Master Butcher Kropf
Marcel Kropf
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Mr. Kropf is a master butcher. He apprenticed in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, where he learned much more than typical Austrian butchers.
He's an expert in many food-related topics: pre-slaughter diet, slaughtering, cutting up carcasses into usable cuts, nutrition, making ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook food from meat and traditional Austrian cooking.
He's taught classes on the topics for decades, along with designing his own kitchen tools and writing a book on how to slaughter, prepare and cook animals. He teaches in Preding, where he has his farm, restaurant and other businesses.
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As in America, experts like Mr. Kropf are hard to find, and vanishing with the decline of small-scale meat preparation.
Christoph Wiesner arranged for us to attend one of his classes. Mr. Kropf prepared a sow from Mrs. Faul, whose farm we'd just visited an hour before the class. He showed us how he divides a carcass into primal and smaller cuts. He then cooked some of the meat as we watched, and served us lunch. He also showed us how to use the scraps to make products like head cheese, spread, sausages and lard.
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The highlight of the course was watching him make lunch out of a sow whose farm we'd just visited. Mr. Kropf made a tradtional meal: soup from the knuckles, ribs and schnitzel from filets made from the calf muscle. This was one of the best meals we had in Austria.
The nicest part of the sow that I ate was the jaw muscle. They gave it to me as we prepared a pork spread. I'd heard this muscle was a real treat. It was really wonderful - extremely flavorful.
Cutting
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Mr. Kropf began by showing us how he cuts and wraps a carcass. He showed us the steps he goes through - removing the glands and making the few cuts required to get the primal cuts. He made it look absolutely trivial.
Interestingly, he said that when he cuts up a carcass, he can tell if the animal was stressed at slaughter time. If so, he'll see liquid pooling in certain places. That's because stressed pigs produce meat that doesn't hold water - and some of it pools inside the carcass. Also, he can tell if the animal received proper nutrition - for instance, when he dislocates some of the joints, if the bones break, he knows that it had a mineral deficiency.
Lard
Lard is rendered pig fat. By heating the pig's fatty tissue, the fat in the tissue separates from the protein holding it all together.
The pure fat is called "lard." Lard keeps a lot longer than the fat from which it is made, because it won't rot like protein. It may oxidize a bit, but keeping it in a cool place slows that down. Mangalitsa fat contains more monounsaturated fat than normal pig fat, which allows the lard to keep even longer without oxidizing.
Learning how to make lard from Mr. Kropf was very interesting, because I'd tried this myself and done it badly. It is very important to separate the fat from the protein, which requires a sieve and a ladle.
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As Mr. Kropf explained, one takes the fatty bits left from the carcass and slowly heats them up with some water. The fat starts to separate after a while. Then one has to use a special tool - a sieve - and a ladle in order to get lard composed of nearly pure fat.
After one removes that fat with the ladle, there are greaves and low-quality fat remaining. The fat is low quality because it will be dark from small bits of burnt protein. So one takes out the greaves and presses them in a press - to squeeze out the extra fat.
The result of all this is much high-quality, pure-white lard, and a lot of high-quality greaves, which are crispy and flavorful, without being excessively chewy or rubbery.
Next: The Spitzbart Family's Farm
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