Why do UK butchers use cleavers instead of bandsaws?

September 16, 2024 6:19 AM

Whenever I buy chops, whether from a butcher, or prepackaged from a supermarket, there are usually some small bone shards that I need to be careful of when eating. I think this is because meat is chopped with cleavers (because I've observed this in butcher shops), instead of being cut with a bandsaw. Am I correct in my assumption, and is there a reason for this?

I grew up in South Africa. Whenever you went to a butcher, the background sound was that of bandsaws cutting chops – often right on the counter (behind the glass). In any UK butcher shop, you don't hear or see it. Visiting shops, I often observe the butcher cutting chops with a cleaver (like with an axe). This is the case for "posh" boutique butchers, or cheap high street shops.

Surely bone shards are a health & safety risk? Especially when the chops are used in a stew (where the bone on the chops is essential for flavour), you have to eat really carefully. I always end up with half a dozen shards on a side plate. It's like having lots of small sharp pebbles in your food. Do people who grow up with this just consider it normal?

Am I correct that cleavers are to blame for the shards? Are bandsaws considered unsafe, and therefore outlawed from butcher shops for H&S reasons?

(I also recall a chicken stew at a not inexpensive Chinese restaurant where all the bones were clearly hacked apart, and sharp bone shards were everywhere. Whenever we made chicken stew, it was cut apart at the joints using a sharp knife. Are other people just less bothered by this?)

posted by snarfois to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

(I also recall a chicken stew at a not inexpensive Chinese restaurant where all the bones were clearly hacked apart, and sharp bone shards were everywhere. Whenever we made chicken stew, it was cut apart at the joints using a sharp knife. Are other people just less bothered by this?)

I can only speak to this part and not the main question (sorry), but as a Chinese-(Taiwanese-) American who grew up eating at Chinese restaurants in the LA suburbs patronized by recent immigrants, this is totally normal.

Chinese cooks traditionally cut right through the bone and so bone-in meat will have all sorts of bones in different sizes. It's true that if done well and with a sharp/powerful enough knife, the cuts will be clean so there should be minimal random shards, but there will definitely be sharp bony edges.

You are expected to be aware of this and to know how to eat around the bones and gnaw the meat off it (which is not considered rude -- in fact a common joking complaint by Chinese immigrant parents is that their American-born/raised children don't know how to gnaw, i.e. 啃, meat off the bones since boneless meat is way more common in the West).

I will admit that I don't really enjoy it either, being born and raised in the US, and when I cook at home I almost always either cook boneless meat or whole pieces of meat on the bone or chicken wings, things like that, but if I'm eating in an "authentic" Chinese restaurant I fully expect to find meat butchered and cooked in the way you described.
posted by andrewesque at 6:44 AM on September 16 [5 favorites]

Cleavers are the traditional meat butchering implement in China, so they are still used almost exclusively in Chinese restaurants. There are many dishes where the traditional way to chop up chicken is by superimposing a grid on the chicken and hacking through it with a cleaver, including bone, because that's the only way to produce chopstick-friendly sized pieces of meat that contain bain. For historical reasons involving the Mongols invasion/emperors, large chunks of meat are considered "barbaric" or at least unrefined in Chinese cusine, while small pieces are considered elevated and refined. Having the bone in the smaller pieces makes it more flavorful, as referenced by this recipe for Chongqing Chicken. I've had it both ways at a number of different restaurants and it's consistently more flavorful when I've had to eat around the bones.

As a USian with an interest in Chinese food, I can't help you with the UK/South Africa part of this question.
posted by A Blue Moon at 6:45 AM on September 16

Meat bandsaws are sold in the UK, which indicates that their use is permitted.
posted by bluefrog at 6:52 AM on September 16

Response by poster: Thanks, very interesting! I don't want the Chinese food anecdote to derail the thread though, as my main concern is about meat (mainly lamb) sold for Western cooking.
posted by snarfois at 6:59 AM on September 16

I haven't really noticed too many shards from meat chopped at the butchers - and this is in the UK, from 'posh' butchers and 'ordinary' butchers, and also from the butchers in Chinatown. Definitely not to the extent that I have had to fish out shards of bone in my meal. Sure, there's an odd piece here and there, maybe a shard a meal, but nothing that I would call a choking hazard for my kids.
posted by moiraine at 7:00 AM on September 16 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'm pretty sure bandsaws would be essential to cut the carcass into large manageable pieces, but when it comes to cutting chops for final consumption, bandsaws don't seem to be used at all.

I'm much more concerned with breaking a tooth or pricking my gums, than with choking. (But that's of course a valid concern too.)
posted by snarfois at 7:03 AM on September 16

Adding my +1 to not having encountered this in the UK at all with lamb chops, whether from a butchers or from the supermarket. If I found bone shards in the meat, I wouldn't consider it normal. I've encountered chicken chopped up like that in Chinese and Caribbean cuisine but in those cases I know to look out for bones.

