- You know when you're like
in a field and it's like, crickets?
- See, I was thinking is like f****** orchestra.
And like tuning your shit.
- Tuning your shit?
- One of the greatest noises, ever.
(saw cutting)
- Butcher Girls is an online butcher shop.
- It's a members-only, but not like exclusive members...
- What?
- Subscription service, it's a club that takes everybody.
You just have to pay to get in.
- You get some pretty dope bags
and really awesome curated meat boxes.
- Right now, I am just packing up orders
for our subscribers.
Every Monday we deliver all across Manhattan.
Tuesday is Brooklyn, Wednesday is Westchester,
Northern Jersey and the Hamptons.
[Jocelyn] In the mornings It's kind of like
our version of service.
So today's Tuesday, so it's Brooklyn day.
People can get one of three different omakase boxes
which are a hundred bucks, 175 bucks and 250 bucks.
- The term "omakase" basically means,
I'll leave it up to you, in Japanese.
We took that same concept and applied it
to a more CSA-driven meat box situation
where we take about the 20 years
of combined butchery experience that we have
and put together a hyper curated box that has meant just
for each individual customer.
- I'm just checking the weights because that will determine
like this gal ordered a small omakase,
which is a hundred dollars.
So I don't want to give her like a $90 rib eye
and then a pack of ground beef, because that seems kind
of not nice.
But then she like asked for pork to grill
and this is a pork shoulder steak.
So it's like a cross-cut pork butt.
- We started off with about 65 customers.
We like collected them and we're like, okay, we
this is enough people to deliver to.
And then I think now we are in the upper 200's.
So like two 75 or so.
[Erika] When you first sign up on the
Butcher Girls website, you have to fill
out your questionnaire before you get to order the meat.
[Jocelyn] Even before we start communicating with people
we have a pretty good idea of who they are.
But when we were putting the questionnaire together
we wanted to mimic the experience of speaking to someone
over the counter, you know? So that was important.
So this is my girl, Janet,
who's been around since the beginning.
So I just remember from last time that I gave her a lot
of braisy stuff.
So this time I'm giving her more like pork chops
and a rib eye, stuff where she
can kind of like switch it up.
[Erika] I think the nature of our business
is, it revolves around handholding, AKA education.
- And empowerment.
- Yes. Yes. Because the whole point about what we do is to
educate people about all the little things
on an animal that you might not know about.
- There's plenty of butchers in the world.
Like a lot of people can take apart an animal,
but I think what hopefully sets us apart is that we're there
literally to just answer your emails
and your texts whenever, all the time
and kind of help empower you in that kitchen.
- I'm just telling her that that little ball
is marrow butter to baste her rib eye.
And then Erika's a big Gossip Girl fan for whatever reason,
so she always started signing her emails,
XO XO Butcher Girls.
So orders usually go out around now like, 10:30 or 11.
So it's kind of time to sort of like pick up the pace
a little bit.
- So it's about one o'clock
and we're just accepting our weekly pig and lamb delivery.
[Erika] So at Butcher Girls, we operate
on like a two week schedule basically.
So week one, let's say, we'd have all
of the meat delivery at once.
We get one whole steer on Monday,
on Tuesday we get to a whole pigs two whole lamb.
[Erika] A lot of what we're thinking
about at this point is when it comes in
we're scrutinizing the carcasses for quality.
[Jocelyn] Generally when the meat comes in, the idea is just
to break it down quickly and get it in the fridge,
and then we process more later.
- I have been butchering for about 12 years.
- I've been butchering for almost nine years.
(gasp)
- Really?
- Yeah, 2012.
- Dang.
- Erika was my first butcher instructor. That's gross.
[Jocelyn] We met at work.
I think when you work in the food industry,
that's the only place you meet someone
that you wind up dating.
[Erika] This is a whole lamb carcass.
And I am going to cut it down into
subprimals and then primals and ready for retail.
Butcher Girls, came about during a time of need.
There was an interesting moment that happened where
everybody lost their jobs and people were getting sick.
The food system needed to be supported
in a way that we felt very passionately about.
Lamb is one of my favorites to butcher.
And it's just because it's so easy.
The thing that I love about it
it's kind of like a chicken almost like in
in terms of like, it's like self sacrificial values.
I just took off the four shanks
and then the lamb neck, right there
which is also one of my favorite cuts.
I'm taking out the kidney fat and the kidneys along with it.
So now that I've felt through, and I've actually
marked exactly where the cuts are going to go.
I'm just going to cut through the sternum.
Right there. And then another one right there.
So, here is the whole lamb shoulder, two sides starts to
kind of have a recognizable shape, right?
Think the seams are super important because you know
that's why I also say like my fingers are my
my most important tool in butchery and not the knife
because you can feel where to go with your fingers.
You could do it with your eyes closed and know where
your knife has to go.
So, and a lot of it you can pull and tug, as, as long
as you're applying pressure and leverage
in the correct spot, falls apart.
[Erika] What I love the most about butchery
is the intricacies in the craft.
And that there really isn't a moment
where you're not learning.
So once you get better and better,
there is still one more thing, still another thing.
We're a, really different butchers.
I'm a lot more detailed.
