Yesterday as I was doing my prep work to get the next rounds of Corn Beef, an then planning on the next step making Pastrami, As well as corning Tongue, and today I will do the prep work required to start Aprils Year of Meat Challange, Brined, and smoked Canadian Bacon, I decided that at some point soon, I should write about this subject near and dear to my heart.. When you are canning, and or working with meats or butchering, you must! be clean.

Now I am not a great housekeeper, I’m not bad and I do it alot but its rare that I can’t look around and think, geez I just did that, and its messy or dirty again.. being on a farm and with the four-footer critters means its a never ending battle, which I am sure that many out there feel the same way.

Which is why I NEVER trust that something is clean enough when I am going to bake, can or work with raw meat, everything gets a just done clean before I start. Here are a list of the most basic requirements IMHO

• Salt
• Vinegar
• Baking Soda
• Boiling Water
• Scrub brush that is only used for this, have one for veggies and one for meat.
• One cutting board just for meat
• One cutting board for veggies
• Fresh Washed Towels, dish cloths
• A sink full of hot soapy water with a hanging towel to wipe your hands afterwards.

So no matter how clean your boards were when they got put away, then should be given a fresh scrub before they get used again, if its my wooden board, its scrubbed with salt, dry scrub first and then let to sit, then boiling water poured on and scrubbed again, and rinsed till water run’s clear. If its glass or marble, I will wash it off with fresh cloth in the hot soapy water, and then dry with clean cloth, then I will wipe it down with straight vinegar and i’m good to go, depending on the tools to be used, I will boil them for a min of ten minutes. Knife’s are well washed and put into a jar with either vinager an boiled water or a low percent of bleach/water between uses.

If I am butchering, cut your nails short, don’t butcher if you have any open cuts or sores on your hands, unless you can butcher with gloves on, I have never been good at that, I need the “touch” of bare hands to do a really good job, which means that I am washing my hands often.

When working outside in regards to butchering, the same rules apply, steel tables or glass table is best, again, wash well with hot soapy water, then rinse with fresh boiled hot water, then final rinse with either straight vinager or a water/bleach compo, have one area that is for “dirty work” and one area that is for clean work.

Example, if I am butchering a duck, I would want one bucket for feathers, as I use them to make a garden tea out of them and then compost the rest, the extra’s that are not for peaple use, go in a critter bucket, at that point the body would be put into clean ice cold salted water to rest, while I do the other birds, only once I am done that part, would I move to the clean meat area, or I might clean the whole work set up and then start with the chilled fresh salted carcasses to process them from there. Remember to change your apron or clean it or change your cloths between the first part of butcher to the clean part.

You are  going to be working with care to make sure that the inner’ds are coming out as cleanly as you can get, and that the less any extra bits get on your main body of meat, but if something does happen, don’t put that in the ice bath, until you have rinse’s it with fresh cool water till it runs clear and is of course clean by your eye sight.

There are two main reason’s in my mind to self-butcher, first because I want the death of a animal I raised to be as stress-less as possable, and I can make that happen if its done right, but the second reason is that I can control how clean the butcher is.. there is none of the things I read or hear about in terms of what happens in those big huge slaughter houses.  Just as the animal was treated with respect though its life, so is the meat afterwards, it has a very high value to me and I treat it as such.

Its up to you to follow the rules to be clean when you cook, process or make your own food from scratch, please take the extra time and steps to make sure that you are protecting the health of your loved ones.