The Butchering of a Sheep After the Sacrifice

Part II-C. The Butchering (a description)

This is the fourth entry in a week-long series.

Important: If you are a vegetarian, or squeamish about reading about butchering, you might want to skip this post. Tomorrow’s post should be easy reading, never fear.

A Description of What Happens:

Any family members not actually assisting the butcher stand around in a semi-circle, watching as the sheep is butchered.

At this time of year, it’s cold, and to do this wet, messy work, the butcher is wearing knee-high black rubber boots, and often a black rubber coat on top of butchering clothes. The butcher uses his own knives for the butchering. He usually has a couple of big knives with him, or at least one (ten to twelve inches long, or up to twenty-four centimeters; and about two inches wide, up to four centimeters wide), but never have I seen them in good condition like nice hunting knives would be. They usually look very old, battered, not too sharp, even looking like they are about ready to fall apart.

Once the sheep has been hung by the hind leg, the butcher immediately starts to skin it. He makes cuts on the back legs and begins peeling the skin off, inside out. As it comes down, he delicately cuts between the skin and meat so that the skin will peel back. As he arrives at the body, instead of cutting, he uses the heel of the knife handle, in his right hand, to pound at the connections between the meat and the skin, while peeling down the skin with his left hand. He peels one side a bit, then moves around to the other side, then back and forth, taking the skin off in one whole piece. As the skin peels down in the cold morning, steam rises from the warmth of the exposed meat. It takes a butcher about ten or fifteen minutes to completely skin an animal.

Once the skin is off, it is set aside. Skins are sometimes taken later to the tannery, and returned as a nice rug. One year, we bought a sheep ourselves, and when the rug was returned to us, it attracted so many clothes moths into our home that we got rid of it and never kept a sheep-hide rug again. Most wool (in America or Europe) used to knit sweaters is actually chemically treated to resist attracting clothes moths (someone in the knitting industry told me that.) In the past, the wool was used to stuff long Moroccan sofas. These days, the hides are sometimes given to people who come by in the street, who then sell them. No one should profit on this day from killing their own sheep, so anything not wanted is given away, not sold.

Once the sheep has been skinned, the butcher begins by cutting open the abdomen. The internal organs are removed. There is a very important internal organ (for cooking purposes) which I don’t know the name of (and which doesn’t seem to be studied in school). I once read about it, but don’t recall the name, so I will describe it, as people have it, too. It is just under the skin of the abdomen, and it is where most abdominal fat is deposited. It has a name, but I don’t know what the name is, in any language. When it lifts out, it looks like a sheet of fat, thicker and thinner in some places, roughly about eighteen inches square, or somewhat rectangular. This will be used in the cooking by being cut into small strips to be wrapped around each piece of meat in shish-kebobs made of heart and liver. So this organ is set aside. (I just heard from my doctor friend, who tells me this is called the peritoneum.)

The liver is removed, as are the intestines. A big plastic tub is kept nearby, and the intestines are carefully pulled out, not all at once, but as a long hose being unwound, with the one end being dropped into the plastic tub as they are pulled. The stomach, kidneys, and green gallbladder are removed. I believe the gallbladder is discarded. Next the heart is removed and set aside with the liver and kidneys.

Now the lungs are removed, not by cutting the chest, but by pulling them out through the abdominal cavity in one piece, with the windpipe still attached. Often, one of the brothers in the family will take and blow them up like a balloon, inflating them fully several times, in play. The children find this great fun to see. But my understanding is that the real reason behind this is to check that they are not diseased. The Moroccans seem to know what to look for. Healthy lungs are a uniform, rosy pink. Diseased lungs have discolored parts, or a speckled appearance, apparently.

If the lungs are not healthy, they are discarded. If they are healthy, they are set aside to use in making a soup. The stomach is washed out (with a hose) and set aside for the same soup.

At this point, the butcher is paid, and he leaves, to go on to the next house he can find as quickly as possible. For about two weeks after this day, all the butcher shops are closed, and no meat is for sale in supermarkets, nor are their meat departments even open. So if you are a meat-eating foreigner living in a Muslim country and are not killing a sheep, do stock up on some meat for the freezer before this festival.

The hanging carcass of the sheep is left hanging to dry. If it is a time of year when there are a lot of flies, the meat is covered with a canvas tarp wrapped around it to keep them off. Meanwhile, the cooking starts.

The first parts eaten are the heart, liver, and other internal organs (because these spoil much faster than the regular meat, and many homes still have no refrigeration, or a very limited amount of refrigeration, even in the cities). The next parts eaten are the head (which will be discussed tomorrow) and the soup made out of the lungs and stomach (again, these parts spoil quickly, so they are used first). The hoofs are cooked and served after that. Lastly, the regular meat is used a couple days later.

The meat does keep a few days (surprisingly to me), just wrapped in a cloth, hanging out in the open. The mother of the family will cut off one leg at a time to use. If there is a married son who has not purchased a sheep, she might cut off one leg for that family to take home. Sometimes the head might be given to someone poor who knocks on the door. Sometimes the family cooks it themselves, particularly if they are expecting a lot of extended family for dinner, or at noon the next day.

Tomorrow, we will read all about the cooking, the eating, and enjoying the day.

Madame Monet