Travis Bader: I'm Travis Bader, and this is the Silvercore podcast.
Silvercore has been providing its members with the skills and knowledge
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I am joined again by Ted Talk alumni, owner of Sankudo
Custom Meats and ModestMeats.
ca in Edmonton.
The ever passionate, always enthusiastic, Jeff Singer.
Jeff, welcome back to the Silvercore
Jeff Senger: podcast.
Thanks for having me Silvercore.
Thanks for having me, Travis.
It's great to be here.
What's going on?
Travis Bader: Well, you know, this is going to be kind of fun, you know,
the joys of doing things remotely.
This is our second attempt at it, but I think we're able to do it with the
internet speeds that we have, as long as we can converse, the upload at the
end will be, uh, will be flawless.
Jeff Senger: Okay.
I look forward to seeing the finished product.
Cause it looks a little grainy.
But I'm happy, I'm happy.
You can't see the imperfections, my wrinkles and crow's feet are,
they're not, they're not apparent.
So that's good.
Travis Bader: So we were going to be recording this morning, but you
know, it was a long weekend and all the rest, and we had both had some
scheduling things that happened, but you had a pretty interesting morning.
You had, uh, at work there.
What, what were you up to?
Jeff Senger: Well, Trav, you know, we've been owner operators of Sanguru Casa
Meat Packers, a slaughterhouse in rural Alberta for, we're in our 14th year.
And, uh, because of the Thanksgiving holiday there on Monday, we
bumped our kill from our normal kills are on Mondays and Fridays.
And we bumped Monday's kill to to Tuesday this week.
So we're kind of short of staff.
It was myself and two of our four daughters.
We call them the slaughter daughters.
And, uh, and so we're We're hopping around to put up six big fat beef.
We started at nine and we finished at about noon.
Uh, so it's like half an hour, half an hour per beef from live in the barn to
hanging in the rail or hanging on the rail in the cooler, which is good, but
it's not great because we like to get our, our total time from on the hoof
to on the rail to down to 18 minutes.
A great day is 15 minutes per beef.
If we have a crew of taller people.
Yeah.
15 minutes.
It's not like skinning a moose in the bush.
I had a friend who...
Kildamoose, uh, near Marathorpe.
And I, he's like, yeah, we, we were really quick.
We got it all done in four hours.
And I was like, yeah, I remember those days.
Yep.
Sounds about right.
It helps that we have a chain hoist and all that stuff.
When you have the goodies and you're indoors, it's quite
a bit easier to make it.
Make it go more quickly.
Um, and then we, we call it, there's a choreography to the dance, the dance
of murder and, uh, my kids, uh, well, two, two or three of them, they say that
we can, we communicate telepathically and it's not that it's just that
we all know what the next step is.
So it's quite a, it's like a team, team sport, or you're covering a whole area.
Uh, In the key and basketball and you know, to stay out of the key and
where the, where the like post up and then don't get kicked by a thrashing
carcass and don't get sprayed by blood.
And then also, uh, usually there's a carcass cleaner with a high pressure hose
and they're spraying down the carcass and you have to stand in the right
place to not get a shower showered on all day, but we got through it, Travis.
And now here, here we are.
Now, here
Travis Bader: we are.
Well, you and I were talking about waste meat, and I'm going to put my air quotes
here for those who are listening, waste meat on whether in the slaughterhouse or
with wild game, what people might leave behind, which maybe they shouldn't be.
Um, let's, let's hear your
Jeff Senger: thoughts on this.
Travis, I love this topic.
Um, So yeah, I mean, being in year 14 of killing animals twice a week,
uh, there's no shortage of time to contemplate what's going into the garbage.
And then my, my job also is to haul waste to the, we actually
have a compost facility at Westlock that takes our organic waste
and turns it into black soil.
So there's, and that's been happening for a couple of years now, uh,
previously had just been going to a landfill, which hurt, hurt my heart.
Uh, but now anything that we can't eat goes to the landfill.
But I, and that's being pulled by my stupid one ton diesel
truck in a, in a hydraulic dumping trailer, uh, to the dump.
But I'm always keen on thinking about what, like, does it
need to go to the dump?
And, you know, what's actual garbage?
And what could we glean something out of?
Less from a financial, uh, urgency.
And more from being, carrying the weight of all of the murdering that I've done
on my shoulders, I just think, if this animal has to die, uh, how do we get
better at using more of the animal?
And so, um, when you, you approached me and said, hey, do you want to do
a, do another chat, chit chat, um, what's kind of new in your world?
We're getting better and better, or I would say of evolving into being
able to figure out ways to harvest more of the animal that wouldn't
traditionally be used as food.
So I would take you through something like, you know, kindergarten or early
on, uh, whether you're a hunter or a meat meat production worker or
whatever, like you're aware that there are pieces that you could probably eat.
I remember when I was young and hunting, you know.
I mean, for the first time a long time ago, or watching, watching dad dress out
a moose when I was like six years old, um, he would save the liver and the heart.
And that, and then whether or not that was ever cooked or cooked up or if it
came home for the family dog or the pets or something like that, maybe that's,
that was probably how, how it It got started like, well, that heart is all
muscle and you can, you can eat it.
And we didn't really know how to prepare it well, unless, you know, there's stuffed
heart, certain family members or ethnic family members, uh, up, uh, grandparents
would say, Oh, save the heart.
And then Aboriginal, uh, first nations people, uh, would say like they, they
would prefer and, and consider a delicacy.
The moose knows.
Which was crazy, like it just seemed crazy to us.
Yes.
But I, I understand that a lot better now, that anything cartilaginous
can be braised and turn into quite, quite a nice, uh, product that's...
happily edible, um, that maybe like mainstream people or listeners would get
in their, in their Vietnamese noodle soup.
So you have beef, beef tendon braised in a, in a, in a Vietnamese.
So if you can kind of liken it to what fast, what, what fast food is available,
I think that makes it seem like.
Yeah, I remember having beef tendon in, in a noodle soup, uh, or there's
a Taiwanese restaurant, a Taiwanese restaurant that we went to, or that we go
to in Edmonton near Modest Meats, uh, when we're in a pinch for lunch or something.
And, uh, they prepare, uh, beef tripe, uh, beef tendon and pork
intestine all in the Taiwanese style.
And, and so sort of being an explorer in, in, in culinary ideas and eating, you
know, being excited to eat ethnic dishes.
It made me think, well, what could we prepare?
What could we save?
Once upon a time, uh, Kevin in, in our from the wild, uh,
adventures, uh, from the wild.
ca, a little video thing that we did, we're exploring, exploring wild
foods kind of from a culinary aspect.
Uh, um, so he, he said, you should save beef intestines because he had eaten,
he'd eaten or, or heard of a recipe.
I can't remember how it came about, but, uh, beef, small intestine cleaned out.
But with a lot of fat on it could be grilled and make it
into a nice munchy crunchy snack.
And I was like, you're disgusting, but I'll save it for you.
Just so I can watch you eat that and, uh, and tease you a bit.
But anyway, he did, he went through his thing, he sauced it.
He, he, he put it up on a grill and, uh, I was like, there's no reason
why this shouldn't be delicious.
And then we ate it to, ate this beef intestine together.
I'm like, my God, that if that's food, uh, then we'll never want for food again.
No kidding.
So this is the journey, man.
Um, So we went from kind of a, a moose heart, moose tongue and, and liver to,
uh, the kilth, the slaughterhouse, um, I say we've been running since 2010 and we
would, we learned about the, the butcher's tenderloin or the hanging tenderloin.
A hanging tenderloin is like a connective piece of wildly grained
muscle that hangs kind of behind.
It's up against the spine behind the lungs or to the rear of the lungs and heart and
it, it connects to some white connective tissue that would be your diaphragm, um,
your diaphragm sort of tendon or sheet tendon that helps the animal breathe.
But anyway, that hanging tenderloin in butcher shops that I follow online was
featured quite prominently because a hanger, hanging tenderloin, um, is a
fantastic piece of meat cooked to be eaten on its own, like sliced thin and grilled.
It's delicious.
Thanks for watching!
Um, in the, in the, in the world of, of hunt, of, of hunting or, or
harvesting wild game are not that many.
You might just use that red meat as part of your grind.
Like you might include it into the ground, you know, your, your, your ground bin.
Um, but, but I think it's a real treat to pull those out of the
beef and the diaphragms themselves.
There's a strip.
of muscle, like an inside skirt or diaphragm from the
inside of the body cavity.
These sorts of red meat muscles that were, that are, that are definitely usable.
Um, and then we go, we go further.
And so recently I'm excited about, uh, saving the, the, the, the call fat,
which is the bag of fat surrounding the intestines in the intestinal cavity.
Um, pure, clean white fat, as well as the suet around the kidneys, that can
be rendered and used as cooking, like as a cooking suet or cooking lard that we,
we've been using beef fat, uh, to cook rather than seed oils for years now.
Yeah.
Um, so, so we get to fat and then we get to tendons and we get to
things like pales of blood Trav.
I don't know if your listeners want to hear about pails of blood, but.
I'm,
Travis Bader: I was introduced to pails of blood when I, I think we, I told you about
that little story where I had to, um, or I was asked to kill some cows for a farm.
Did I tell you that
Jeff Senger: one?
I think so.
Yeah.
But go ahead.
This is entertaining.
Travis Bader: Okay, fair enough.
They, um, I'll condense it cause I'm pretty sure it's in our last
episode, but, uh, there I am, I got talked into going out.
The only white guy on this farm, Filipino farm, they're just starting out.
They're getting animals from the auction.
And, um, uh, previously they, we got goats and they had, uh, smaller animals.
And this is the first time they had.
Cows and these cows still had their horns.
They didn't have them chopped and lied.
And I had visions of, uh, just walking up and using a 22 close to
the head and putting the thing down.
But these were some, uh, already agitated cows that, uh, I couldn't get close to.
And so, uh, took them from a distance, learned exactly where
the shot placement is on a skull.
Cause it's very different from the, uh, looking at a skull and looking at a live.
Uh, cow's head and trying to extrapolate.
So, uh, uh, second cow went down on the first shot.
I can't say the first cow went down on first shot, but there
was a learning experience there.
But as soon as it's down, they would run over, they'd slit the throat
and they're collecting all the blood into great big bowls and buckets.
And they said, they're going to boil it up.
And they said, it's like chocolate.
It's so good.
Do I want some?
And I said, well, I really appreciate the offer.
I think I might pass in hindsight because I was in my early
twenties there in hindsight, I think I should have tried some.
And at some point in my life, I'm pretty sure I will.
But why don't you tell me about this?
Jeff Senger: Um, well, yeah, there's multi use, uh, at the slaughterhouse.
So.
Uh, there's a, like an Eastern European tradition and, and a British
tradition, French tradition for making a blood sausage, I guess.
Like, so I think culinary tradition, uh, not just European and Asian.
Yeah.
So pork blood traditionally for, for blood sausage.
Um, uh, uh, I had never thought about the blood pudding, although there
was a culinary friend in a cooking competition, uh, prepared exactly that.
I think it was like a blood, a blood mousse, but flavored with cocoa.
So it was the richness.
of cooked blood, but blended with cocoa and sugar to make a sweet blood custard,
which is pretty, like, that's pretty challenging for the North American palate.
But man, if that animal has to die and you're, and there, there are folks that
want to, or are at least curious about exploring how you can use that for
food, I think, um, all power to them.
Um, being the owner of a slaughterhouse, we have, uh, an immense amount
of, uh, available And we, it just generally goes down the drain.
Um, and, and we haven't thought about it for years.
Except for occasionally harvesting blood to sell to some restaurants
for, for, for, for blood sausage.
But, um, one of my daughters was in, I don't know, in, uh, early high school,
early biology 10 or something like that.
And they were, somehow the, the, the topic came up.
They were talking about the nutritional qualities of, of
blood for soil and soil building.
