What it takes: From the meat counter to the grill

By the time you read this, I will be in Oregon with my grandparents. It has become a tradition for my brother and I to spend the summer with them. Like many years before, this year Grandpa came to visit before taking us back on the train.

Grandpa recently retired as a meat cutter and grew up seeing the process of turning an animal into meat. He said that in his day, the meats were of different. They ate things like beef tongue, oxtail and sweet breads. He told me about his grandfather who would put blocks of ice in the ceiling of the cold room to store freshly cut meat. On his father's side, the family were dairymen. They made sausages and from their Portugese tradition. A favorite among our family is still linguica, spiced smoked sausage.

In the early 1970s Grandpa became an apprentice meat cutter at a Safeway grocery store in northern California. He later bought his own business, where he went to farms and ranches to butcher beef, sheep, goats, pigs (and once even a horse) onsite. He had a custom truck with a cooler to transport the meat back to the shop to hang and age. Grandpa explained, "Aging helps to break down and tenderize the meat, and carcasses were often hung for 10-14 days." After the aging was complete, he prepare the meat for processing or smoking.

My dad has fond memories of all this. He says "After school, I would go to the shop. That's where I developed a deep love for salami. I would cut a chub of salami and eat it as I walked up to the sitter's."

Grandpa remembers things a little differently. "There was once I worked 40 days straight without a day off. A normal week was 14-16 hours a day, 6 days a week. It was difficult to spend time with family."

Around that time, my grandparents made a big change and moved the family to Missoula, Mont., after Grandpa took a job at a wholesale meat company.

Rather than butchering animals and processing meats, the company he worked for supplied finished meat products to restaurants. He worked as the lead production manager. He told me about the times he traveled to workshops in Denver where he sampled meats like ostrich and alligator.

When I asked about the most important skills a meat cutter could have, he explained that you actually need a variety of tools, especially if you are working with a whole animal. Things like a carcass rail, boning hook, boning knife, breaking knife, scarvern, and a steel are all important. So is a stone to sharpen the knife. He said, "The only thing worse than an accidental cut from a sharp knife is an accidental cut from a dull knife." This is because if you work with a dull knife, you work harder. A slip can cause a nasty gash rather than a clean cut.

While Grandpa was here in New Rockford, we decided to make a trip up to Miller's Fresh Food and talk to the meat cutter, Leland Koenig.

When I asked him what he loved about his job, he said that he loved meeting people and making good products for his customers.

Leland began as meat cutter when he was in high school, as part of a training program. Other than that, he has had no special training, just hands on experience. His experience has served him well. In 2017 he won first place for his whole muscle beef jerky at the North Dakota Grocers Association Convention.

Leland's specialities include bacon, beef and sausage. One that sounded very intriguing was the bacon-wrapped top-sirloin that had been marinated with herbs and spices. His products are so good in fact that he makes them for the other nine Miller's Fresh Foods grocery stores as well.

Before we left, we wanted to buy some meat to grill for our going away dinner. Leland suggested we try the sauerkraut brat with jalapeno and cheddar that just came out of the smoker. We also got some pork chops, chicken thighs and a chuck roast which Grandpa cut into steaks. To wrap it all up, Grandpa showed me how to grill a perfect steak.

The next time you hear from me, I will be writing "What it Takes" from the Oregon coast. I haven't settled on a topic yet, but I guarantee it will be something out of the ordinary.