278 LBS of Meat | Butchering a Moose

good morning everyone in our last video you saw us harvest this beautiful cow moose we are back at the cabin we're gonna get started processing it we're gonna do a ton of different things with this mousse we're gonna do steaks we're gonna do roasts we're going to do a bunch of ground burger meat but the first thing i'm gonna do is we're gonna head inside and ariel is actually gonna render down some of this moose fat into lard so we already have the whole carcass completely broken down it's all in the freezer we got all the stuff we're gonna be using to make our burger meat and then i'm just grabbing the lard and bringing it inside before we get started on processing the mousse we're going to be working on the fat that we have from the mousse and i'm actually really excited for this we have never rendered fat from a wild game animal we've done lard from pork and we have done tallow from beef so this should be really exciting and unfortunately the fat is very dirty in itself so i think that what i'm gonna have to do is a little bit of like a two-step process i'm gonna heat everything up first until it's liquid strain it get all that icky stuff out that we don't want and then we're going to be actually putting it back on the heat and getting all that water to evaporate so it's good for storage so it is not the prettiest fat i have some organ fat and we have some of the fat that was along the back which looks a little bit different there's a lot of that it's really it's a it's a lot of fat in general so it's gonna take some time probably more than one pot and we have a really awesome dutch oven here that was gifted to us and it's just awesome it's huge i think it'll do the job so we're going to get as much in here as i can fit we're going to get this started and then we're going to start processing our mousse and while we're doing that we're going to be keeping an eye on this so in this bag is some of the best mousse meat in our opinion and that is the back straps and the tenderloins we're going to get these all cleaned up and we're actually going to be vacuum sealing these today this is part of the back strap this is just half of one of them and backstrap basically just runs along the spine of an animal and it is a delicious cut that's why we like turning this into steaks just going to clean it up a tiny bit and we're going to cut it into about one inch thick steaks nice beautiful steak so one thing we found makes processing or butchering an animal a little easier is to have it extremely cold or almost frozen so this back strap was all in the freezer from when we got home yesterday so it's probably been about uh under 24 hours so it's not frozen but it's extremely cold and then when we actually go to grind our meat that we're going to make into our burger meat that's going to be almost frozen and that's going to be perfect it's way easier to grind meat when it's almost frozen that is one big bowl of back strap that's one of the back straps i'm gonna put this aside arrow's gonna come in here she's gonna start vacuum packing them and i'm gonna keep cutting up the back strap and then i'm also gonna cut up the tenderloin and i think we got one roast in here we'll have to cut up look at that spectrum this backstroke back straps are all done and packaged and this is one of the tenderloins and i'm not going to do this in steaks i'm actually going to do this in kind of big chunks and probably end up baking this in the oven okay so we're going to finish packaging the tendon line up and i found one more little piece of backstrap we're going to do and then we're going to bring one of the quarters in here and start working on that all right so we are gonna start working on one of the quarters we're gonna grab the front quarter and basically that's all gonna be used for burger meat so it's gonna get ground up so it doesn't have to be pretty we have to get all the meat off the bone part of it that's the bottom ankle we had to cut off so it would fit an ice chest and that's the rest it really cost us a lot of time maybe it does it just works hey let's flip her oh nice job i don't feel heavier than this one and sometimes they are depending on how you cut them we're moving right along to the other front quarter so have a lot of work to do we have all of the grinding to do i think we're going to start it tonight we may just get it through the first round and then we'll pick back up probably tomorrow we're just going to keep chugging along it is 7 20 at night we're going to start grinding the meat we're gonna run it through one time on the course grinder and we're gonna see how long it's gonna take i'm thinking it's probably gonna take at least an hour to get through one time [Music] keep superheroes come back [Music] that's your hair we're halfway done grinding the meat the first time through so we're only the quarter way then but these i'm estimating to be about 50 pounds each and then the two tubs that we have out in the freezer i'm pretty sure those are even heavier so we're gonna have a lot of ground mousse meat it's gonna be awesome so i'm gonna bring these out to the freezer get them in there and i'm gonna bring the other stuff in and we're gonna grind it so we got it finished well partially finished it is officially two hours after when we first started and we didn't really take any breaks at all so the grinder was pretty much running continuously which is awesome love this grinder and we're going to take a break now we have to go run the store get even more ice and then we're going to pick back up tomorrow with another 10 hour work day again we'll see you tomorrow good morning we are picking right back up with the processing today we started with straining our lard that we were rendering yesterday it actually turned out really really beautiful it's a nice golden color and it should solidify to a white color i'm going to put this aside and get the second batch going yesterday i realized immediately once we started the first batch that the fat should be ground first it makes for a just overall better end product and you get a lot more of it so we're going to be starting with that first i'm going to put this aside and get some of the fat chopped up into smaller pieces so we can get it in the grinder yeah and i can just definitely straighten that pot for sure [Music] you're gonna have some weird pieces in there too that's just stuff i picture so don't be alarmed just like the meat that we ground yesterday was partially frozen this fat is also partially frozen and it makes all the difference when you're grinding a lot of meat this little grinders have no trouble putting this all through and the burger meat that we ground last night that has been sitting in the freezer for