And 10.
Uh, Orange Home Depot five gallon pails because we didn't have any good ones
kicking around and we, we saved, we ended up with five five gallon pails of beef
blood that we saved and put in the back of the truck to take home to add to our
compost pile to, uh, to, to see what would happen because we noticed on the farm,
if we've done any on farm slaughters, Uh, wherever blood is spilled, uh,
vegetation just jumps out of the ground.
It's just electric.
As soon as there's just so much nitrogen and then the micronutrients in blood
also that are accumulated by, uh, by a mammal is exactly kind of what the root
system needs in, in, in almost all plants.
Um, To really, to really grow, to really grow, to put carbon dioxide and water to
work and, and build healthy root systems.
So, uh, on our compost pile, we took five, uh, twenty five gallons of, of beef blood
and the pile heated up almost immediately.
There's like a whole bunch of weird things.
The blood clotted in the pails.
It was like pouring out these, this weird, um, red silk scarf
onto our lawn clipping pile.
Uh, five, five gallon red silk scarfs in these kind of pieces of, of.
Big bright red Jell O was swirling, like you kind of get lost in it
if you stare into a blood clot from a freshly killed animal.
And then we turned it over in the grass, and within a couple of hours,
we went back and checked after supper, and the pile was just steaming.
So the microbiology in the pile of compost was also electrified
to just sort of melt down.
It went into, you know, nuclear meltdown mode with having all of that
nutrition and, and the water available.
It meant that, um, the microbiome or whatever living in our
compost pile, I loved it.
And, uh, that compost was used on a experimental food forest
garden and the plants exactly what we expected would happen.
The plants are just jumping out of the soil.
So, um, anyway, it's just a huge contemplative thing.
We said.
We used to think that to have an apple tree grow or to put in a
perennial raspberries or something like that we would dig down into our
horrible, uh, boreal forest soil.
This used to be just a mixed wood boreal, but most of the farmland
here is, uh, an eighth of an inch of topsoil and then, and then clay.
There are spots, low spots where leaves have blown off the, uh, the poplar
trees and accumulated over the years where, where the, the topsoil is a few
centimeters, but not much more than that.
So instead of digging down, uh, to plant plants, we, uh, Summerland,
BC and that, that place is a desert.
Uh, and their innovative ideas, the approach to viticulture was built,
build upwards instead of digging down.
Let the plant dig down if it wants, but build, build your
soils on top of the surface.
So lay down cardboard or mulch and then mulch on top of it and put your
composts on, on top of that to, to build, to build a new layer of soil.
And, um, and so the compost with blood in it was absolutely mental.
And it's funny because it's October, I don't know, 10th.
Yeah, October 10th today.
And, um, of the food forest experiment that, that I did with my daughter,
Annika, um, we, we were just out harvesting, uh, the last of the
strawberries from her food forest.
And that is absolutely not normal for Alberta at this time of year.
But, uh, there's heat coming out of the compost still.
So despite having, yeah, we've had a couple of heavy frost, but
because of the, there's heat in the soil and her nasturtiums, I think
kind of blanketed the strawberries.
Uh, with their foliage.
So there are ripe strawberries that she's picking just today after kill.
We stopped at the strawberry patch and pick some strawberries
out of, out of the blood compost.
So it's sort of like a weird full circle story about getting strawberries out
of blood, uh, because it activated the compost to get it to throw off heat.
You can stick your hands into the dirt in her food forest.
This dirt on top of cardboard that we started in, in May.
I think we, we heaped up in May and it's still hot.
The soil is warm to the touch.
Right, so that's a miracle of what's, what surrounds us.
And then the story of a restaurant, a customer, a customer of ours
who we kill big fat beef for every week, Brad Jesperson, North Country
Market, he said he's got a customer, a restaurant in Spruce Grove called
Barbacoa and they want tendons.
And we've saved tendons from beef before for dogs and dog food.
Um.
And that is the tendon in the back of the, the, the back side of the lower, the lower
extremity of the limb above the hoof.
So if, if my hand is the hoof, we are taking this heavy tendon out of, out
of this part of the animal's lower leg.
If you skin the hide off back here, you can take a great big, and then cut with
your knife into the tendon and all the way down to the, to the first elbow.
Um, you could take quite a heap.
Uh, one, one single white cable and it's not meat and it's not fat,
it's tendon and barbacoa restaurant wanted for human consumption.
Well, we're familiar with doing this for dogs and they're always
really mucky and they go in a pile on the floor in the gut room.
And then we take them home to the farm smoker, which is a plywood
box with a smoke generator.
And I'd smoke them and we'd sell them in the city for, for dog
treats, but that wasn't going to cut it for, for human grade.
So, um, with the animal on its back in a cradle and this, you could do this with
your wild game as well to take tendons for either your pets or for deer tendon,
elk tendon, um, or, uh, Moose tendon soup, and it's something worth exploring.
And, and, and like, I don't think, I think tendon was a lot more approachable
than liver, kidney, or, or maybe even heart, um, because when you braise a
tendon, you just sort of end up with a chewy noodle and a, and a broth
that has a ton of collagen in it.
So even if you strain out the solids after you boil tendon in, in, in a
water or a stock, so salted water.
Maybe flavored with, with, uh, OXO cubes or your own stock, like a
veggie stock or a beef, beef stock.
If you boil the bejesus out of a tendon, um, and then let that cool, strain out
the solids and then that, let that cool.
You'll have what we call it at our house, brown jello, which is a real, like a
high collagen, high elastin, um, cooled.
Substrate that melts in a pan and can be added to add like a velvety and, um, a
velvety mouthfeel to any, any dish at all.
Um, there would be some, have somewhat of a liquid component.
So your chilies, your soups, uh, like, like any, any soup or chili, any stew or
curry, all benefits from our brown jello.
And that really is just boiled down or boiled down and broken down, uh,
uh, tendon, beef tendon in our house.
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
To take it a step further on the tendon chat, culinary masters, so
these chefs at this restaurant, they would take the tendon dish a few steps
further, and that was, you braise the tendon, you slice it really thin, and
you let it dry out on a wire rack.
And then once it's dry, you can deep fry it and make, um, uh, chicharrones
or something that would, would resemble, um, to like a person who just eats
fast food and, uh, at the, at the gas station, uh, like pork rinds.
So the beef tendons braised, braised or boiled.
Slice thin, dried, and then put into deep, like, to hot, hot oil, and they
puff up into something crunchy like a pork rind, which would be a chicharron
if it was pork, but sort of just a beef, a beef crisp made out of those tendons.
And they really take on the flavor of whatever you add to them.
So you throw some salt and pepper, garlic salt on them, they're just
a nice crunchy, totally different texture from anything else that you can
get from a beef, but quite pleasant, and no strong flavor or anything.
And then as, as far as health goes, um, Um, just loaded with elastin and
collagen, which features highly in a lot of prominent beauty products for
and skin, skin regeneration stuff.
That's why I look so young.
, I'm a, I'm
Travis Bader: 110.
I, I would think that eating that would probably be better than just rubbing it
on the face, like, than the products.
But hey, that's, you know, to eats your own, when you work
Jeff Senger: on the kill floor, you get a little bit of both, you know what I mean?
. Travis Bader: Have you ever had, um, moose Nose?
Because I, a friend of mine, uh, just sent me up a picture.
It was a little pretty sad photo, but it was, uh, uh, a cow moose that was killed.
Just for its nose and he's a conservation officers, so they're
tracking down the people who did this.
Um, but he was talking about what a delicacy it is in some cultures.
Um, I can't say I've ever had moose nose.
Have you tried that?
Jeff Senger: You know, surprisingly, no.
Uh, we've done a lot of weird things, uh, but.
We haven't had a moose dead in a few years, and I think that now I have the
culinary, like, I have the culinary skills, like, and the confidence to
say that I think that I could, I could approach a moose nose now, um, after
exploring, like, chicken feet and oxtail and, and, and, and the tendons.
I, I think that you could get something that, like, that would
be approachable for anybody.
So I think that you don't have to be as brave as you think in
order to eat something like that.
Um, but no, I haven't had moose nose yet.
I think it's a tragedy, like, isn't that an interesting topic, like, to
say that as Westerners we kill an animal for its tenderloin, and then
secondarily rib steaks and strip loins.
But a lot of the animal is ground, made into slim jims, or like, like pepperoni,
and then so much of it is thrown away, like the heart, the nose, the tendons,
the tail, and the livers and kidneys and like fat and all that stuff is just
thrown into the garbage, the hide also.
Um, and then you kind of flip it upside down and you say, imagine
someone thinking it was a good idea to harvest an animal just for its nose.
It's awful.
And it contravenes, of course, that contravenes all, uh, you know,
fish and wildlife legislation and protection of wildlife, all that stuff.
Um, so that makes me sad, but, uh, it is just an interesting,
that's an interesting little, um,
Travis Bader: And that's why I brought it up, not, not to be political.
Cause it's so easy to take that into the political spectrum.
And it's a, it's an unfortunate event that, uh, they're working hard at
putting an end to and through knowledge and, you know, everybody out there
talking in eyes open and realizing that there's a community to be accountable
to just talking about this sort of thing can, can help with ensuring that
people are, are not, Wasting animals.
Well, now that would, in my opinion, that's a massive waste right there.
I think everyone's opinion would say the same thing, but you know,
there's things that people don't consider wasting that may be with a
little bit more of education, like what you're talking about here.
Uh, they will in the future.
And they'll find ways to be able to cook up these odd bits and these airbracks,
again, waste parts in a way that just really utilizes the whole animal tip to
Jeff Senger: tail.
I think that there are cultures that aren't nearly as, uh, well off as,
as, uh, Western Canadian or Canadians and the West, uh, that, such that.
Well, one, that they may have a deeper connection with animals and, and or
wildlife to begin with, uh, with their food sources, with their food traditions.
And, and so eliminating waste for both financial reasons, uh, and also, um, like
traditional Asian medicine, traditional, you know, like, uh, a medical.
Food through medicine, medicine through food in a culture that's a lot older than
Western European culture, where they're saying that there is value in eating.
Peculiar bits, you know, to you and I, uh, maybe, uh, to sort of help settle
ailments in, in a time before, uh, centrum multivitamin was, was available in a
time before you got tidy little caplets of omega 3 and omega 6 to help your,
your thinning hair or your sore joints.
Um, so I think that there's, there's thousand year, you know, uh, food is
medicine, thousands, multi thousands of year, uh, cultural heritage.
In, in, in cultures older than Western European, uh, where they had to figure
out or they got to figure out, uh, why, that's an interesting idea too, like,
you know, which, which plants in the forest are there for my bed to, to solve
which, you know, to help aid in what, um, What ailments, and then which parts
of the animal can aid me similarly.
There's
Travis Bader: definitely a deeper connection with your natural
environment and what you're eating.
If you're able to pick up on these little bits and what
they're actually doing for you.
And I guess a good connection with yourself, if you're in tune
enough to realize that when I eat this, it makes this happen.
So it's a pretty deep
Jeff Senger: magic
Travis Bader: trick.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
I agree.
It's, uh, when you're talking about the, uh, uh, blood in the grass
and everything growing up, just reminds me of full metal jacket.
What makes a grass grow?
Blood, blood, blood, right?
Uh, I always thought that was just something that they chanted and it was
for shock effect, but turns out, yeah, it
Jeff Senger: does.
Uh, another experiment that we did in the house was that, uh, if, you
know, the, the, the, the question I had to ask is what if, what if beef
tripe, that is stomach, is food?
And if we could make beef tripe or stomach food for people, that
is food for, food for people.
Um, then that blows the doors off all kinds of weird ideas about scarcity.
And, uh, like I couldn't believe that we could eat well as a family of six.
Really off, our joke is in the early years we really were working
for the banks more than that.
