There's a new family member in 4505 Meats' "Swine So Fine Product Line" making its debut this month. Aside from their transcendental chicharrones (pillowy clouds of fried pork skin that melts in your mouth), turduckens, spiritual t-shirts, letterpress posters, and the masterminds behind the best burger in the Bay Area (if not the country, aside from Peter Luger's in Brooklyn), they're releasing their visually stunning, prodigious tome of meat wisdom: Whole Beast Butchery: The Complete Visual Guide to Beef, Lamb and Pork.

I've been an ardent fan of chef Ryan Farr since my fellow KQED colleague and I attended a panel discussion UC Berkeley titled, "The Art of the Butcher." We watched in awe as he proceeded to expertly break down an entire side of a pig in front of the audience. (And later on, when hunting for a caterer to roast a whole pig at my wedding, I knew who to call. Ryan and his talented crew prepared this amazing porchetta for our picnic reception several years ago.) Since then, I've also seen him work his magic at various street food festivals and his weekly lunch gig at the Ferry Building.

Ryan Farr holding his book "Whole Beast Butchery" at Eat Real Fest 2011. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

With the release of "Whole Beast Butchery," he's adding author to his list of talents. Ryan teaches butcher and sausage-making classes, but as they're sold out for the rest of the year -- this is the next best thing. This hefty book is beautifully illustrated with color photographs by Ed Anderson that comprehensively depicts the labor-intensive process of cutting up whole slabs of beef, lamb and pork. This short video from Chronicle Books gives a great overview of what you'll find inside.

Whole Beast Butchery starts off with an introduction that outlines why there's an increased interest in taking this ambitious culinary step.

"Home butchering is the next logical step for those who raise their own vegetables and chickens, preserve the bounty of the land and field of off-season meals, and care deeply about what they feed themselves and their families. When you decide to butcher a whole animal or a part of one by yourself, as I hope you will, you are almost always going to be buying that animal locally. By doing so, you are supporting a local business as well as your community."

Ryan then outlines the basic tools you'll need to get started: a hatchet, an array of knives, bone saw, hooks and other accoutrements to break down an animal. But the best advice he gives is to plan ahead -- partner with other families to share the labor and costs of a whole animal, and decide ahead of time how you want to butcher the meat.

"You will need to understand all the different options in order to make the best decision based on your needs. Not every cut of meat with which you are familiar can physically come from the same animal...If you want tenderloin medallions or filet mignon, you won't be able to cut porterhouse or T-bones from the same side of the animal."

Ryan also advises to follow "whole-animal utilization," which is "not just about using all the parts of the animal -- including the offal, the lesser-known cuts and organs -- it's also about making sure there are no scraps left behind, which is also a great way to get the most value from your whole animals. Use the best scraps to make sausage and other scraps to make stock. Then poach your sausage in the stock. Then reduce the stock and make a sauce."

There's loads of recipes in the book how to prepare your cuts of meat once you're done butchering (or if you're just interested in cooking), from spice-cured beef brisket with curry to crispy pork shoulder with shank. Here's one for smoked pork sirloin if you want to prepare yourself a decadent breakfast.

Smoked Pork Sirloin
Serves 4

Master Brine, completely cold - 8.5 cups (67 oz, 1900 g, 28.7%)

Boneless pork sirloin or cowboy "ham" steak - 1 whole (27 oz, 766 g, 71.3%)

Rendered pork fat for cooking (optional) as needed

1. In a nonreactive container, brine the sirloin, fully submerged, in your refrigerator for 24 hours. Rinse well under cold water.

2. Prepare a smoker with about 2 cups / 8 ounces of apple or hickory wood chips. Insert a probe thermometer into the center of the sirloin and smoke the meat, ideally at about 230°F / 110°C, until the internal temperature at the center reaches 150°F / 65°C. (The smoke will peter out after a while; don't add more chips, or the meat will be too smoky.

3. Let the meat cool, the refrigerate until ready to serve. Cut into thick slices and fry until crispy and golden, adding a little rendered pork fat to the pan, if you like. Enjoy for breakfast (or anytime of day).