probably like i don't know 13 or 14 hours so that's gonna be nice and cold too and as soon as we're done with this and we get it on the stove we're gonna start on that next we're gonna be grinding it through the small plate on the grinder [Applause] [Applause] so actually gonna turn it off since you're gonna give that a go we took a break and we were officially halfway done with our ground moose meat and i just started this second batch and i noticed the grinder is kind of clogging up on me so i've never sharpened that little cutting wheel the little star or this so i took them out in the conex and i sharpened them up the best i could and i'll put it back together and see if it works any better well that did it that was the key i sharpened up that uh plate and a little star cutting wheel and she's back to ripping through this meat and about this grinder i believe it's called the cabela's deluxe grinder i think it's like a one horsepower but we've had this thing for over five years we have nothing but great things to say about this we've done a ton of animals with this and we've never had a single problem yeah was the stuff that was in the blade what i'll do is i'll just clean up that stuff and then i'll just leave it side to side so we use it again oh we cannot forget let's save a big patty for ourselves it's been a long day of grinding meat so we're taking a little break we got three out of the four buckets done already completely packaged and in the freezer so we're gonna eat some moose patties real quick and feed the animals and then we're gonna get back to it hmm what are you putting in salt pepper salt and pepper like why do i want like sweetness with it really they're just so deprived and hungry you want the sweetness for them trying to get dessert with like lunch and dinner all in one i think this would be really good which is mayonnaise pickle and lettuce on a bun [Music] well it has been one heck of a day that was a hundred and thirty pounds of ground moose meat all ground through the grinder and packaged and in the freezer that is going to be delicious this winter last season when we got our roadkill moose we actually cut it with two percent pork fat and we decided this time to just do a hundred percent moose meat and we're really glad we did it turned out great uh we both feel like it really doesn't need any extra fat so we're glad we went that route another thing we did different is when we got our roadkill mousse we packaged it in saran wrap and then we used butcher paper which we love to do it's a great way to package your meat we like it better than vacuum sealing it's a lot cheaper we actually ran out of butcher paper and we didn't get our shipment in in time for our moose so we went to a local store and they had these packages that you put your wild game meat in and these are one pound packages we actually really like these they're pretty affordable and they're very strong so another good way to package our meat that's it for tonight we totally ran out of time we're going to pick up on the lard tomorrow we still have the two hindquarters that we need to cut into roast but we're going to hit the sack because it's late we're getting all set to jar our tallow so everything went really well actually this was our first time doing it with a wild game animal and it turned out awesome in fact we tried it last night with some biscuits and it was really really good it's a lot like tallow from beef so we're more familiar with pork and lard but this is also really great and it's something we get to use from the moose this is a pot that it looks like where it's hardened it's really beautiful you can see we scooped out of there so we've got to get it hot and we're heating up some jars too we're basically going to be open kettling it because once lard has been rendered and all the water's out of it it won't go rancid so we're just going to put it in some hot jars put some warm lids on and then that's how it's going to store our oil is super hot there is no bubbles meaning there's no water and i'm gonna be very careful with it because it's really really really hot we're gonna strain it one more time i've already strained it but just because we use kind of some dirty fat and an older dutch oven i'm going to strain it again just to make sure it comes out really clean and then we'll put it in our jars we've got our fat strained again and we are getting the jars out i've got to make sure they don't have any water on them because i don't want to introduce any back into the fat so if you didn't already know this i'm pretty obsessed with animal fat i really like lard and i really like well again we're new to tala but i really like just animal fat and it seems like a tedious process because it really is but it is such a useful fact cooking mainly for us is what we use it for a lot but it has so many other purposes that we've never even tried and we may look into that but we usually use a lot in a year for cooking and my absolute favorite part about it is that you when you're pouring it you know it's this golden light golden color and then it turns white when it dries it's beautiful all right these are just going to seal on their own and we have one more batch to do i think we're gonna get about 16 pints we would have gotten more had i remembered to grind up the fat you know chopping up the fat into small pieces or grinding it makes a huge difference you will get so much more fat so if you're ever doing this make sure to do that i don't know how much that thing weighs how much do you think it weighs let's lift it together and see if we can tell just a little up there walking around i just wash my hands i know but that's well oh i gotta wash my hands okay i never looked at the heavy side are you playing jokes wait you're playing jokes i'm not it's that heavy no it's like a rock it like doesn't want to move it's so heavy like that's i feel like that's over 100 pounds it's it's over 100 pounds well we're all finished up with the lard and we're moving on to the hindquarters i believe this is the back right hand side of the mousse this thing is heavy i'm really surprised i could lift that on my own guess i didn't know my own strength really surprised i was able to lift that thing up here on the table we're going to get started on this i think it's about noon already in the day the plan with this is to cut some really nice roasts and just package those like that and then whatever we have left on here just some of the trim meat things like that maybe around the bone we're going to fire up the grinder again run it through the course and the fine and i think we're actually going to add some seasonings and make some sausage with that okay we're good we're solid we made it halfway okay there we go working on