin invests in small-scale butchers as demand for local meat rises

By Lindsay Christians

Mar 30, 2022

On a recent Monday, culinary instructor Joe Parajecki stood in front of students in butchers’ whites, their hair tucked up into hats, notebooks at the ready. In one hand, he lifted a well-marbled hunk of striploin, brandishing it like a fish he’d just caught.

“This is the danger of big (processing) plants,” said Parajecki, who teaches in the Artisanal Modern Meat Butchery program at Madison College. “Somebody stuck their hook right here” — he placed his thumb into a rip in the muscle — “and destroyed three inches into the strip.”

No restaurant chef wants a steak with a hole in it. If the plant hadn’t messed up, “you’d have three more inches of steak,” piped up Amber Ferry, a student who raises her own beef on a farm in East Troy.

“That was me breaking the tenderloin last week,” added Lance Bontrager, another student. Bontrager works at the Piggly Wiggly in Belleville and dreams of selling local beef to grocery stores. (For full article: https://captimes.com/food-drink/wisconsin-invests-in-small-scale-butchers-as-demand-for-local-meat-rises/article_5e380a17-a4f9-503f-a2b7-14f79922bbeb.html)