Then, then working for a paycheck, we're working just to pay all the people that
allowed us to have this slaughterhouse business in the first place.
And, um, and with us having a bunch of kids back to back to back, uh, We
called it bin food for dinner tonight that what what we would got to eat
would be what was in the bit What would have been thrown out on kill day?
Or what would have been trimmed to throw out from the, from the cut floor.
So, uh, when a farmer brings in an animal, we ask it for a cut instruction.
How do you want each muscle group cut?
Uh, what thickness for steaks?
What size of roasts?
And do you want your heart, tongue, liver, kidney, suet, tail, cheeks?
Um, and they, and a lot of those cut instructions, most
of them are no, no, no, no, no.
So those things would be saved on the kill floor, but then they, they,
they would, they would go into the cooler as like approved, uh, because
there's a meat inspector there.
So they're human approved organs and OFL, but the generally, uh, most farmers
wouldn't take those unless they had a dog, a farm dog or something like that.
They could, but a lot of them just, no.
So our family learned to eat offal out of necessity and thriftiness, um, and
then we've, we've come a long way since then to like, like actually preferring
certain cuts or certain offal like hangers or diaphragm, skirt, um, and then
also kind of working into the explore, exploring things like tendons and
what's the use of blood on the farm, but there's just such a huge volume of it.
It's hard to just walk away from a dumpster where, where you're
putting 50 to 80 pounds of beef fat.
per animal into the garbage and I went on this kick where I couldn't sleep for
two days because I was thinking about the caloric value of that fat and Google
told me or the internet told me it's very close to that of diesel fuel so I thought
can we refine this animal fat through not that complex chemical process with
a backyard biodiesel generation system.
Can we make biodiesel and mainly it would just be funny and fun
to run my truck on animal fat.
Just like if, if I did it once, I would have been pleased with
myself and I could die happy.
But, uh, we didn't get to that stage, um, because the first step for, uh,
suet, or beef fat, is to, to render it and render out the, the connective
tissue and the impurities, uh, bits.
Which, Uh, every farm family kind of has experience with that
during, after a pig slaughter or, or even an on farm beef slaughter.
Uh, the fat goes into the oven in a gigantic pot or onto the
stove at low, low temperature.
And then overnight it'll melt down and then we'll ladle off the, the clear,
the clarified fat into mason jars on the counter and let them cool into hard
lard or hard suet to be used in cooking or for pies later on in the year.
Um, and then the, the, the.
The nibbly bits, usually someone who's disgusting will go and eat
those nibbly bits like schmaltz or, uh, There's another word about
schmaltz, the bits that are left over.
That's the connective tissue that's sort of been fried or confit ed in that.
In that fat, that animal fat and it's quite crunchy and good.
So if you've just been out freezing your nuts off in a, in a deer stand
and you come home and there's some fat rendering in the oven or on the
stovetop there, you grab those little fat connective tissue bits and eat those.
But, but the rendered lard, my point is the rendered lard is
the first step to biodiesel.
Once you have this clarified, the clarified lard or clarified suet in jars.
Or in a pail or in a 55 gallon drum, uh, that's step one.
And, uh, what happened here, I think two weeks ago, is, uh, a restaurant
customer said, I'd like to switch back for, where once upon a time, french fries
and fish and chips were predominantly fried in beef fat or beef tallow.
And McDonald's restaurants, uh, once when they were founded, it was fairly
well known that they cooked all their French fries in beef tallow.
And that was part of what made their fries notoriously delicious is they were
fried in beef tallow instead of, uh, they eventually switched for cost reasons.
I read the history of this, um, into seed oils like canola oil is, but canola oil
with additives, um, that made the canola oil taste or behave more like beef fat.
Not the same.
There's a brewing company in Edmonton and, uh, they have a tasting room.
And they said, Hey, listen, can you render me some fat for our deep fryers?
Because we like to provide chip, uh, potato chips and also French fries to our
customers while they're tasting our beer.
And um.
So Brad with the fat cattle and I kind of said, well sure, how
much, how much fat do you need?
Like we thought a few liters, we need about 200 liters a week.
And we're like, yeah, that's, that's a whole business unto itself.
And so this enters into, so Brad's got the cattle, we're killing them for him
and he's like, can you save me this fat?
And I'm like, 200 liters is like, it's four, it starts out as 400 pounds of fat
and we are throwing out 400 pounds of fat a week and then some from his animals.
So like, this is all doable.
But we need a separate building to do this, because we don't have
enough floor space and room to save 400 pounds of animal fat.
We need a gigantic steam kettle to melt this down to render it in,
in monstrous batches, like two, three hundred litres at a time.
So I'm kind of doing research on all this equipment, and I'm kind
of fooling around on Realtor.
ca.
Uh, to look at, like, land and buildings or whatever available.
And, uh, this is where, this is fun, we talked about this off air a little bit,
but, uh, Uh, the United Church in San Guto is for sale for a low, low price.
And I'm like, that's weird.
And, uh, So I'm hanging out with one of the slaughtered otters, we're driving
to Vancouver, it's a long story.
But, uh, we had 15 hours to kill.
Not to see you.
We were delivering some cats, if you can believe, she's a real cat repreneur also.
So we were delivering some kittens to eventually, it was all legal.
It was all legal.
It's how she's paying herself, paying her way through university.
And I was like, yeah, we definitely will.
Actually.
Like I was like, who can we call?
We were there for, I was there for one night and I had to fly back to,
she dropped me off at the airport.
I just wanted to be there through the mountains, because I'm like, I could
never forgive myself if you had a wreck or something, or, or just a breakdown
with your kittens in the back, so we, I drove there and then flew home, and then
Heather, my wife, flew there and drove home with, with Anna on the way back.
It was really funny.
But, um, Anyway, lost my cats, cat repreneur, uh, oh, so, so, we had 15
hours to kill and we're talking about this church for sale and I said it's 4, 000
square feet of space and it's, it's like a block away from the meat packing plant
and so we started singing a jingle about sauce church, we're gonna make a church
that makes sauces as well as rendered fat, but rendered fat, we need a place
with a giant kettle Like a commercial sized kettle, they build these all the
time on cruise ships and convention centres where they would make two to
five hundred litres of a soup at a time.
Um, the aftermarket world has them available.
They're not that valuable.
They're really expensive, I think, to buy new, but nobody
makes two hundred litres of much.
Um, so, we approached our local investment community and we're sort of tied in there.
A cooperative that we built, uh, to finance the slaughterhouse.
14 years ago and the, the board of directors of our investment
co op was like super keen.
They're like, yeah, we were worried that if that church like was sold
as a residence, it would turn into a weird, like it just wouldn't go to no
good, no good use in the community.
It wouldn't benefit.
Yeah.
I have some would move in.
Uh, you know, or it becomes some kind of, uh, a drug house.
Like, cause it is, it's an unusual building.
It'd be weird to live there.
I think, uh, the kids and I both feel like there's probably some
weird vibes that you wouldn't want to be there late at night, you know?
One of those places.
Yeah.
Well, it's, it's, I don't know, we're, we're not a church going
family and it has a peculiar feeling.
I mean, like kind of quite a nice feeling upstairs.
And then the basement is like definitely haunted.
A little smudging and
Travis Bader: then it's a house of the Lord.
House of the Lord.
I think so.
Jeff Senger: The United Church, yeah, it's house of Lord.
Praise the Lord.
That's the, that's the joke without offending the church people.
But the, the United Church had a ceremony where they, they
like decommissioned the church.
And one of the members of the, of the church said that they actually
make it, there's a special word, but they, they desanctified the church.
So now it's just a civilian building again.
And it was like, I appreciate that.
That's great.
Because less ghosts, less ghosts the better.
Yes, I agree.
Especially in your LARD, in your LARD production.
You don't want ghosts in your LARD.
So we believe, yeah, this is the next project, Travis.
So you can get into the ground floor opportunity.
Uh, these shares are going to go wild in the San Guto stock exchange.
You know the IPO?
Yeah, you can, it's the, I call it the ILO, the initial local offering.
We're reinventing finance and San Guto.
That's how desperate we are to not cease to exist as a town.
Oh, I'm sold.
Travis Bader: I'm totally sold.
You just sold me right there.
Jeff Senger: Church basement.
Lard.
Praise the lard.
Uh, sauce church.
So, so this is it.
So this is, I think, possibly the best business decision ever.
Not the slaughterhouse.
No, not the retail meat shop in Edmonton.
Also, no.
Low margin.
Uh, high, uh, Spoilage, or not spoilage, but uh, like short shelf life.
But I think my entire life, the last 14 years, has been devoted to the meats.
And I was like, kept looking in my, my waste trailer, the garbage,
the dumping trailer at the dump, just thinking we could do better.
We could do so much better.
When we connected with a compost guy, I'm like, now we're making dirt.
And then when we threw blood on the compost, I'm like,
now we're making compost.
And these plants are loving animal juices on their roots.
And like, so that's really smart.
But still the fat could, you know, so, so we just, we, we, we didn't have to
continue to process this stuff into biodiesel if we can sell it for the
world, the world of French fries.
And if it's true, the case that one French, one brewery that wants to sell
French fries needs something like.
200 liters a week.
And even if they're off by a factor of 10, or if I'm telling this story like
a moron and it was 20 liters, well then to get to 200 is only 10 restaurants.
So our puny little slaughterhouse that kills 20 beef a week.
Could take the fat from the animals and, uh, and, and, and extra, extra bones.
That was, Sauce Church will manufacture rendered lard for, for deep fryers in
Edmonton, as many as we can, uh, fill.
And, and then also the steam kettle can be used to do bone broth,
which is a restorative, nutritious.
Uh, Superfood, uh, friends of ours, super sad story, um, recently had a
baby and the mother was diagnosed with a, a tumor that was cancerous in her
brain and they removed it and she's undergoing chemo, but, um, they've,
she's been devoutly, uh, making bone broth for herself as just a superfood.
to, to just to get through the chemo, uh, to give her food or give her body
all of the micronutrients that it needs.
She's been really keen on, on, on bone broth and have, has developed some
recipes that really work for them.
Um, we have our house recipes at our house for bone broth, uh, building beef stock,
where you, where you start with bones and four days later you end up with, uh,
again, kind of a brown jello or with a lot of super nutrients, nutrient dense stuff.
And I thought, man, if, if we have the floor space.
Uh, via this decommissioned church building, um, we get, so, so if things
work out, financing comes off on the 15th in five days, and then possession
is November 1st, um, it's got a small kitchen in the basement and we can get
it AHS approved, I don't think, with too many modifications to be able to turn
this into a whole, so my, the latest business venture is, uh, making use of
waste, exclusively making use of waste.
Travis Bader: I think that's brilliant.
Like that's absolutely brilliant.
I think you've got a very large market, the shelf life of this stuff when
frozen is going to be pretty good and you've got a sweet backstory as
well of where it's coming from and everything that went into it that I
think people would want to get behind.
I think it's a really smart business venture, honestly.
Jeff Senger: I appreciate it.
It comes from a desire to, to really honor, to not throw the animal away or
to, like we, by weight, if an animal comes in an 1800 pounds, it hangs 850 pounds.
So the hide head blood and guts are half the weight.
And then when it, when it shows up on the, it hangs in the aging coolers for a couple
of weeks and it's down another six or 8%.
Um, and then it goes through the cut room and.
Uh, uh, trim steaks and trim roasts.
Probably, we're probably looking at a 65 percent yield on 50
percent of the live weight.
So the animal, most of the animal that we eat is discarded.
So when my kids, when we put a steak on one of the, we're having family
dinner and we have T bones or something really gratuitous, everyone gets
a two pound T bone on their plate.
And the kids like cut away the fat.
I say, give me that and I eat it.
Oh, I love it.
I love that.
That's what the flavor is.
Yeah, but, but also like, I just can't, and that's, I have a body, uh, fit, you
know, that matches, but, uh, I can't stand that there would be waste at sort
of the restaurant level or at the kitchen.