this huge muscle up front turning it off in one piece for eric because i want to save this for rose the leg is just full of beautiful beautiful muscles 20 pounds maybe 20 pounds huge muscle beautiful piece of meat that we need to get cleaned up um i think it weighs 20 pounds i don't i don't i don't know though 20 ish maybe a little more there we go she's ready to be roasted like charlie shane we're almost done with the leg just starting to break apart the bones we're making bone broth tomorrow we have lots of roasts and quite a bit of trim meat that we're going to be using for sausage which is awesome wasn't quite anticipating that so when we're done with this we're going to grab the other hindquarter and get started on that that's [Music] [Applause] we ended up with a ton of roast and we got quite a bit of meat for grinding into sausage we're going to take it all out to the freezer and we're going to get to work on that other leg we decided to multitask and get some of our bone broth started so we have lots of bones and some water we can only fill this up about two thirds of the way and then a whole bunch of herbs that we're going to be straining anyways once it's done i'm going to pressure can this for about two hours and then we'll probably can it tomorrow okay those are roasts [Music] we're getting these roasts put away in the freezer i think we got a little over 50 pounds of meat just with the roast and then we have all the ground meat in there and then i also have the sausage meat that i ground through once i have it in the freezer and i think i'm gonna wait till tomorrow morning to grind that through a second time i want to get this a lot colder and a little firmer [Applause] we're just about done grinding the sausage meat through the grinder on the fine plate and i'm gonna add some ingredients to our sausage i've got a bunch of herbs here we're doing thyme parsley and sage and then i've got a little bit of ginger and i've got a bunch of garlic so i'm gonna add the rest of our ingredients and i have like a sausage seasoning mix that has like salt and paprika cayenne a few things like that we're doing black pepper red pepper flakes and cumin seed i'm just gonna sprinkle this over the top and we're gonna mix this whole thing together okay we've got everything all incorporated together and it smells really good but we're to cook up a small piece real quick and make sure we like the way it tastes before we put it in packages all right the meat turned out really good we are going to add a little bit more of this sausage seasoning that i have which was like the cayenne the paprika and the salt and then it's not too spicy so we're going to add some more red pepper flakes then we're going to give it one more mix we're going to clean up the grinder get this out of here and we're going to get this put in packages and in the freezer [Music] so well everyone all of our hard work has finally paid off we officially have that whole entire moose at least the meat in the freezer let's go over what we got for back straps and tenderloins we ended up with 46 pounds ground burger meat we ended up with 132 pounds the sausage that we just finished we ended up with 36 pounds and the roasts together were 64 pounds and that is a grand total of 278 pounds of pure meat which is awesome this is a 14 maybe a 14 and a half cubic foot freezer so it's a really big freezer you could definitely fit a full-size bull mousse in one of these freezers i'd say this mousse that we did took up a little over half of this freezer and what else we have in here is mainly just dog food we have some meat that we processed a while ago for them we have some fish that's frozen in there for them and then we do have a little bit of produce but we try not to keep a lot of our produce in the freezer as far as how we run the freezer because we are off grid uh it simply just runs off our solar system once this thing gets cold it actually doesn't really draw too much power and then when winter comes we just completely unplug it and it just stays frozen out here on its own all we got a ton of great stuff from this we have the towel that's inside and i think the only thing we have left to do is finish up canning the bone broth so we're gonna head inside and do that we're working on our bone broth again and this is our second batch we had to boil the bones or pressure can them for three hours each batch it took forever because they are super dense bones and we know they're done now and the minerals have started breaking down into the liquid because the bones themselves are starting to become kind of like chalky the next step is to remove the bones from this broth and then i'm going to strain it and we're going to get some jars ready and then we're going to clean out a pressure canner and start pressure canning the bone broth this is what the bone broth looks like that we cooked yesterday and if i just give it a little stir all that oil will mix in so i have to get this back on the stove heat it up and then put in the jars and then we'll be pressure canning it eric and i are super big fans of this broth we also have some fish stock and chicken stock from this year we even have some bone broth from the mousse that we got on the roadkill list but this stuff is so versatile for us it's great for if you're cooking up rice beans we use it a lot for soups in the winter it's probably one of our favorite ways to use it it is super rich and flavorful and it by far does not compare to something you can find in the grocery store but if you can get your hand on some bones you can make this stuff at home all right we are finally finished with processing the mousse and making all the things that we wanted to make out of it we have our tallow here we ended up with 18 jars and then we have 21 jars of bone broth we're both so excited with how much we were able to get from that mousse i definitely think what we got is going to last us over a year which is awesome i've got to get these put away but we're not going to end the video quite yet because we have to cook up some mousse uh foreign [Music] so thank you [Applause] so hmm

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 492,149

Rating: 4.9387202 out of 5

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, homestead alaska, cabin life, off grid cabin, daily life off grid, winter in alaska, off grid in alaska, living in a tiny house, winter cabin living, day in the life off grid, harvest moose, moose alaska, self reliant alaska, greenhouse alaska, chickens alaska, processing moose, butchering moose, grinding moose meat, how to grind meat at home, grind burger meat, processing large game, knives for butchering, moose hunt alaska

Id: I697J30ihHE

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020