Jocelyn, is stronger and more efficient.
What do you think?
- I'm detailed, sometimes.
- Oh mother f***** sorry. I heard it. Sorry.
[Jocelyn] Who is detail oriented, now, Chef?
[Erika] Shut up.
So the foreshanks, the neck, the shoulders, legs,
this one's got the sirloin and the filet still attached.
This is the filet, sirloin over here, the loin
or the saddle, bellies, skirts, hangar, kidneys, kidney fat,
the rack of lamb on the top here,
the spare ribs on the bottom.
- I'm macro, you're micro, that's how I see it.
[Jocelyn] So this is a side of pork.
So when the pigs come in, they're always split in half.
That's kind of why pork is probably my favorite is
because it's like such a blank canvas.
I think if you season it far enough ahead
of time or you brine it, or whatever it is
it can really be whatever you want, which is awesome.
- Jocelyn, is like the jock in this family.
- That's not true.
[Jocelyn] I'm like if Emilio Estévez and Ally Sheedy
had a baby after Breakfast Club was over.
[Erika] Okay, so who am I? [Jocelyn] You're Molly Ringwald.
[Erika] Hmm. Yeah. That's probably true.
[Jocelyn] I really like the butcher is just so tangible.
You have a cow at the beginning
of the day, and you have steaks the end of the day.
It's pretty straightforward.
So these are some of my favorite cuts that you get
from a side of pork, boneless loin chops, pork trotter,
pork flank steaks, pork tenderloin, pork chop,
pork coppa ribs, pork forehock, and then a Boston butt.
- We're currently working on expanding the business.
And you know, of course we're always having some sort
of existential crisis because that's in the nature
of our business as well or who we are, maybe.
[Erika] We're working on the USDA processing facility
in Long Island City in Queens.
And that's going to allow us to really be closer
to Brooklyn, closer to Manhattan
like where we're actually doing most of our business.
So that's great.
I'm putting together all the products that I think go
into a small box.
I tend to kind of pack a little heavy.
Good for you. Bad for me.
This is my rendition.
- Of a?
- A small box.
Yes?
[Jocelyn] 49.
- Did I just totally not?
- Hold on, I'm adding. 75. It's a little bit big.
You could lose one piece of beef.
- If you asked me if you ask anybody, I'm the good cop.
[Jocelyn] I'm fully the bad cop.
- Typically, on Wednesdays and Thursdays
we do sausage making and terrine making.
[Erika] Today, I made a pork and pistachio terrine
with black pepper corn in a way.
Terrine, is a ground meat product.
Let's make it sound real sexy.
It's kind of like a European meatloaf
but it usually has like nuts.
It's a much more refined, you know,
beautiful product, usually.
Terrine making is I think, essential
to whole animal buttery because it really lends itself
to utilizing the whole animal
especially around the grinding meat process.
So this is what we call pork trim.
And it's literally the off cuts
and little bits and pieces from the whole animal.
And then the fat that we usually use is going to be
from the fatback or like
from the fat that gets removed from the loin sections.
[Erika] I think when we've put the business together
and made a conscious decision to make it an online business
we thought that it was gonna take away
the intimacy that we have with our customers.
And, and some of these guys are people
who've been customers for years, right.
Then there's a lot
of new people that we've never met before.
But I do also have to say that I get that same interaction
over email and over text and over the phone.
And I feel a closeness to my customers that I don't know
that I have ever actually felt in the past.
So that's really nice.
We don't always have the terrines around
because it's kind of more laborious
like we're talking about right now.
And we don't always have the time to do it.
And so, you know, but it's, it's on our menu.
People frickin' flip out when, when it happens
like they get so excited, you know, because like
in fact we've made it just for you.
So this is basically it pretty much done.
And now I'm going to vacuum seal it,
and then sous vide for probably about five hours or so.
On Tuesdays we get to skedaddle outta here
at around like four, 4:30 usually?
- Says the fake type A person. We usually leave at 5:30.
[Jocelyn] I think before we had a kid, work-life balance
fully did not matter to me.
I was happy to stay at work late.
And I think, you know, with this model
because we're not retail customer facing, we can do a lot
of that stuff from home, like during nap time or whatever.
And we condense all of our work
into four days, four like longish days
so that we get like three dedicated fam days.
Which, is such a treat.
[Erika] Being Nina's parent frickin' rules.
Maybe, the only reason why we get to have Butcher Girls
and get to be business owners at this capacity is
because of the help that we get from my parents, primarily.
We spend a lot of time wanting to be like normal parents.
We don't want people to look at us.
- Dude, we are better than normal parents.
- No, I know that.
But like, I think that
because it's important for not just Americans
but for people to see queer people as people, you know
it's just like I'm Asian or I'm, you know
it's just like, it's anything else.
But while we're at it
let's be the best queer parents we can possibly be.
Because what we want to do is celebrate her
and who she is, you know
for the same reason that we celebrate ourselves, right.
And that we like maybe wished in some cases
that our parents celebrated us, they eventually got there.
So nurturing that part of who Nina is
and all the little colorful things that make her,
her I think is super important.
And, and I hope that all parents do that,
for their children.
(upbeat music)