So there's also waste at the kitchen table.
So half the animals throw it out when you kill it, kill it.
And then half again, when you cut it and pack it and wrap it, and
then you throw it, then someone like doesn't feel like finishing their
steak and it goes in the garbage.
It goes to the dog after that.
And that's frustrating because that animal likes, like it was.
Yeah, someone, someone fought for that animal, if it's in the case of a
domestic animal, someone fought to keep that thing alive, uh, for two years
before it went to slaughter, or in the wild, like, you know, the, the animals
born and survived, like kind of some insurmountable odds, uh, for a young, uh,
newborn animal to make it to adulthood, to then be harvested, it's tough to then
have it thrown out many times in a row.
Travis Bader: You know, teaching people that, and I think the easiest way to
do that is to start with those, you know, that are friends and family.
Uh, we worked hard with our kids from a very young age to eat.
Every part of the animal, as much as we were comfortable
and knowledgeable to cook up.
Luckily, like I love eating, so that's not a problem.
And my wife's a red seal chef by trade.
So she loves cooking.
So that's a good, good fix there.
Good mix.
And, uh, But you know, our, like our Christmas traditions, we'll
have blood puddings, blood sausages.
Uh, that's something everyone looks forward to.
And we'll have it a few times throughout the year.
Not all the time.
Haggis, of course, Robbie Burns Day.
Everyone loves haggis.
No, not if it's too livery, uh, oxtail, I mean.
Put that in the, um, in the pressure cooker.
And that's the best way that I found that I really enjoy it.
You know, we brought our kids to a friend's place at a very young age
and they got to meet the, uh, the Berkshire pig that we were going
to be taken home all wrapped up.
So they, I.
Brought them around the corner for when it was shot.
Cause I didn't, you know, they're pretty young and probably don't, doesn't
always go as anticipated when it's shot.
You don't know if it's going to be a quick and or not, hopefully the person knows
what they're doing and they do it right.
And then it does go as anticipated.
This one did.
But, uh, aside from the shot, they were there prior to the shot, um,
around the corner was shot and then drag it out and butchering it up and
letting it hang and then working on it.
They're all a part of the process there.
And they.
Think that really helps them and just have that appreciation for what the food was.
It doesn't just come wrapped up in cellophane at the grocery store.
What it was before, where it is now.
And we've never had that issue with them being picky eaters, thankfully.
Jeff Senger: Yeah.
I, you know, as a, as a lifetime hunter and then, and then as a professional,
you know, meat harvester, I, I agree, or couldn't agree more with you about how
important it is for, to get youngsters out and people of all, of all walks
of life, uh, to be involved with the harvesting of food and knowing.
Uh, knowing intimately where food comes from, I think that our culture is like,
it's okay with having a TV shows, um, that, uh, that broach, you know, like
savage, savage level, horrible content and like that's, it's, it's, I don't,
I don't know, it's, it's allowed CSI Miami anytime, seven o'clock at night.
And they're exploring subjects fictitiously.
That's true.
There's actors and the kids understand that, but, uh, really mature subject
matter about what humans do to humans.
And, in a fictitious way, and I find it quite appalling.
Like, they're approaching matters that are challenging
from myself, and I'm a murderer.
The things that humans do to humans.
And then in real life, if you actually turn on the news, probably
more appalling than a lot of the fictional documentaries and things.
Uh, the news is pretty shocking too, about what humans do to humans.
I think that takes maybe a bigger leap.
Uh, even for kids or for people from, uh, main, more, more
mainstream walks of life then.
Then digest, digesting the concept of harvesting an animal to eat, even people
that say, came to Kevin Cost once from the wild on trips where they'd worked in
food that served food, they'd prepared food, but they'd never harvested an animal
before, uh, while it was emotional and spiritual and a journey for each, each
person that we introduced to catching a fish, killing a fish, bleeding a fish,
uh, uh, shooting a grouse, uh, harvesting a grouse, processing a grouse, and
then all the way up to deer and bear.
black bears.
Uh, I think that it was an easier transition than you than you'd think.
Um, for people to not, I mean, to just appreciate where food comes from.
And I think that a lot of people that have that experience, they kind of, they maybe
might choose to not go back to eating food that's just on a styrofoam tray.
Or never buy food or meat on a styrofoam tray without, without having some deeper
thoughts about how many hands touched that before it got here and why is it on sale?
Yeah.
And those are good questions to ask.
Those are good
Travis Bader: questions to ask.
You know, the, the other thing I, uh, really wanted to impress upon my kids at
an early age was just that whole concept of life and death, because it brings a
greater appreciation for life in general.
And I think that.
Death is such a closed door activity.
Nowadays, you don't see open caskets that much anymore.
Uh, it's a very sanitary process in behind closed doors.
When you find your food coming out to you that there's, I
think there's a disconnect.
In general society of, of life and death.
And then you couple that with, you know, media, like you're talking about
watching your CSI or playing the video games and life is just given such a
very low value that I think it, um, it gives the wrong impression to people
that, uh, go back a hundred years.
There is a very different relationship between the living and the dead,
whether that's animals and people and having that connection, I
think makes you a better person.
Yeah, I
Jeff Senger: think I'm more contemplative and probably, uh, a person who would be
more, uh, living in the moment and, and, and, and more grateful and humble, uh,
being the, the trigger puller on this, at the slaughterhouse has made me realize
just how, how a quarter of an inch of skull is between me and instant death,
uh, we, in, uh, 13 and a half years, I've had two, uh, firearms, mishaps.
Uh, one where a gun went off and I caught some ricochet in my forearm
off of, off a 22 long rifle.
And that didn't feel great.
And a tiny piece of it hit me in this, in my, in my nostril and
blood was coming out of my nose.
So it was shocking.
Uh, it was a bit of a wake up call.
And then a couple of weeks ago.
Um, I made bad choices and I used a 22 Magnum to shoot a lamb and the
bullet went through the ram's head.
Hmm.
The inspector was kind of in a hurry.
We're all in.
I was in a hurry and trying to, uh, satisfy the inspector's need to get
to a hockey practice or something.
So I was like, while.
Team A was working, the slaughter daughters were working on a
beef that I, that would knock down, and we put in the cradle.
They were skinning it.
I said, because we want to, we want to kind of get done quickly, I'll go and
shoot the lamb out in the pens, on a concrete floor, and then drag it in.
I'll work on the lamb while the kids are working on this beef.
So anyway, and I didn't switch to 22 shorts.
I just used the 22 magnum.
I'm like, it'll be extra dead.
What could go wrong?
Like, I hadn't had a miss happen a while.
This is like workplace safety.
All these no nos, all these contributing factors, but, uh, anyway, so I
shot through the, the bullet went through the lamb's head, bounced off
the concrete, bounced off a pipe.
And this, this little piece of 22 magnum hit me like just on
the right side of my temple.
At the speed of like, someone just threw a pebble at you.
Like, so I just felt this little doink off my, my forehead.
And then I kind of looked, I was looking at the floor and I saw the
sparkle of copper and lead and it landed and it made a tink when it landed
on the cement next to the dead lamb.
And I was like, Oh, like there was no one there to even see it.
Like the kids were busy.
The inspector was busy.
And I was like, Oh man, that was like death himself just
came and gave me a little, Oh, where's the, where's the camera?
A little doink.
And, uh, I was like, Jesus, like that's how close.
You are to shooting yourself like, so firearm safety was like, like,
like brought back to the forefront and also that that lamb is dead
and it could have been, it could have been just as easily myself.
So anyway, farm life, we found this other ideas that my wife and I, uh,
moved out of the city, uh, didn't grow up on a farm, had no idea how farms work.
And then 20 years ago, we had our first daughter and we're
in Calgary working downtown.
And I'm like, this is stupid.
This is what, this is what you would do.
Well, if you weren't me, I just couldn't believe that we could live like that.
Um, the commute, like gridlock, uh, the C train, there were like all
these instances of things where I thought that we'd lost our humanity.
And I thought, I just don't want to raise care.
We, we thought we don't want to raise kids this way.
Let's move to a farm.
So we, we moved to the farm and, uh, like you said.
It was kind of like traveling back in time.
So it's like, welcome to 1910.
Don't dive scurvy, don't get dysentery, but we're way more clear and present
in our daily lives of how fragile human life is, how fragile we are
dependent on systems like water.
Not freezing, uh, electricity, when, when the grid goes down out here, there's
not a huge rush for people to fix it.
Snow shoveling, ice storms, heavy rain, flooding, all that stuff.
So you kind of have to learn to battle those things, uh, on your own.
And then this year, Uh, near to us, uh, there were wildfires that were crazy.
So as a hunter, you can recognize why, why, while a bad, uh, an
unusually hot, dry summer or hot, dry spring might result in wildfires.
You know it because of the crunch under your boots.
If you put a lot, if you spend a lot of time in nature, you can recognize
things that lead up to, uh, Like a weird summer, a weird summer of
wildfires or weird, weird summer where the roads that you used to walk in on
or drive in on are now muskeg bogs.
So people that recreate outdoors can kind of have a better appreciation of
nature and natural things, and also animals and food and where they come from.
Um, so we've had 20 years living as these Druids out on our land, watching some
summers, the, the, the farmland would get so dry that it would crack, the clay
would crack and then open up and there'd be these two inch cracks like running.
We'd follow them like with the, our little, the slaughter daughters,
when they were under 10, there's like, where does this crack go?
Maybe to Narnia or the underworld, I would tell them, you know, but the, the
myths and our, and the relationship with nature, I'm reading a book right now.
That's really got me bothered.
Um, It's called The Age of Insecurity and it's kind of, the author starts with a
discussion about the, uh, the Enclosures Act that kind of led, led to, um, this
is, I don't know, I'm not trying to get political, but it's a western, uh,
corporatism, western, uh, Capitalism.
So once upon a time, humans lived on land without the concept of ownership of land.
And people just took what they needed and they lived off the land.
And then these smart guys were like, Hey, if we put a fence around that
and said that one of us owns it, and then we throw off the people, then we
can charge them to get what they need.
Like, they need that land for life, uh, to satisfy food, shelter, clothing.
But if we take it away from them, put a fence around it and then sell, we can sell
the requirements of life back to them.
And it'll be hilarious.
And it was probably a joke, or like, there's no way anyone's gonna respect
a fence or believe that because I have a piece of paper that says that
I own that land and you can't go in there anymore, that, that I'll, I'll
grow the crop and sell it to you, or I'll, now you can work for me.
Anyway, really interesting, the Enclosures Act, and how it all started.
By making people insecure.
Your food insecure.
Well, I think that, like...
If you participate in, uh, corporate capitalism to the extent that Heather and
I did, that you have enough money to buy a bit of land, I would say that, how do
you invent a movement called the non or the Unenclosures Act, where individuals
leave their corporate jobs and buy an inexpensive bit of land, and then they're
reconnected with the ability to provide for their basic needs, directly where
the magic of the sun meets the soil?
Where food leaps out of the ground and, and where the animals then eat those
plants and create a fungus in their poops.
And now you're eating mushrooms and eating plants and you're eating the animals.
Like, how do you get back to where?
Um, I think that our environmental woes and challenges would probably be a lot
smaller if there was a person on every quarter section and a pig in every yard.
And that's like my, that's my political campaign when I'm running for mayor
of South San Guto, the town of 300.
Yep.
Is just, I think that probably...
I can get behind that.
The only way...
Yeah, the only way we're gonna have sort of, um, habitable future is
if fewer people are worried about what sneakers they're wearing and
what chains they got on and what symbols on the front of their car.
And more people are just walking in boots or bare feet in the mud and
appreciating like, hey, wait a minute, this is a bad grasshopper here.
You know, beef prices are going to go up.
I should probably grow my own beef.