That said, if you want to avoid this in future, giving the chops a wash in a clean sink should get rid of the shards. The fragments should just be on the bones where they've been cut and shouldn't have travelled inside the meat so washing them off should take care of them. (Obviously don't do this with chicken as it can spread harmful bacteria.)
posted by fight or flight at 7:19 AM on September 16 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure bandsaws would be essential to cut the carcass into large manageable pieces

As a former culinary professional who took extensive butchery classes, I assure you that bandsaws are not essential. When I do butchery I make sure to do a pass on the cut of meat with my hands to make sure I haven't missed any bone fragments. My butcher does the same, but I still do that same pass when I get ready to cook a cut of meat because sometimes the butcher misses something.

I do not recommend washing raw meat in your sink; splashes of water with raw meat juices on them will absolutely 100% get into places you didn't even think were possible. But I do recommend just looking over your cuts really carefully and get all touchy-feely with them so you can find any of those fragments before you cook them.

Tl;dr: bone fragments in butchery just happen, no matter what method is used to butcher.
posted by cooker girl at 8:19 AM on September 16 [11 favorites]

In my opinion bones should be cut through in stew meat because it gives the liquid access to the marrow and that improves both flavor and texture.
posted by jamjam at 11:37 AM on September 16 [1 favorite]

I used to teach basic biology labs in a Tech College in Ireland. I inherited an interesting practical examining the structure of long-bones (femur, humerus, ulna etc.). I used to ask my local butcher for a few dozen such bones cut in half along their length. Butcher refused to accept payment, thinking it was a useful public education service. Around 2015, new legislation made it really difficult to use bandsaws in retail premises: all such work was sent back up the food chain to meat factories. Too remote to make my request, so we had to edutain the students in other ways.

Also: reading Kindred shows that Neanderthals did a pretty fair job butchering vertebrates, large and small, with fragments of chert kept sharp with antler 'retouchers'. No steel knives, let alone bandsaws, need apply.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:08 PM on September 16 [2 favorites]

I'm a UK sheep farmer and the combined abbatoir and butcher that I take my sheep to uses bandsaws when butchering, but that's in the butchery side of the abbatoir, so I don't know if they use them in their butcher shop in town. I could imagine that bandsaws don't fit the image of the village butcher shop in the UK and they might use cleavers where customers can see but bandsaws in the back room.
posted by Rhedyn at 12:39 PM on September 16 [2 favorites]

When I buy pork chops here in the U.S. I often find damp bone "sawdust" from the bandsaw used to cut the individual chops. Not a problem, just interesting.
posted by H21 at 1:05 PM on September 16 [1 favorite]

What kind of lamb are you eating? (Not being sarcastic. I'm wondering if it's shoulder, rib, or loin). I'm not in the UK, I'm in the USA, and I work in the meat room of a supermarket. Lamb comes in mostly precut and then the butchers use the band saw to cut them into chops. I honestly have never seen bone shards in the lamb. Shoulder chops do have a couple of bones in them due to the nature of the cut, but not shards. There's no shards in rib (they look like tiny porterhouses) because they are cut apart down the center then cut individually. Rib chops have the long bone.

Other cuts of meat don't really have shards, but sometimes a small bone here and there, but certainly not a dozen pieces! You have made me really curious as to what you've had to experience.

Edited to add: we never use cleavers. We don't even have any in our store.
posted by annieb at 5:08 PM on September 16 [1 favorite]

I'm Chinese American and going to counter -- I don't consider bone shards or dust to be normal in food at all and is a sign that the meat wasn't washed and picked through carefully before cooking, which could be a preference of both the restaurant and the cook as a norm, but personally I am not a huge fan of it. Bone shards and dust can happen from both cleavers and band saws.

My family and I basically agree on this, eating around the bone is fine and we can expect that maybe occasionally there are some shards that we need to be conscientious of, but it doesn't need to be so intrusive that it ruins the experience and causes danger. I've also had a nasty experience with bone dust in my food as well, so I think it's fair game to dislike both. Bone-in meat is still extremely tasty though, and requires finesse, but I can only count around 3 times in my life it's ever been so bad that it made me take notice in a negative way. This is involving both Western and Asian preparations.
posted by yueliang at 12:55 AM on September 17 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Fully agree with everyone saying you want cut bone in your meat, especially for stews, for flavour. I don't particularly like boneless cuts. I'm quite happy eating around bones with sharp edges, I only have a problem with loose bits of bone smaller than a fingertip.

The chops I buy tend to be rib, loin, or neck.

I have no problem with bone dust on chops from a bandsaw whatsoever, I wouldn't wash it off, it would also just improve flavour.

As people have said bandsaws may not fit the image of a small butcher shop, or there may be space or cost limitations.

I would think if the final chops are cut using a bandsaw, small shards are less likely than with a cleaver. But it would seem I'm either unlucky in encountering more shards than typical, or more sensitive to it and many people don't notice it.

Perhaps the style of cooking has something to do with it. This is mainly a problem when chops are used in a stew, where it cooks apart in a lot of gravy. It's less likely to be an issue when the chops are fried or grilled, and they stay intact.

Thanks for all the answers!
posted by snarfois at 2:05 AM on September 17