Master Brine

Yield: 4.73 liters / 1 gallon and 1 quart

This recipe is a starting point, but there are many possible variations. If you're not a fan of hot flavors, go ahead and omit the chiles. Always use a tall, narrow nonreactive container only just large enough to hold the protein, so the brine will go up as far up as possible. The brine must cover the protein completely, so scale the quantities here up or down as necessary.

Granulated sugar - 2 cups (13.6 oz/385 g / 6.5%)

Kosher salt - 2.5 cups (20.4 oz / 578 g / 12.7%)

Whole black peppercorns - 1/4 c (1.2 oz / 34 g / 0.7%)

Whole coriander seeds - 6 tbsp (0.8 oz / 24 g / 5%)

Dried bird's-eye chile or Thai chile - 3 small ( 6 oz / 17 g / 0.4%)

Water - 16 cups (123 oz / 3500 g / 77.1%)

Combine everything in a large pot and bring to a boil. Once the sugar and salt have dissolved, remove form the heat. Transfer to a tall nonreactive container that will fit in your refrigerator and let it sit uncovered to cool. When the brine is at room temperature, refrigerate until it is completely cold. Add the meat, and brine as directed.

Whole Beast Butchery: The Complete Visual Guide to Beef, Lamb, and Pork by chef Ryan Farr and Birgit Binns. Photographs by Ed Anderson. Published by Chronicle Books.

4505 Meats
San Francisco Ferry Building
Saturday market: 8AM - 2PM
Thursday market: 10AM - 2PM

Facebook: Facebook
Twitter: @4505_Meats

It's 4th of July weekend, and for a lot of Bay Area cooks that means heading outdoors and firing up the grill. Forum talks BBQ and grilling techniques, and compare notes on favorite foods prepared by fire.

Host: Dave Iverson

Guests:
• Amanda Gold, food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle
• Chris Ying, editor in chief for Lucky Peach Quarterly, a new journal of food writing published by McSweeney's
• Eric Markoff, chef at Anchor and Hope in San Francisco and developer of the BBQ program at Town Hall Restaurant
• Ryan Farr, owner, chef and butcher for 4505 Meats

Original Broadcast: Fri, Jul 1, 2011 -- 10:00 AM

Related Posts:
Grilled Pizza

San Francisco residents Ryan & Cesalee Farr are the self described "Mission rat" couple behind 4505 Meats, producer of popular meaty products as chicharrones and Spicy ‘Zilla Dogs that buyers freely gobble at events and the company's Ferry Building booth. Working at the Ferry Building has its advantages; Cesalee said, "We buy all of our vegetable, fruits, eggs, and crackers and any other goodie we may need here."

Ryan is the butcher/chef/teacher and front man of the 4505 venture, and his wife Cesalee does much of the administrative and logistical work. The two also have an eight month old son, named Tanner, who may soon try Fatted Calf liverwurst (more on that later). Cesalee & Ryan Farr answered Bay Area Bites questions via email and phone interview. Comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.

THE WORK TOGETHER
Cesalee Farr said, "I run the (Ferry Building) Farmers market booth, work in the office. I try to take care of all details on outside events." She also manages "the kitchen flow… you name it, I do it." If you book a spot for Ryan Farr's pig butcher classes at La Cocina, Cesalee is the one answering the phone, and processing credit card info. Her imprint can also be found on the the 4505 Facebook page, which is regularly updated with market menu, product and class information. Her husband of nearly four years is the main chef, as Cesalee clarifies: "I don't make sausage, but I don't mind getting my hands dirty. I help out if needed."

THE RELATIONSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Cesalee: "We met in Calistoga, which is my hometown. I moved home from school and we happened to be working at the same restaurant, All Seasons Bistro. I was the front of the house, and he was back of the house. Our first date was skydiving. On the second date, Ryan picked me up with tomato dripping down the front of him. I was like 'this guy is weird' but he kept saying he 'never knew what a real tomato tasted like till then….' It’s been love ever since. That was 2002, 8 years together and we’ll be celebrating our 4 years wedding anniversary in August."