I think with, and then with Wi Fi and things, like with technology, like what
we're doing right here, um, and then COVID was another kind of, uh, score for
remote work, uh, that you can, you can be an intellectual person doing intellectual
work remotely from home, but why oughtn't you live on land where you can provide
for a lot of the things, and in a shorter, uh, Distribution chain, you can provide
for a lot of things that you need and a local, in the local small community.
But, but I think that it comes from like what, and this is just to, I'm
just rambling on your point in that, uh, can you make a more decent kid
or a decent citizen if they've been around, not like traditional farm life.
I don't want to go back to where, how we, how it was.
Um, there are a lot of improvements that have made since then.
But I think taking a modern, uh, contemporary society and then.
Asking that they become more involved in the wild places and in, in, with a
direct connection to land itself, um, such that the land is managed better.
And, and I think that probably like the, the tip of the spear might be exactly
your people and that, that is the hunters and wildlife conservation folks.
Um, those are the people that are, maybe they live, they live in,
uh, uh, in, in urban settings.
But I think the people that really...
Consistently spend money to conserve wildlife and think about, think
big thoughts about nature are, are probably the people that use
Travis Bader: nature.
I had a few other things I wanted to touch on, but I also have some
questions here from the Silvercore club, people through social media.
And they got some good ones in here.
They got some really silly ones, which I'm not even going to bother getting into
because I just don't even understand it.
But, um, uh, some of the good questions we had, let's say field
dressing in your opinion, what's the best field dressing utensil?
Jeff Senger: Oh man, I love it.
This is really intimate and interactive, Travis.
I really feel great about these sorts of questions, and I could,
like, as you know, I can go on any topic for hours with enough coffee.
Uh, the best field dressing utensil is probably, uh, a round honing steel.
That is inexpensive and bought from a butcher supply company, 12 inch, uh,
Victorinox, black handled honing steel.
And knowing how to use it for an inexpensive, uh, butcher knife,
like a, a boning knife, 6 inch.
Stiff six inch boning knife, stiff straight back and a honing steel are so
key that if you have a razor sharp knife that is at least six inches long, you can
core the butthole on your animal up to and including a moose or elk or large,
like the largest of the large game.
Um, if it's razor sharp, you're not pulling or pushing that on the knife
in a way that would create a dangerous situation for you, stabbing yourself and
bleeding out because you're field dressing in a So, that's it, just, if you have a...
People...
There's all this stupid, um, expensive kit that is sold with various
camouflage patterns and sold under various stupid brand names that
make it sound super extreme, mega...
And they're all unnecessary.
A boning knife for twenty...
I think retail you can buy a six inch boning knife with a big plastic handle
that is ergonomically useful for about thirty bucks and then a honing steel
is, uh, uh, honing steel or honing rod.
is about a hundred.
But those two pieces of kit are unbelievably useful, uh, in the field.
I find I don't carry a saw to cut the brisket.
It's just unnecessary.
Uh, as you get advanced, you can actually split the brisket on any animal, including
a moose, um, through the cartilage beside the center sternum bone, if you
want to get fancy, or just reach up up to your, just roll your sleeves up.
And you don't have to split the sternum and create a sharp edge.
And then this, like, so just a sharp knife is very, very important.
And then the second, the really cool piece of kit that is like,
would be a sleeper for most people.
And you probably, you wouldn't even see them at a hunting store.
It would be a ratchet strap.
The, the value of a ratchet strap in your kit for field dressing is next level.
And I'll fight anyone who wants to say that there's a better piece of kit.
So you can learn how to tie a knot and actually your rat replaced your ratchet
strap with a lighter piece of gear, which would be like a quarter inch piece, a
quarter inch nylon rope and like 10 feet of it, but a 10 foot ratchet strap for
those of us who give zero shits about learning how to tie knots means that
you can go around the back leg of the animal and you can go over to a tree.
Or, or to your buddy, but to a tree when you don't have friends or you're
hunting solo or the animal's down and you're, your hunting partners are far
away, um, you can ratchet strap to a tree and so you can crank, uh, in
a way that's stronger than just you, you kind of can, can get a competitive
advantage through ratchet strap that nylon webbing slides really nice.
So you can go to the animal, like through it's, uh, the tendon and the
back leg around a tree, back through the leg, back to the tree, back
through the leg, like on a moose.
And now you have like four times mechanical advantage because of the
pulleys and that stuff slides better than rope around a tree, that nylon stuff.
So then you can, you can pull the animal over with a ratchet strap.
So one guy, a ratchet strap and a sharp knife is a great way to manage even
the biggest of, of downed wild game.
That's my, that's my answer.
Love
Travis Bader: it.
What's the best way to avoid getting hairy meat?
Jeff Senger: Oh man, that's a great question.
Uh, The best way to avoid getting hair on your wild game meat is to minimize
the number of times that you penetrate the hide with the knife during gutting
and then subsequent processing.
So, minimize the number of holes in the hide and I did a course once, or workshop,
once upon a time, um, where you would dress the animal differently depending
on which equipment that you had with you.
So if you're road hunting and the animal is dead near your truck, um, you could
be more aggressive in how much processing you do compared with if you're backpacking
in and you have an animal down 16 miles from the nearest road or vehicle.
But, one of the methods I speak about in my workshop that is, I wish it was
available online, maybe we'll, we'll, we'll video on one day, uh, you and
Tiffany and, and I, Travis, but, uh, a minimal intrusion gutting method is
the best way to minimize the number of punctures and the length of those
punctures through the hide, uh, and it would be the method that I would choose
to gut an animal if I had to haul it a long ways, uh, to get back to a vehicle.
And then once, so minimum intrusion is, uh, core of the butthole.
Thank you.
And around the genitals, so cut the, the tailpipe in a circle, giant doughnut
around the ass, and if it's a female, uh, the vulva area, and then a small
slash, uh, in the abdomen, like six inches or less, in the belly, right
beside the penis, or where the teats are on a female, like on a doe, like between
the nip, like, Uh, longitudinally, but a six inch gash between the nipples
on a doe or cow, cow elk or cow moose.
And then the third slash is just at the throat.
So through those very small intrusions, you can loosen the throat and the
esophagus by punching your arm down around the collarbones and loosening it all just
through that little hole in the neck.
And then you can...
You can core out the butthole and then reach in through the, the, the
slash in the, in the guts area and grab the tailpipe and pull it out
that, that small cut and then reach your arms up through the small cut in
the belly and open the diaphragm to pull the heart and lungs out that way.
And so the, the, you're making the least amount.
of, like, inches of cutting through hide and hair as possible with just
a butthole core, a throat slash, and then a small incision in the belly.
You're gonna wanna roll up, like, take off your long sleeve shirt and roll
up your sleeves in a larger animal to get up and reach up through the
diaphragm, cut the diaphragm, and pull the throat and trachea out through
that same Incision in the belly.
Um, it's all doable, but the goal is there's no perfection.
Like, oh, Jeff said, you can only do six inches cut in the belly.
If you have to make it longer, then make it longer.
But, uh, especially for a bigger animal like a moose.
Um, but the, the minimal number of cuts and then don't skin it in the bush.
Uh, I would drag it out unless you're really concerned about temperature.
I would leave the hide on as long as possible till you're back to some sort
of civilization and that keeps mud and grime and dirt and leaves and hair.
Off the meat.
So if you can get it back to camp and lift it in any way, uh, that's the best way to
skin is where the hide is falling off the carcass as you're lifting the carcass up.
And f funny also, a ratchet strap.
A ratchet strap.
And a stout, a stout stick that isn't gonna snap on you between the,
the heels or the, the two tendons as a ga or if you have a, if you're
fancy and you have a metal ga, um, a spreader bar between the knees.
Um, you can kind of ratchet strap it up into a tree and
lift it as you're skinning it.
So that the hair and gravity is all pulling the, the hair, the
loosened hairs as you're, as you're cutting through the hide.
It's pulling it down.
Usually when the animal, where the animal falls is a bad place to skin it
because the ground is uneven, inevitably, and you're not using gravity to your
advantage to pull that hair and hide away.
So I would just gut it and then load it and get it back to a vehicle to load, to
get it to camp somehow with the hide on.
And then if you want to go even further, if the temperatures are
ideal, like it's really cold.
Um, you can gut it and get air into the cavity and it cools from
the inside of the animal, not from the outside of the animal.
And Kevin, uh, Kossawan, great friend from the wild, uh, filmographer, he
actually aged, uh, several deer one season in his cold room with the hide on.
So he read this, it was European technique, and it worked magnificently.
And it kind of goes against everything that a person would...
I don't know.
You're like, how quick can I get my meat naked?
And, uh, that, I don't know where that comes from.
But, uh, uh, he's like, I, I think that kind of like hanging a duck,
hanging a duck and aging it till its head falls off or whatever.
Like, I don't know.
He's kind of on this kick.
And we did, we were experimenting with, uh, extreme dry aging beef.
And he's like, well, if I leave the, if I leave the hide on, then what happens?
So it, it just aged with the fur on in his.
In his cold storage basement room, and then before he wanted a heart,
it's so it hung out there two, three weeks, and then he skinned it at home
with really sharp knives and lots of time, and he said it was perfect.
It was like virgin meat, no hair, no gravel, no dust, no spores.
Because the hide stayed on right until he was ready to actually butcher the animal.
Travis Bader: Got a question here.
This guy knows how to ask lots of questions in one sentence.
It says, hang versus ice bath versus butcher straight away.
I've have a big 105 litre Coleman cooler, but no walk in.
Our second fridge is used for the house, but it isn't overly full.
I've been doing an ice bath for seven to 10 days as per Von
Benedict's podcast, drain the water every day, add ice as needed.
Seems to work.
Okay.
This person says water at the end is much less bloody.
I live in the lower mainland.
So weather doesn't seem good to hang.
A friend does, but uses commercial fans in his garage.
What does hard meat layer do to the quality?
So that's a whole bunch of stuff in one, in one question there.
But what would you have to say to that?
Jeff Senger: Yeah, with regards to how do you get your meat cool safely and
quickly, uh, and as simply as possible.
And this is a question from the lower mainland where temperatures aren't
like they are in north central Alberta.
So, um, I have to expand my mind a little bit.
I've heard of the cold water bath method and, Uh, harvesting moose as a kid with
the old men, uh, when I was growing up, uh, we use river water to cool
the moose down when the temperatures were no good and the flies were bad.
So an early season harvest, um, cold water was kind of the only option
because we were, we're remote.
And, uh, we had several days where, where the game wasn't going to be.
Out at commercial refrigeration.
Um, very interesting.
Um, so there are some options and that is like, I, like a cold water
bath or, uh, dry or aging in air, in, in cool air, ideally, um, you
know, um, or butchering right away.
And I would say the whole idea of aging is to make the animal, uh,
increase in tenderness and, um, uh, decrease in its total water load.
So it, it, it would concentrate flavor and increase tenderness by aging in air.
Um, in an ice bath for multiple days, um, I would say that you're cooling it
through, but you're probably not getting like water loss to concentrate flavor.
there probably still would be enzymatic activity inside the
meat, making it more tender.
Um, so that would be applicable when you're dealing with like
a bull, a bull animal or a male animal or an older animal.
Um, you might want to do that for more tenderness, but your end use of
the animal is probably something that would guide you, uh, the most here.
Uh, because I think that a good option would be to butcher immediately.
So, um, if you have one cool night or, or, or 12 hours in a cold water ice
bath, 12 hours it's chilled through, um, then it's time to butcher, uh,
again, depending on what you're planning to use the animal for.
If a lot of it's gonna, if it's an older animal, like a, uh, a trophy animal.
is an old buck or old bull.
Um, a lot of it's going to, like, if we're being honest with ourselves, a
lot of it's going to go into grind.
So I would say you're not getting any meat benefits by aging that, um,
you're going to grind most of it.
And the tender parts are already tender.
