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Cook:Manchester Want To Butcher You
Trafford kitchen to launch a series of intensive six hour specialist cookery courses with local chefs and producers
"THE problem with most cookery classes," says Sean Fisher, founder of Trafford trade kitchen Cook:Manchester, "is that you don't learn to cook... not properly... you turn up, start on the wine, have a few laughs and learn a few recipes.
"It's a nice day, not a cooking lesson."
"This isn't a lightweight lesson, this is a brutal six hours of graft. Nothing is done for you, we want to give people experience of being a real chef in a real working kitchen."
Fisher's new lessons at Cook:Manchester on Chester Road are a whole different animal, because, well... you get a whole animal.
This Sunday 8 March, celebrated Manchester chef and Man of the Wood, Rob Owen Brown, formerly of the Mark Addy and author of new cookbook Crispy Squirrel and Vimto Trifle, will hand each of his class a whole lamb and teach them how to hack it down and make it restaurant-ready.
"We start at 9am by giving you an entire lamb," Fisher explains. "Then for the next six hours Rob will show you how to take it apart, why to take it apart in that way and the best way to use the cuts; then we start the cooking, creating six dishes in a working kitchen environment.
"This isn't a lightweight lesson, this is a brutal six hours of graft," Fisher continues. "Nothing is done for you, we want to give people experience of being a real chef in a real working kitchen."
Cook:Manchester
After ten years in retail and working for Microsoft, Fisher found that many part-time chefs, street food traders and small-time food businesses were struggling to find enough cooking space at home or the money to buy the kitchens they needed. There was a gap and Fisher intended to plug it.
Just over a year ago, Fisher opened Cook:Manchester in Trafford, a 3000 sq ft warehouse filled with over £100,000 of kit, including blast chillers, bbq smokers and a mighty walk-in fridge.
Word soon spread, and by the time Manchester Food and Drink Festival came around in September 2014, all 30 of the festival's food traders were using the Cook:Manchester kitchen.
Rob Owen Brown: Man of the Wood
Now Fisher is opening up his kitchen to the public for the first time with a series of specialist cooking lessons run in collaboration with chefs and food producers from across the North West.
As with Owen-Brown's lamb masterclass, each six hour course will focus on mastering a particular skill or ingredient; Owen-Brown will be running more classes on pigs (with Chorlton's renowned Frosty Butcher) and seafood, while sausage-makers Bobby's Bangers and barbecue hogs Fire & Salt BBQ are amongst a number of others lined-up for the future.
Places are limited to ten students per course and priced £150 per person. Not cheap. Still, Fisher reckons you're getting a lot of bang for your buck.
"We think the price actually gives some amazing value for money," explains Fisher. “We’re offering the chance to learn basic butchery as a skill as well as some amazing recipes with meat that you’ll take straight off the animal.
"Best of all, our students will be taking all the leftover meat home with them to practice with."
Cook:Manchester, 476 Chester Road, Trafford, Manchester M16 9HE. 0161 876 4806. Email sean@cookmanchester.com
The first of the sessions begin on Sunday 8 March with Robert Owen Brown’s Lamb Masterclass, followed by a joint course on butchering and preparing pork by Lee Frost and Robert Owen Brown on Sunday 29 March.
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Really Mancon? The main photo is of two pigs' heads? I eat meat but that's distasteful, even if the article is about cookery courses. Perhaps those kind of images should be on TV cookery shows regulary and in cookbooks. It's be great if Mancon had the minerals to do an article about the reality of Halal with lots of images of suffering animals.
I find it bemusing how people seem to suddenly get up in arms about animal cruelty in slaughter when it's being done by Muslims. Would you not be interested in Man Con doing an article about cruelty in slaughter generally?
I was expecting that kind of response TBH, and yes, I would have no problem if Mancon covered slaughter in general. I've always said that if the only choice I had to eat meat was to slaughter the animal myself, then I would just be a vegetarian. So...back on topic, Gimboid, what is your opinion about the title photo?
Nothing wrong with the photo. I cant believe people who moan about seeing a couple of pigs heads in a photo about a butchery course but are happy to go home and eat pork for their dinner.
I eat meat but I think it's important to be aware of the slaughter and processing methods.
Anonymous, I think it is highly unlikely that the pigs pictured at the top of this article are halal.
Plus, anonymous, the "reality of halal" is that 84 per cent of animals slaughtered by the Halal method were stunned before being killed. That's according to those animal-hating varmints in the, er, RSPCA and those jihadists in the, er, Food Standards Agency. There's a broader debate about how animals are slaughtered in this country, but it has little to do with the Muslim panic that you appear to be suffering from, and much more to do with the reduction in numbers of smaller slaughterhouse and an over-reliance on industrial slaughter.
@Smitty Do read the post. I said...'It'd be great if Mancon had the minerals to do an article about the reality of Halal with lots of images of suffering animals.' Of course pork isn't [and can't be] Halal. If Jews and Muslims ate pork he price would go through the roof.
@Smitty part deux...the 'reality' of this 84% Halal you speak of can't be classed as Halal if the animal is stunned before it's thoat is slit.
It's a cooking class that teaches you how to cut up a full carcass. (Ok so in the class you get a lamb not a pig) Weirdly enough the meat looks like the animal before it's divided into chops....So the picture fits. That is what dead pig looks like, you used to see that in traditional butchers shops all the time. If you can't look at a picture of a pigs head....this class probably isn't for you.
Do you get to take any of the meat home that you've butchered?
You do! All the leftover meat is divided up between the students at the end of the day so you can practice more at home.
Woo! Shame the article went up with little notice about the course. I'm not too interested in the later lamb butchering course.
Don't worry, there are plenty more sessions in the works. Keep an eye on cookmanchester.com/masterclass… for the most recent list of classes we're putting on!
Why isn't there a decent butchers in Manchester City Centre?
Arndale Market butchers is great, excellent kielbasa & incredible Tomato Sausages,
A lot of the meat in the Arndale market doesn't look too fresh. The chicken looks as though its been defrosted prior to being placed on display too. If you want decent meat, get the tram over to Ashton for the food market. Been this week and it ws absolutely amazing. Got some decent meat from Pearson's butchers as well as a load of cheese, pies and bread.
I think they're opening one in the NQ near Beermoth? Should be interesting to see what that'll be like.
I agree with Avo [surprisingly] on this one. There's plenty of meat in the Arndale but it's not quality, and I'm not talking about the opposite sex BTW.