DATE NIGHT

Cesalee: "Our house for date night has been the case a lot lately with us having a new baby and a crazy work schedule. We try to make it special, by having caviar & Champagne, but some nights it’s a roasted free range chicken and homemade beers from a friend."

ON ART MADE FROM DEAD ANIMALS
Ryan Farr mentioned that his wife makes and gifts bone/skull related art to friends and families. She makes her art from the bones and skulls of "deer, cows, goat, lamb, rabbits. But mostly, I do pig skulls, since that's what we have most of…" Each skull is individually handcrafted in San Francisco. (Email cesalee@yahoo.com for more information.)

Cesalee: "(The) skulls are sourced from local farms in the Northern California area. It's a small production of handcrafted skulls, bones and more. Created solely for my own passion, with my love for nature and science it all came together."

THE ART PROCESS

Cesalee: "It depends if I get the animal with or without the fur, skin and meat on them. I de-face/de-skin the animal. I know that sounds kinda crazy. Then (I) boil them, changing the water often. I de-meat the skull/ bone, boil it some more, til I have a meatless/ skinless piece. Drying it ideally in sunlight, boil it some more and then in a bath it goes… hair peroxide works best about a 20vol with water. It can't be hydrogen peroxide from a drug store. I found this out by trial and error, I also may have read it somewhere. I also do hair so it works out perfect. (I'm not practicing hair right now, other then for friends.) After a long 36 hour or so soak, it's time for more drying, when the bone is no longer wet, I seal it with a clear kind of epoxies spray. (Then it's) ready for painting or paper mache. I style it out with swarovski crystals, crystals/rhinestones, eyelashes, colored paper, bright colors, etc… Each skull is totally different."

BABY FOOD, THE 4505 WAY
So far, Tanner has been out to eat with his parents to Hana, Starbelly, Tartine Bakery, and Delfina. For eating at home, this baby has meaty options:

Cesalee: "Tanner's 8 months old, and yes, we're looking into what kind of liver he'll be eating. I was thinking Fatted Calf liverwurst, it's to die for. Our 3-year-old niece loves it! She eats it with our chicharrones and doesn’t share. It's smoked with a little garlic and herbs so I haven't actually given it to Tanner yet. I bought some for the last two weeks to give to him and I've eaten all myself. We started buying it for our friend's son when he was about 10 months old.

We make all of Tanner's food. He gets fresh ground lamb from his Dad, fresh egg yolks, strawberries & bananas, pears, apples, avocado (his favorite) and yams. He's not a big fan of asparagus. Meat is our next step. I'm thinking liver mousse and pate is what I want to start making for him next."

THE FOOD FAVORITES

Bi-Rite Market
3639 18th Street (between Dolores Street and Guerrero Street) Map
(415) 241-9760
Hours: Daily 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
Closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Days.

Ryan: "The staff is so helpful. We love that. Sam is definitely an inspiration, in many different ways. The small businesses they support, and the selection that they have… it’s where you go." (Bi-Rite was one of the first to carry 4505's chicharrones)

Cesalee: "I shop here at a lot, I grab cheese, a free-range chicken for dinner to roast, a loaf of sweet baguette, ice cream from their creamery or whatever else I may need for the house."

SanJalisco (Formerly known as Los Jarritos)
901 S. Van Ness Avenue (between 20th Street and 21st Street) Map
(415) 648-8383
Hours: Open daily from 8am to 10pm

Ryan: "I love Los Jarritos. The chicharrones con huevos. Anything there is spot on."

Pizzeria Delfina
3611 18th Street (between Dolores Street and Guerrero Street) Map
(415) 437-6800
Hours: Monday 5pm to 10pm
Tuesday-Thursday 11:30am to 10pm
Friday 11:30am to 11pm
Saturday 12pm to 11pm
Sunday 12pm to 10pm

Cesalee: "It's small, amazing food and I love the staff and the fact it's blocks away from the house it's bad either. Our normal order: Salsiccia pizza, special pizza usually one with an egg on it…., salad of, and if (it's) in season, the fries with eyes. Ryan will have a beer and Cesalee a glass of rosé."