So on an older animal, like a trophy buck, I'd save the tenderloin, the strip and
the ribeye, the strip loin and ribeye, and then probably grind or cube for stew
or slow cooking most of the rest of it.
So I think that what you're trying to get out of, like, Aging in a
traditional European slaughterhouse kind of idea, um, it doesn't
apply to wild game the same way.
The reason that we do it with big fat beef and even big fat pigs,
uh, aging works really well because they're just carpeted in lard, in fat.
So they have a, a wetsuit, a fat layer that can be trimmed off later.
And so that means that they're just really great candidates.
A big fat beef or a big fat pig, uh, hog.
Uh, are terrific candidates to age indefinitely because they're so loaded
with that, that sealing in the moisture and allowing enzymatic enzymatic activity
to break down, uh, the connective tissue in the meat, a lean wild
animal, particularly a breeding bull or breeding buck has little to no fat.
And so in air it dries out, and in water, this, I want to get to this,
the, in a cold water bath, you're risking spreading contamination.
So if there's a bit of fecal matter, or a bit of spores, or contamination,
like in the bath, then it gets, it's watered down, and so it's diluted, but
it could get all over the meat if you have some, something nasty in there.
So I'd probably just go ahead and...
If I didn't have refrigeration, uh, right away, I I'd have the animal cool
down and sort of like rig a mortise up and then butcher it right away.
Get it into a cooler on ice in at least primals, like boneless primals.
That's a great way to go.
Cause you're not going to improve, uh, meat quality that much.
If you're hunting just for meat, and you're taking a fawn or a cow or
something that's been fat, shooting off here would be like shooting
a cow moose off an alfalfa field.
Or sorry, an alfalfa or canola field.
That's a big, lardy, fat ass animal.
So you can skin it, uh, and, and chill it, and you're going to get some benefits by
letting that thing age, the tenderness, because it's got a big fat, uh, jacket on.
So it's retaining its moisture, retaining that juiciness,
and then getting more tender.
But usually a bull or a buck, um, is going to lose juiciness
in exchange for tenderness.
And then you're adding that whole meat contamination risk, uh, from E.
coli spreading.
So I would just butcher right away.
Travis Bader: Butcher right away.
Yeah.
I like, you know, I had Axis deer for the first time, uh, did a hunt in Molokai and
very hot, very hot weather over there.
And, uh, it, the meat immediately went into an ice bath, which was, you know,
something I've never done before.
And I've always kind of frowned upon.
Um, and people talk about how Axis deer is like one of the best meats out there.
That wasn't my assessment.
I found it to be a very mild meat.
And I was wondering if that ice bath really kind of made it more
mild and affected the texture as
Jeff Senger: well.
Yeah, I think it definitely would.
Uh, we've had poultry, uh, yeah, definitely, uh, meat picks up water when
it's in, so hot, hot meat going into cold bath picks up water in the fibers of the
meat, so it affects your texture as well.
Um, So that's something like, if you prefer it, if you prefer that texture, the
texture and the extra weight, that's good.
But, but I think that the risks of contamination is always a concern.
Um, as if I put on my, my retail meat vendor hat, I would sell, uh, Uh,
a cold air chilled chicken, uh, for more than an ice water bath chicken.
So an ice water bath chicken goes into these cold water baths.
Uh, that's how the mega processors do it to get those chickens cooled
down more quickly with less real, less real estate, less room.
Um, but if there's some chicken shit in the water, that chicken
shit is now on all the chickens.
So the solution to that is usually to add, to add a chemical, an antibacterial
chemical to the chicken bath.
And then that's all being slurped up by the meat.
So the meat itself, the muscles and the skin and all that is soaking in a shit
chemical bath and it also gives you.
Yeah.
It's like the chlorine in a swimming pool.
Like someone just took a dump in your pool, but don't worry.
It's it's uh, don't worry.
It's fine.
And I'm like, I don't want to eat.
I don't want shit in my mouth.
That's sterile or active.
I don't, I just assume to have neither.
So, so when Paul, sorry, but in poultry, then air chilled
is like this premium product.
If the poultry is killed and then air killed, washed off and then air
chilled, um, that's more desirable.
Travis Bader: Um, and you know, people talking about, uh, different
ways of cooling off their, uh, their game, I always, like, I look at
people, they buy meat grinders and they'll buy slices and they'll buy
all these different contraptions.
And why not just go on Craigslist and buy a used freezer and get a little
temperature control for the thing.
Um, uh, other than storage space, you can get, uh, or a used fridge, just
something to hang your meat or hold your meat for a while in, in a cool area.
It seems like that would be a pretty good investment if somebody plans to go
out and getting more than one animal.
Jeff Senger: Absolutely.
I think planning your trip, um, I mean, this is an answer to a, not exact,
not a question, but an extension of the previous one, and that's that, um,
there's so much money spent on camouflage.
And, and knickknacks that are brick and brack, that's all unnecessary.
Um, if you are serious about what you want to do with your meat, then
yeah, ice or, uh, uh, a generator.
A lot of guys are traveling with generators, generators anyway.
So, a window rattling air conditioner in like a semi insulated plywood
box would be, would be more useful than, uh, I don't know.
What can I think of that I saw, uh, recent, like then a ghillie suit.
I think that's some, invest money in an air conditioner,
a generator and a plywood box.
And the ghillie suit probably is a bit of an overkill.
Travis Bader: Uh, I'd say so.
Yeah.
Maybe just be still, you'll probably, uh, find more.
Jeff Senger: But yeah, it's really interesting.
I don't know.
I have a strong, strong feelings about the commercialization of hunting and
that they'll like that if it can be manufactured in China, uh, for 3 cents
and sold to North Americans for 300, uh, that works and that gets promoted
and pushed, but what doesn't get pushed is exactly what you said is Craigslist
or Kijiji or, or Facebook marketplace.
And looking for that used fridge or the even used walk ins are not expensive.
If a couple of hunters working together, we're going to go.
plan a trip where they go into camp and they're going to set up
and be like, be in theater for 10 days, no matter what's harvested.
No one's driving out that then, yeah, like a five by eight trailer with, with
spray foam insulation or some dowel foam and a, and an air conditioner running
during the day would be, would be really a lot smarter than, uh, the lift kit and
the, um, the ground effects, lighting and, and the, you know, whatever,
whatever people are spending money on.
You don't need a whiz bang rifle if all your meat just rots.
Travis Bader: That's a really, really good point.
Jeff Senger: Yeah.
Get a 303 at a, at a gun show and, and wear like sneakers because
they're all like sneakers are awesome.
Disposable set of, uh, inexpensive sneakers and just throw them out
every year and then go hunting and, and maybe think about meat prep,
meat, meat storage and preservation.
Travis Bader: I like that.
Here's one.
Uh, what do you think of Rene Redzepi's dry aging beef and beeswax?
I think he had some like super old, uh, uh, cow that he ended
up, um, dry aging and beeswax.
Did you follow that?
Jeff Senger: Yeah, no, for sure.
I saw that and I thought, super cool.
We have, uh, on the farm, we have bees.
We have wax and we've done it once.
Uh, we did a strip loin in, in lard, uh, in beef tallow, sorry, beef tallow.
So dip, uh, ice bath, like dipping in hot tallow and then
ice bath and dipping hot tallow.
So the, the goal here from the meat weirdo perspective is that
you're trying to minimize, uh, the amount of trim loss that is called
pellicle or, uh, more commonly scab.
So the dried out husk of say a desirable cut of meat like strip loin or ribeye
that is a cut that you'd want to super age If you just like cool or
you just let it age in air you get a gross bark or scab on the outside
of the meat and then you're trimming that down to just cut out the bright
red jewel in the center because most people are really put off by that just
that ugly looking bark on the outside.
So Rene Rezepi and others, uh, dipping in fat means that you're not losing
all, you're not losing, uh, moisture as quickly in the outer layer.
So you have a higher yield.
on the cut because you're keeping the moisture in by dipping it in beeswax
or lard and beeswax and lard or tallow are semi permeable to moisture and and
in air so there is some exchange It's a little bit better than a plastic
bag, but not a whole lot better than a plastic bag So that would be something
more akin to wet aging or bag aging.
So you have to ask yourself.
What's more permeable just a Vaxeal bag Or wax.
And both of them, they're pretty close.
Wax has a little more breathability than, or, or, or lard tallow.
Um, but it's kind of like a wet aging technique.
Something that we've seen in, in the world of, uh, fermented dry cured sausage
is using a bladder, or the beef bung.
So a scraped out, like a very large, like the intestine or a bladder, a pork
bladder or a humongous pork bladder.
And now you can stuff sausage in that to make traditional,
all kinds of traditional, uh, dry cured fermented stuff.
Um, and that is a permeable membrane.
And there's a place, um, I can't, I can't remember the name of the manufactured
product, but they're dry aging bags.
That are sort of these semi permeable bags made out of, uh,
collagen or something like that.
So they breathe.
That's a step closer, like a step away from plastic and
closer to just dry aging in air.
But it's worth exploring and like a mad, I mean, uh, I wouldn't go through an
inordinate amount of expense to experiment in this way, but if you liked the effects
yourself of aging in beeswax, Rene can do all kinds of crazy things because he's...
He's done really well for himself in restauranting.
So I think in some ways, uh, it may be a bit for show, like what
can we dip this in with that?
Like how, like it's a little bit excessive, but, uh, it's cool.
It looked cool.
And, uh, if you're playful with your food, which you should be, and you
want to experiment there, I think that there might be some flavor notes
and wax that affects the meat in a different way than plastic or, or lard.
So I, beeswax has a really.
Uh, pleasing smell and feel to it in, in my palate.
Um, so I think that would be imparted to the meat somewhat.
Travis Bader: Here's another one, um, you may or may not know this one, but
it says, uh, considerations with deer and CWD, chronic wasting disease.
Would you avoid cutting through bones and butchering to be extra safe?
Jeff Senger: Yes.
Um, that's an easy answer.
And, uh, Yes.
Um, so man, strong feelings on chronic wasting and strong feelings
about, uh, uh, mad cow, uh, bovine spongioform encephalopathy.
So we're always not monitoring, but we're always mitigating the risk on
the kill floor with beef for BSE, which is the bovine version of CWD.
Um, and so.
We've read a lot and written a lot of procedures that you
use a spinal severing knife.
That's a special knife to decapitate the animal.
Whenever you're cutting through the spinal cord, the spinal cord
is deemed specified risk material.
And so you don't want that knife touching the rest of the, uh,
the edible part of the animal.
So we have a special knife to sever the spinal cord.
And particularly careful around animals over 30 months of age because
there's a higher, statistically higher probability of animals over
30 months of age having, um, prions than animals under 30 months of age.
So, Canada Food Inspection Agency kind of built all of these sort of, they had
to just draw a line in the sand where statistical probabilities are used.
It was a little bit like any public health emergency where.
It's not perfect, but they did the best they could to try
and minimize the spread of.
Um, so, so for BSE, we're not recommended, but it's required that you not eat,
uh, meat within one inch of the spinal cord, uh, where we remove and treat as
specified risk material the first one and a half meters of small intestine.
And spine are not used for food.
So if you're, other bones are just, other bones and cutting
other bones are, are just fine.
So I think that sort of the, the proxy for wild game and CWD would be to
avoid spine, avoid severing the spine.
And that's, it's not that hard to do.
So debone an older animal, uh, debone it without cutting, uh, down
the spine with your reciprocating saw or, or your handsaw.
What do you have in camp?
Just avoid the spine, head, brain, eyes, tonsils, and, uh, the
first, and the small intestine.
Get that away from the meat.
And then kind of avoid, avoid eating meat within one inch of the spinal cord.
And then you're doing the same thing that we're doing in the food industry for beef.
Travis Bader: What about, what about marrow?
Would that be a
Jeff Senger: consideration?
