Essesntial Butchering Equipment
Basic Butchering Equipment
Butchering at home is an experience like no other and it’s highly likely you already own the equipment needed to achieve success. If not, equipment can be accumulated over time or borrowed from neighbors. It’s also likely when you purchase equipment, you’ll be sharing the larger items with neighbors and eventually passing it down to the next generation. This is to say, that buying butchering equipment is an investment that wont leave you empty. Whether you are butchering chickens, pigs or beef, there is specific equipment that is needed.
Knives Are Essential
This is pretty obvious but it is nice to have an arsenal of knives at your disposal, however about three knives is all you really need. There are so many different types of knives to choose from so lets take a look at what they are.
Boning Knife – thin semi-stiff curved blade, 5-7″ long. This will be your most used knife for all butchering.
Breaking Knife – long stiff blade, curved or semi-curved, 8-10″ long. Also called a butcher knife or a sticking knife. Great for trimming and breaking down large cuts.
Cimeter Knife or Butcher knife – straight, stiff blade, 12″ long. Used for slicing large cuts of meat.
Our Favorite Knives
Boning knives are a perfect start to your butchering equipment collection. Growing up in farm country watching Dad and Grandpa butcher every year, we really only saw one kind of knife. Black handled carbon steel boning knives. All the uncles, and cousins have this style of boning knife. These knives stand the test of time. Out of the package these knives will cut through cartilage like butter.
Curved blade boning knives are the go-to for butchers. Fibrox handles provide an easy comfortable grip. Used by Grandpa and generations before him. Easy to grip and stay sharp longer with carbon steel material.
High grade German construction combo set boning and skinning knife with scabbard is a great choice for the home butcher to get started.
A 10″ curved cimeter knife is used for cutting large pieces of meat which is essential for any home butcher. The knife material is easy to maintain. Stays sharp longer.
Knife Sharpeners Are Essential
A sharpening steel is quick to use and easy to bring with when butchering. Electric sharpeners are handy to have. Just a quick touch and the knife is sharp once again. They are honed precisely and easy to take with. You will determine your own favorite way to sharpen knives and will likely own a few different knife sharpening tools.
Our Favorite Knife Sharpeners
Never once did I see an electric or a kitchen sharpener in the butcher room. It was always just the steel. I never understood how Dad and Grandpa were able to get a good edge on a knife with just running it across the steel, but somehow, they always did. They had been using a steel their whole lives, they were experienced and knew just what angle to hold the knife at the get it the sharpest.
- Sharpening Steels are easy to take anywhere and used by the most experienced butchers
- Sharpens very dull edges.
- Carbon Steel material
- 12″ is a good size to have.
- Kitchen Knife Sharpener 3-step system.
- Repairs, restores and polishes the blade.
- Hones at the correct angle and edge.
- Easy for anyone to use.
- Electric Sharpeners make sharpening easy and fast.
- Always hones at the correct angle. No mistakes here. Percise.
- Lightweight and easy to bring along.
A Butcher Room is Essential
A Butcher room is essentially a large room that contains all the heavy equipment you will need to make butchering easy. The room will contain a bone saw, meat grinder, stainless steel tables, cutting boards and knives of all sorts and sizes, heat, water, and a cool place to hang beef, deer and hogs.
Our Favorite Butcher Room Essentials
The butcher room can be an old barn milk room, heated garage or shed. A place cold enough to hang the meat in the same room when cutting. A sink with a hose makes it easy to spray down and clean up at the end of a long day. A used walk-in cooler that keeps the meat at the essential temperature is nice but not necessary.
Rubber Floor Mats are as essential as knives in the butcher room. Standing for long hours, on a concrete floor, will wear you out quickly. But a rubber floor mat like this will make a huge difference in your butchering longevity.
Steel and Metal Mesh Gloves keep your hands at a consistent temperature and save you from getting cut. These gloves are flexible and comfortable. Worth purchasing.
Stackable Meat Lugs are essential to any butchering day. As you cut up meat, you put good cuts in the tubs and bring them to where you are wrapping your meat. Easy to store, stackable. Look for the ones that have heavy duty ribbed rims with a wide rolled lip for hauling heavy loads.
Processing Meat at Home
Butchering meat at home is a lost art that few people achieve anymore. The traditions and the need is lost in a lot of families. Butchering at home isn’t complicated but it is work. Hard work and committing to it is something we don’t often see. It’s much easier to raise the animal and send it to the local butcher for processing. Though it saves on time, it loses the historic art of butchering at home.
Do not be afraid to create your own traditions and meat cutting holidays with friends and families. It becomes a time to gather the family and reminisce about life as you cut and solve the worlds problems. Often times the wives will be packing the meat nearby and having their own personal conversations. Butchering at home is a lost art. We hope you can bring it back to your generations in your own personal way.