Elixir
3200 16th Street (at Guerrero) Map
(415) 552-1633
Hours: Monday-Friday 3pm to 2am
Saturday 12pm to 2am
Sunday 11am to 2am

Ryan: "Elixir is our neighborhood bar. They're always great to us. We started grilling there on Sundays; (grilled) all last year, in the summer."

Cesalee: "Usually it’s a beer and shot of bourbon whiskey for Ryan and vodka, soda for me."

Avedano's
235 Cortland Avenue (at Bonview St.) Map
(415) 285-MEAT
Hours: Monday – Friday 11am to 8pm
Saturday 9am to 8pm
Sunday 11am to 6pm

Cesalee: "I grab pasta or meat that we may not have at our own kitchen, or if I’m heading to a friends for a BBQ, I’ll stop here."

Hana Japanese Restaurant
101 Golf Course Drive (near Double Tree Dr.) Map
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
(707) 586-0270
Hours:
Lunch: Monday - Saturday 11:30am to 2:30pm
Dinner: Sunday - Thursday 5pm to 9pm, Friday & Saturday 5pm to 9:30pm

Cesalee: "Hands down, Hana Japanese Restaurant in Rohnert Park has the best sushi outside of Japan we’ve EVER had!!!! We’ve tried a lot of places. Sometimes we go for lunch and end up staying for dinner. It’s that good."

Dynamo Donut & Coffee
2760 24th Street (between Hampshire St. and York St.) Map
(415) 920-1978
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 7am to 5pm
9am to 4pm Sunday
Closed Monday

Cesalee names Dynamo Donuts as her guiltiest food pleasure, "hands down. I can eat at least four in one sitting."

Thanksgiving is plated comfort, dinner to honor a lore-steeped narrative of the harvest, funneled through a few hundred years of regional cultural variations. The foods are invariably soft, uncomplicated: balls of mush in warm hues -- orange, brown, beige, and dull, vegetal green -- a crust here, a relish there -- nothing to stun or overwhelm. An ambitious menu might boast edgy updates of accepted classics, but themes are very rarely abused or flaunted, merely tweaked: one might endeavor to make sweet potato casserole, for example, re-imagined as a single perfect fritter on each plate, sidling up to tidy blobs of marshmallow-esque creme fraiche, shaded by fronds of fried sage.

So long as the chile-garlic sauce stays in the fridge and no pretentious foams materialize, side dishes may be mussed in a respectful fashion. Turkey, whole, however, is a most traditional yet often maligned centerpiece -- flightless, frequently bone-dry, and hard to budge. Every year, food writers fall over themselves trying to convince desperate cooks they've found an antidote -- brining, larding, frantic temperature adjustments -- when they'd better serve suppers by pushing far superior animal proteins -- say, glorious hams, sides of wild salmon, or haunches of venison.

Enter the turducken. Despite its cultish presence in the cozy Thanksgiving lexicon, the turducken is aggressively weird, an unnatural, misshapen, stitched-up Frankenstein-like thing -- something that perhaps resembled a "sneetch" in life -- prior to being butchered and baked. Still, as the steaming mass -- chicken, within duck, within turkey -- all boned and stuffed -- descends on an overloaded banquet table, accompanied by grand quasi-medieval pomp, hearty eaters think nothing of its artificial genus, gathering around to slice through and spill forth the intertwined meaty chunks in varied hues -- reveling in the surreal delicious guts of a very strange beast indeed.

For three years, I lived with a few turducken aficionados in a big house at the edge of the Mission District, close to Potrero Hill. They would stay up the entire night before Thanksgiving, boning and trussing. There were no good chef's knives in that house then, so strings of meat bounced dangerously around the room with every nip and tuck, and the kitchen floor eventually took on a fatty sheen from all the spills. We'd host big Thanksgivings too, with a long table to accommodate a mob of friends. There was always a lot to drink; the living room was always too dark; you usually couldn't even make out the color of what sat quivering on your fork -- that is, if you were sober enough to care by the time all the food was ready. I recall, on one boozy occasion, trying to separate out the excavated components of my turducken slice -- to appraise them each, and assess how their individual qualities affected the flavor of the opulent whole. At this, I failed.