No, that's not a specified, like in the BSE world, that's
not a specified risk material.
So marrow bones is still allowed.
That's, that's not statistically a significant probability of prion
source for, uh, for a potentially infected animal in the world of beef.
What I think is brilliant though, is that unlike beef.
In the, in the, in the, in the deer world, you can submit deer heads for testing no
matter where it's harvested in Alberta.
And I think that BC has something similar.
So, so you can get like, it's kind of funny that my family can get a steak at,
at, uh, at, at Walmart and eat that steak.
And we don't know the animals never tested for BSE or not.
We're just hoping that.
The, the federal processors kind of did things that were, that
the provincial process also do to mitigate risk and sort of to, to
avoid the statistical probability in older animals, dah, dah, dah.
So they did something, but they certainly didn't test it for BSE.
There is a test for BSE that's just like the test they run on the
heads of deer for chronic wasting, except that hunters get to have.
Uh, a negative test result, whereas people shopping at Walmart or
shopping anywhere, we don't get a negative test result on, on beef.
Interesting.
Other countries and jurisdictions do test, they test for BSC on 100 percent of all
beef slaughtered, like the United Kingdom.
But we don't do that here.
However, hunters can submit that head to test for CWD to
know that you get the all clear.
And chronic wasting is, I don't think there's any proven cases of chronic
wasting jumping to humans like yet.
Um, so Kevin and I were hunting in Southern Alberta and like 25 percent of
deer, or I think the stat is even higher, um, are test positive for chronic wasting.
Uh, and the, the official stance of the Alberta government says we don't recommend
you eating animals that test positive.
Uh, and the results are usually a month or two from when you, from
when you submit the, the test.
So, so we were kind of, Kevin was in a shit position cause he had one that
tested hot and he had already gone through the expense and time of, of buying the
tags, harvesting the animal, killing and gutting and skinning, and then
butchering and putting it in his freezer.
But he didn't eat a speck of it until he got the test results and
the test results were positive.
So he threw it all out at a landfill.
They don't recommend you feed CWD hot animals to pets.
Man, I would choose maybe not to hunt in areas where the prevalence is as high as
20 or 30 percent Because I don't want to go because I don't have enough money to
go through all of that and then just throw out the animal I'm I'm still poor member
of the working poor enough that if I kill an animal I want like we're in like a
95 percent CWD free zone And I'm really glad that the government provides those
statistics, so that I can be reasonably assured that the animal doesn't have CWD.
Again, noting to listeners that CWD isn't proven to do anything to humans.
It's just advised that possibly because BSE did jump or has been known to
be able to jump and cause Kurtzfeld Jakob disease in humans, that probably
you want, you want to simmer down on eating animals from wild animals that,
that suffer from chronic wasting.
So it's, it's, it's a whole topic and for, for a podcast, uh, all on its own
to bring specialists in and talk about where are we at with, yeah, CWD in Canada
and, and in jurisdictions like in the States where it's much more prevalent.
What are they doing?
Travis Bader: So here's another one.
Person says, I run, I render bear and deer tallow.
What do you suggest is the shelf life in a fridge?
He says, smells all right after a few years.
So I guess if it passes a smell test,
Jeff Senger: we're good.
Yeah, that's funny.
There's just like this freaky book that have, that my wife bought when we were new
to farming called nourishing traditions.
And, uh, it was about fermented and fermenting foods and, uh, eating
raw dairy and stuff like that.
Uh, and it really did say that, that human beings.
I need to be able to trust their senses of taste and smell.
And if it's off to smell, then don't use it.
Yeah.
It was as simple as that.
And, uh, I think that we, we really underplay our senses and that
you could probably, if it doesn't smell good, then don't use it.
We've noticed that rendered lard in the freezer probably has, depending
on what else is in your freezer, probably has a six month shelf
life before the fat tastes rancid.
Because of the zero water content that fat and rendered fat doesn't
permanently, it doesn't freeze.
It just hardens or like stiffens.
But so there's always activity going on in fat and it can go rancid.
And if you use even a little bit of rancid pork lard in a dish, the dish is ruined.
So I wouldn't be afraid to smell it and or taste it.
Uh, to, to see now that being said, uh, there's always a use for lard
and particularly bear fat or deer fat to waterproof your boots, uh,
to waterproof and treat leathers.
Um, so even if it's no longer culinarily useful, uh, it can be used to, to
treat leather, to treat fabrics, to be water resistant, waterproof.
Travis Bader: I like that.
Here's, here's a neat one.
So when people look at the liver on an animal to see if it's healthy, what
are they looking for and are there any other ways to check the health
of an animal through its organs?
Jeff Senger: That's a terrific one.
And we've seen in in in the because it's the case that we've been running
the slaughterhouse for 13 years We've seen a lot of organs and because
there's inspector They're checking doing postmortems on the organs to see if
the animals fit for human consumption They almost always are because even
afflictions of the organs, uh, don't require that we toss away the carcass,
uh, but it does require that we don't consume or the, the, the organs themselves
are not fit for human consumption.
And I think like a great rule of thumb, kind of the follow up to the,
the kind of the nourishing traditions, like trust your senses of smell.
Uh, when a liver is...
That liver is a great one because it's like a huge canvas of the animal's life.
Like it's a canvas and an atlas, a map of what, what the animal's done, what
it's been up to the last few years.
Uh, has it had a healthy lifestyle or has it been, uh, getting blackout drunk
on weekends or more likely, uh, dining, dining on things that aren't good for
it or dining in slews where there are parasites and so, so anyway, Long answer,
but if it looks disgusting, throw it away.
You will know a bad liver when you see it.
Um, man, there are liver flukes that are kind of like leeches, small leeches
that live in livers, uh, that usually hang out in sloughs and wetlands.
And they occur in all ungulates or multi chamber stomach, stomach animals.
Uh, and when the liver has flukes and you see things moving in the
liver, it's bad news about the liver.
Also, those flukes or milder infections of parasites can leave scarring on
the liver, so if it's not a nice, smooth, beautiful, mahogany colored
liver, with no white bumps or white spots, then it's a healthy liver.
If it has white spots, white bumps, uh, pustules, uh, sacs filled with
pus or gross little squirmy animals, then that, like, that's a condemnation
of the liver and the organs.
And I kind of be careful about the rest of the animal.
However, Um, in, in bovines, uh, those parasite, the parasites
that love eating, uh, organs don't love, uh, infesting the meat.
So the meat is usually still just fine if the livers are condemned and thrown into
the garbage, not fit even for dog food.
So keep an eye on the liver.
Um, you would look for swelling in glands like the tonsils, uh, up, up in
the throat at the base of the tongue.
If there's anything swollen or any, uh, infections, uh, you might want to talk
to a veterinarian in your area to just make sure that the meat would be healthy.
Taking biopsies and little weird little, uh, Ziploc bags is not the
worst idea if you're, if you're unsure, it's better safe than sorry.
And, uh, I'm not, I wish I was more familiar in British Columbia,
but there is a lab in Edmonton that would take weird biopsies.
Uh, it's, it's an extension of, uh, like fish and what, what used to
be called fish and wildlife anyway.
But, uh, the fish and wildlife department would take, it's
where you submit your heads.
Right.
Uh, for chronic wasting testing.
If you, if you drive right to a center, but you could, you
could, you could bring biopsies.
And I think a lot of the people that work in that field are quite interested
to find rare and unusual conditions.
So if you're unsure, uh, put it, yeah, freeze the meat, like, like harvest
the meat, save it, maybe save, save a liver that looks disgusting, but if it
looks disgusting, it's cause it's bad.
Hmm.
Travis Bader: Yeah, it makes sense.
Um, better to age meat on or off the bone?
Jeff Senger: Um, great question.
If the animal, so if the animal is chilled right through and you're
managing temperature properly by getting it gutted and skinned quickly
after the harvest, then leaving it on the bone is better because you have
less overall surface area to lose.
Yield due to scab or helicose or bark.
So I'm thinking of a big, the hip, the, the, the, the, the ass end of a deer,
the rear quarter, the rear hip of it.
Um, the more, the more big pieces you can keep it in, the bigger the piece,
you can keep it in the less surface area it is for water to evaporate.
Um, and leaving, leaving the bone in.
And, and if you were.
if you did have a saw and you split the animal straight down, uh, the center
into sides, um, those feather bones of the spine, keep your rib eye and your
strip loin protected because they're a bit of armor that protects water
from evaporating from the bone side.
So keeping the bone, keeping it on the bone is the best way
in the biggest piece possible.
That's the best way to dry age.
Okay.
Again, um, Less surface area means less water loss, and the whole point
of dry aging is keeping water in the muscle while enzymatic activity breaks
down the muscle in the connective tissue to make it more tender.
So the more water you lose, the more redundant aging is.
If you're losing a lot of water, if the animal's not coated in fat,
or if it's a bunch of small pieces, you're just gonna, you're gonna lose
water, so it's gonna make it dry, but the enzymatic activity will make it
tender, but it'll be dry and tender.
And so you're undoing the tenderness is being undone
cause you're losing juiciness.
So just butcher it as soon as it's cold through.
Right.
Okay.
Travis Bader: So here's what about meat curing, sodium nitrate versus
sodium nitrite brands advertise nitrate or nitrate nitrate or nitrite free
products, but use celery extract.
And what's the difference?
Jeff Senger: Funny.
Uh, we went on a wild goose chase to try and get celery extract,
which, which turned out to be another name for sodium nitrite.
Sodium nitrite, uh, is the curing ingredient in pink salt or like
there's, it goes by a lot of different, they're cure salt, pink
salt, number two, Prague powder.
Uh, they all contain a percentage of sodium nitrite.
And then as it oxidizes, it becomes sodium nitrate.
And that, that sodium nitrate is sort of the, uh, the reduced version of
sodium, sodium nitrite after it's done its work, glomming onto oxygen to,
to do its preservative work in meat.
Uh, so it's all the same that, that, that as a cure, you're not really saving
yourself if you invest in celery extract.
It's, it's the, it's chemically the same thing.
Interesting.
Um, unless you were making your own.
Yeah.
It was really disappointing.
Like.
We're going to buy a bag of this stuff, the celery extract from Norway for 800.
And, um, the, it was chemically no different from chemically
produced or like a artificially produced sodium nitrite that's then
watered down and bonded with salt.
So it's a low, it's not a hundred percent sodium nitrite that would kill everybody.
It's 2 percent or 5 percent and then you have to adjust your recipes.
Um, uh, it.
In small quantities, if you're not eating a thousand or dozens
of pounds of cured meats, I don't think that the health consequences
outweigh the novelty of having food preservation, and it has great color.
It changes the flavor in your bacons and hams, and it changes the color, changes
the flavor, and it extends the the shelf stability of that, of those products.
So I'm an advocate of of cure salt to make cured meat products.
Um, that being said, I wouldn't eat a hundred pounds of them a month
because you just don't need that much sodium nitrate in your diet.
And the oxidized version, sodium nitrate in your diet.
Um, so, so just be reason, be reasonable.
It's been something that's been around for curing for hundreds of years.
And, uh, Uh, but, but eat responsibly.
Uh, there are, are alternatives and thinking that you need, uh,
cure salt in order to produce a delicious salted meat is not true.
It makes a very specific type of product, but if you're averse, or allergic,
or other health reasons that makes you want to avoid cure salt, um, then
just explore using salt and smoke.
That's an even more...
ancient traditional method, but just salt, uh, iodine, iodine free.
So sea, sea salt and thyme in the Italian tradition of whole muscle
curing, uh, works quite lovely.
Um, you don't get sort of the same color and the same, uh, tinny flavor
as in like an American cure salt, cured ham or bacon, but we've done.
And we don't get the same color, but we've done a sodium nitrate free bacon.
Um, and it's just salt and sugar on side pork and then sliced.
It's kind of, it doesn't have the nice color, but it's, it's
also very, very close to bacon.
