Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.

There's something surprisingly animalistic about cooking, and specifically about butchery. It's also one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen. To stand above a cutting board with the solid heft of a knife weighing down your hand is a great feeling, and the sheer sense of control you get, when you've practiced enough and you know your blade and you're finally getting comfortable, is one of the purest forms of physical poetry I can think of. It also appeals to the engineer in me, seeing the clockwork aspect of the meat before me and knowing how to pick it apart, piece by piece. It's a power rush, no doubt, but it feels solid, right, and good.

Nor do I think I'm alone in this feeling. To watch any decent chef go to work with a knife is a thing to behold. The strokes are quick, careful, but confident and absolutely final. The rush of butchery also happens to be why I find professionals chefs to be so damn intimidating. Obviously someone yelling at you with a massive meat cleaver in one hand is a scary sight, but the simple knowledge that this person is so inhumanly skilled with what is frankly a weapon is downright terrifying, especially with some of the more unhinged personalities I've seen in the kitchen. Chefs are scary, simple as that.

Butchery, however, is also one of those skills that is very quickly being thrown to the dogs (Much like the gristle being cut! Bad jokes, away!), especially in home kitchens. So much of our butchery is done at the local Megamart these days that most people couldn't point out the breast on a chicken, let alone where their steaks are coming from. And that's fine, I suppose. This is the march of progress, the cost of specialization. But it's also a bit sad. We're losing basic knowledge about what's on our plate and how it got there. And in a food culture that's growing more aware of what it consumes, more conscious of its diet, I can only hope that we turn that same concern to our meat as well.

But what concerns me is that all of this could very easily be lost in the growing vegan, vegetarian, and raw movement that is sweeping kitchens around the world. And, points where points are due, there is something inherently savage about butchery, and something somewhat off about finding it so appealing. But to accuse any chef, or anyone that enjoys working with a knife in the kitchen, of being bloodthirsty is an absurd and childish argument. It would be like accusing a watchmaker of being destructive because he likes to take fine work apart. The passion is motivated by curiosity more than anything else, by the desire to see everything open and laid out. And fine knife work is in and of itself an art, something that takes years of practice and dedication to develop.

So keep at it, and if you've never really worked in the kitchen, give it a shot some time. Go in, get your hands dirty, and try taking something to pieces. If nothing else, you'll probably get a good meal out of it.