Like most people who have studied up on the subject, I hold corpulent football personality John Madden responsible for the turducken's first wave of popularity. Until he had a change of heart in 2008, he used to gleefully dole out massive specimens to Thanksgiving Bowl victors. Bestowing credit for the preparation's actual invention, however, is a tougher proposition. Paul Prudhomme got a nod for a while, but his role -- attributed loosely to a 1983 appearance at a festival in Duvall, Washington -- has not been verified. In a November 2005 article in National Geographic, Calvin Trillin presented Herbert's Specialty Meats in Maurice, Louisiana as a long-running, immensely popular purveyor of pre-assembled 'duckens, but avoided making any claims about its involvement in the dish's origins.

The concept of matryoshka-style holiday roasts can stretch further out of the mainstream into relative gastronomic wilds, where history and legend hold a few smoldering lessons. The key to the success of a turducken is the duck. Its essence diffuses through the surrounding layers of stuffing to saturate its inherently less delicious comrades -- the chicken within, the turkey without -- with spurts of fat and heady flavor. Replacing the turkey with its opposite -- a silken, grease-spitting goose -- yields a gooducken, a much richer endeavor naturally quite beloved in England. I like the idea of losing the unctuous goose, retaining the turkey, and adding a fourth bird, perhaps even a fifth -- maybe a wee quail, petite and boneless, buried down in the depths, folded up around a hard-boiled egg, a single chestnut, or a minature wad of stuffing, and then, for the outermost layer, the fifth, an entire emu. Imagine that, an emurckenail. I'm not sure how emu -- fine-grained and somewhat beefy -- would jive with all that paler stuff but someone -- probably not me -- should find out.

After a brief bit of research, my fantasy was steam-rolled by a rough and very real bird-iathon slouching out of the past. The largest recorded "nested" bird roast, or Rôti Sans Pareil took place at a royal feast in France in the early 19th century, and involved a breath-taking 17 feathery creatures, all boned and stuffed into one another, in order, from smallest -- a six-inch-long Garden Warbler with a solitary olive squeezed into its tiny empty cavity -- to largest, a huge, currently semi-endangered terrestial bird with a wingspan of seven feet called a bustard. Fifteen other birds -- a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, and an Ortolan Bunting -- were pressed, skin to gut, between those two extremes.

What's more, Richard Sterling gave a pretty famous and utterly silly account of a chef friend's even heftier undertaking in his book The Fearless Diner:

"I knew in my gut, in my gastronomic soul, that what I had long hoped was true. That it wasn't just some wild traveler's tale designed to stir the imagination and not the pot. The ultimate cookout was a reality. The only thing that could possibly be greater would be to spit-roast a giant squid. My wildest culinary dream could come true. Sven, Allah bless him and may his tribe increase, had done it. 'I tell you no lie,' he went on, sipping a cold one. 'They wanted camel. I roasted a whole camel on a spit.' 'Yes!' I cried. 'Tell me everything.' And he did. He told me how he stuffed the camel with six sheep, stuffed the sheep with chickens, and the chickens with fish. He told me how it took 24 hours to cook, and that he served it on a silver platter in the shape of a recumbent camel. He related how the tribesmen who were the sheik's guests then attacked it with their knives en masse, feasted with their bare hands, and ate the meat down to the ivory."

If, for you, after all that, mere turducken will still do come November 26th, you can savor it without shelling out for shipping or expending any effort beyond tending the oven. While supplies last, Ryan Farr of the esteemed 4505 Meats is working the local turducken angle, selling 20 pound behemoths -- free range, organic, and stuffed to the hilt with cornbread-sausage dressing -- for $250 apiece, available for order and subsequent pick-up in Potrero Hill. The stuffing between the layers will be made of chicken-and-duck sausage and cornbread. Yours will arrive in a roasting pan, on a bed of root vegetables and herbs, with an electric thermometer and alarm probe already inserted.

Slip him an extra twenty and maybe he'll put a quail in there too.

Photos by Ryan Farr