Travis Bader: That sounds delicious.
Um, this person, Hunter says, I've got a good grinder and I wrap my meat in paper.
What are some next investment ideas?
So smoker, vacuum packer, meat band saw.
And then if vacuum packer, he hears that they tend to break
every few seasons and maybe there's some good suggestions out there.
Jeff Senger: That's a really good question.
He's right about vacuum packers being disproportionately expensive.
And that they don't, they don't last.
There's a lot of things that can go wrong.
So they can lose seals and the heating elements can make crappy seals.
So if you're not harvesting a huge number of animals per year, um, and you're
intermittent, you know, it's like, say you're an intermittent harvester or you're
harvesting a couple of deer per year.
I think that you're on the right track with paper wrapping, um, using the
animal up in a reasonable amount of time.
Like.
If, if you have six years or six year old game meat in your
freezer, you're doing it wrong.
You're probably hunting too much or you're not giving it away to family enough.
So the kind of mummifying and like meats that's harvested for, for men,
for more than one season or maybe two, you're either harvesting too much,
you're not giving away enough or you're just not cooking with it often enough.
Uh, so I, I think that for this, like a non commercial, uh, like kind of hobby
hunter, probably you'd have a lot more fun with a smoke, like with a smoker because
you, it gives you access to a whole, uh, breadth of products that you can, you
can at home manufacture to have, to have things that the family likes eating more.
So then, like, so that you're solving the problem by making more delicious things in
a wider scope of flavors than just storing meat that nobody likes eating longer.
Yeah.
So the pepperoni at my house, when I was a kid, like, we'd eat a whole
moose worth of pepperoni every year.
Like playing video games, eating pepperoni or jerky.
So I think that probably going down that path isn't a bad idea because smoke
and salt and sugar make meat delicious.
You can make an alley cat into some delicious jerky, I think with, with a
pre packaged jerky mix and a smoker.
Yeah.
I would eat alley cats.
I'm going to quote you on that one.
I think.
Okay.
Travis Bader: Last, last one I got here is Moose Knows.
Is it kind of like the ultimate foundation for head
Jeff Senger: cheese?
Yeah.
Uh, yeah, I think easily the proxy and probably like the culinary French, uh,
Western European world would be, uh, head cheese is a proxy to moose nose.
It's, it's cartilaginous and, uh, man, we did some gross things with pig faces,
uh, where they're scalded and scraped, of course, during the processing.
And then we debone the entire pig face and then we rolled it
up ears, ears, cartilage and all.
And then tied them in a tight little bundle, uh, wrapped around bay leaf and
various herbs, and then essentially, uh, uh, braised that, that rolled
up and tightly tied face in a roll for hours and hours and hours.
And then, I don't know what, what the process is.
I think it went into, um, The, it was just poured into, into pans to cool, like into
a bread loaf pan to make just the world's, the world's like least fancy head cheese.
And then we sliced it.
And when you're eating this, so it was like brown Jell O like really, really
dense brown Jell O with this curl of pig skin, snout, ears, and all kinds of, and
the little bits of meat and fat in it.
It was absolutely delicious, which is gross, but the texture
was a bit getting around because.
Yeah, yeah, you could slice it and put it on, on, uh, in a sandwich and you
almost wouldn't know that it wasn't just a luncheon meat, it just tasted like a
delicious pork luncheon meat, except for when you got a piece of the cartilage,
the cartilage in the ear, again, edible and chewable and was fine, like it wasn't
bony or gristly because it had been braised for so long, the cartilage just
turned into something, a little firmer bit of, of, of, of gristle in there.
So.
I, I would highly anticipate that the moose cartilage would eventually,
with enough braising, it would sort of melt down into a sticky, tacky, quite
enjoyable bit, kind of like a tendon in your Vietnamese soup at your Vietnamese
takeout place, uh, or a little bit like a chewy noodle, like, uh, uh, uh, tripe,
like beef tripe in either an Italian cultural tradition, a French cultural
tradition, or, uh, an Asian cultural tradition, kind of like chewy noodle.
And once you get used to it, you kind of like, I quite like this.
It's super rich.
Like all of those foods, the collagenous foods are quite rich.
Head, cheese, and nose.
You probably wouldn't sit down and eat like a pound of it.
But, um, I'm pretty keen on trying moose nose the next time I harvest a moose.
To see where, where it goes and if we can kind of amp it up, like
they're, they're probably the traditional preparation methods.
Um, but I wonder if you could kind of build a hybrid of, of scorching it and,
and cooking it in a campfire, like wrapped in the stomach of the, of the moose.
That's one way to do it.
And then that hyper traditional, hyper stone age.
Um, but if you brought in some culinary techniques from Western Europe or even
from Asia, you might be able to like approach it as if it were a pig's face.
Or pig ears and make it into a collage, like a collagen delicacy
or, or kind of a moose head cheese.
Yeah.
Travis Bader: So for the listeners, next time you're out there and you got your
moose nose, just wrap it in a pig's face or a treat, treat it like a pig's face.
There you go.
Jeff Senger: Yeah, I would say, Google, uh, head cheese recipes and then
apply them to your moose nose recipe.
And I think you're going to be okay.
Like you're going to be close.
You're going to get there close, but practice makes perfect.
Travis Bader: I can only imagine what the, uh, non hunter, non meat eater tuning
into this podcast would have to think.
Is there anything we should chat about before we wrap
Jeff Senger: things up?
I was pretty keen on, on promoting the lifestyle of living on land,
living on like, uh, in rural areas.
I think that reasonable people would, would at least consider and like poke
it a little bit because of the costs.
There's sort of a metaphor in the cost of meat when the grocers are gouging
has made the artisanal butcher modest meats, not the highest price to buy
your meat at us, which is weird.
We're cheaper than Costco and I'm getting all the margin I want,
like a reasonable amount of margin.
On my Wagyu, 60 day dry aged Wagyu, we're selling at 77 a kg for a bone in rib.
And Costco is selling a factory bone and rib for 99 a kg.
And I'm like, what the f how is that fucking possible?
And it's because the grocers got a taste of fucking people so hard during COVID
that they're like, there's no reason.
What can they do?
What can shoppers do?
What are they all going to buy a fucking farm?
Are they all going to go hunting?
Of course they're not right.
It's too hard.
And like, they've been programmed, they've been too dumbed down and
they've been made too sedentary and too filled with depression and anxiety to
actually become hunters and farmers.
They're not going to do that.
They're just going to pay 99 for a mislabeled for it.
Convenience.
Is the addiction, right?
So, and that had sort of, uh, consumers in between a rock and a hard place.
And, and then COVID sort of just prove that to the mega corporations, the two
or five like food retailers in Canada that can just charge whatever they want.
So it made artisanal meat seem not that expensive.
Cause it's not that expensive when you have a short supply chain.
That's crazy.
So that was good, but, but I liken that to sort of like the land idea.
Oh, was that then in the real estate field?
So this is a metaphor that the grocery fuckers are sort of a metaphor for
the real estate people that are fucking you also as a, as a member
of the working class, real estate developers are like, we can just
charge whatever we want for houses.
Mm-hmm.
as evidenced by house prices in, in, in cities that are getting less and less
desirable if we just do a reality check and say that, is this how I wanna live?
Mm-hmm.
, like with, with break-ins daily and, and just people on top of each other
and, and concrete and noise and pollution and like, all that stuff.
If you really just ask yourself, is this what I, how I wanna spend the rest
of my, I'm on, like, there's the, the statistical likelihood of me even existing
is one in a gajillion and then, I'm going to like, I'm going to take a train
to work and be packed in like a sardine and on the train for an hour and a half.
And then some dude farts and I just have to smell it because
I can't get out of the way.
Cause I'm just packed in like, this is one of the things that made me leave Calgary.
But so, so you're like, this is the best, this is the highest.
Someone would fart and you just have to smell it because And
then you're like, oh, that's it.
I'm out of Calgary.
Yeah.
I was like, this is the end.
Civilization is over.
What the city has on offer, the pros don't outweigh the cons.
And that was when a fucking house in Calgary is 400, 000.
The same house is 1.
6 million today.
So then we're, we're in Vancouver.
We're dropping off these kittens and we go downtown to West Vancouver.
And I drive past the do like a multiplex where they're building houses
and selling them to people that are literally 10 feet wide in the country.
We call those Atco trailers stacked.
They just took out like Heather.
You're never gonna believe this.
They have Atco.
They have a 10 foot wide con or like, condo, in like a 3 or 4 story walk
up, but there's like, 70 units just all stacked together, but they're
actually, like, 10 foot wide houses.
And then I asked Annika, Google these, like, uh, ones for sale, Google it.
995, 000.
Man.
And I'm like, these people, so, so the real estate guys are, are
fucking people really, really hard.
They're like, Oh, but how could you not want to live in the city?
And then when you have, uh, you have oligarchs that are burying money and
buying Condos downtown to jack the prices at gentrifying our like neighborhoods
in Toronto and Vancouver as good and stable investments I can't really blame
them That's where I parked my money to if I had tons and tons of it But
it means that it drives up prices for people living there so you can buy a
shoebox atco trailer for 995, 000 in Vancouver and live in Vancouver and
your dog doesn't have a place to take a shit that isn't concrete Because
there is no places that aren't concrete within a walkable distance of this area.
So I was like, Oh my God, it's so weird.
So, so the way, so now all of a sudden rural air, rural
living doesn't look as horrible.
You're like, wait a second, honey.
So I could tell it, I could probably telecommute thanks to technology and
I could buy 160 acres for 300 grand.
Or 160 acres with, with a house on it for five or 600 grand.
And the answer is true, my son, that's true.
And then, so, so it's possible that we're entering into a period of time
where just people problem solving to have the least shitty life that they
can might choose a house on every quarter section, a pig in every yard.
Travis Bader: I like that.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot to be said for
Jeff Senger: that.
It's, it's possible that you don't pick up warm dog poop.
With your hand through a thin plastic bag, because that's where it's at in the
city, of course, pick up your dog poop.
If anyone with a dog in Vancouver let their dog shit all over the place,
they, you'd have to have swimming goggles to get down the streets.
Of course.
I don't
Travis Bader: know how much about downtown Vancouver you've been through, but I think
there's more human feces on the streets.
There's still a lot
Jeff Senger: of shit.
That's human shit.
Um, but our dog has never seen pavement, right?
Um, and what would you, what is that worth?
What is that worth to you?
If, if your dog has never experienced pavement or concrete?
I don't know.
And like, it's weird anyway, so yeah, you're on your.
Yeah, you're on the phone with someone from 1930, and he's telling you,
like, how do you live like that?
I don't mean you specifically, but I just mean, like, they've bamboozled, they've
bamboozled to the point and sort of taken, like the, the realtors in this case, have
taken away from a working family so much.
That even the horribleness of living on a farm because of weather and freezing
water and managing all your own systems is still better than the, than the
option of leaving a 900, 000 mortgage to your children instead of a paid
off quarter section to your children.
In my lifetime, I'll be able to pay off 160 acres and give 40 acres
each to each of my four daughters.
But if I had a million dollar mortgage, which would be a normal
starter house in Vancouver.
I, even on a 30 year term, I wouldn't even put a dent in it if my payments were
anywhere near reasonable on my income, even as an accountant with two degrees
from university, I would have a hard time accumulating any equity except for
the equity of increasing property value.
That's only good if you leave that market.
It's only good when you leave the market.
You having a bunch of equity in your house in Vancouver doesn't
do you any good unless you leave.
Because you can just buy the same house as what you're living in with your equity.
It's hard to, it's hard to climb the ladder if you're just a working
person and you didn't inherit wealth.
Travis Bader: You know, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
I always enjoy chatting with you and man, did I learn a lot.
Jeff Senger: Well, thank you very much for having me, Travis.
Anytime,
man.