Description
Course Description
This course is designed for chefs, keen cooks, hunters and small holders or anyone with an interest in butchery. You will learn skills to get the most from the meat you raise, hunt or buy. This is an ideal opportunity to brush up on your butchering skills as part of your continuous professional development and learn new techniques to upskill and bring back to your kitchen. For those who send animals to the butcher, you will learn how to put together a cut list to best describe how you would like the carcass broken down into various cuts. Hunters will learn new techniques and cuts to get the most from their hard earned quarry. Numbers are kept low to aid hands-on learning, book early to avoid disappointment.
The Butchers
Our hands on Introduction to Butchery one-day course is led by two expert butchers John Griffin and Declan Gilmore (The Hunting and Homestead Butchers).
John Griffin has a wealth of experience as a boner of beef, venison, lamb and pork and his natural eye for detail led him to quality control role with industrial meat factories. He enjoyed his time spent also working at the retail butchers counter sharing knowledge with others. He is a professional hunter and culls deer annually. As a dedicated conservationist he strives to be self-sustainable at his smallholding in Co. Carlow. He keeps chickens, pigs, sheep and cattle alongside his vegetable garden. Family and friends are always guaranteed a full belly after a visit! The production of quality meat and passing on these skills and knowledge, alongside the appreciation of the meat on our plate, to every generation, is his passion.
Declan Gilmore is a qualified butcher for over 30 years. He has worked for most major retailers and small family butchers here and in Australia. He is passionate about local seasonal food and grows fruit and vegetables including crops for Irish seed savers and rears livestock in Co. Wexford. He is a qualified nutrition and health coach and shares his food and lifestyle passion with elite and amateur athletes. He loves teaching and learning about real sustainable food and his mantra is ‘Knowledge is only knowledge if it’s shared!’
