‘I Always Wanted to Get My Hands Bloody:’ Inside the Unique World of a West African-American Butcher
‘I Always Wanted to Get My Hands Bloody:’ Inside the Unique World of a West African-American Butcher
Raised in a West African family, Abou Sow grew up with butchery as a cultural tradition. Now, with Prince Abou’s Butchery, he also considers the culinary art form an answer to sustainability.
While most little boys wanted to play ball or video games as much as possible, Abou Sow couldn’t get enough of visiting his uncle’s halal slaughterhouse in Jamaica, Queens, New York.
“I just always wanted to get my hands bloody,” he recalls about the key family outings that turned into his first job at 13 and eventually his career as a butcher at Prince Abou’s Butchery in Queens. But unlike your average American butcher, Sow’s relationship to the craft of slaughtering/meat fabrication is more cultural than anything else.
Though he was born in New York, the first generation immigrant grew up in a household rooted strongly in West African customs and traditions. His father is Senegalese, and while his mother was born in the United States, her Ghanaian roots were always on proud display.
Sow’s relationship with butchery is full-on Fulani (mostly people of Senegal), who can also be found in Guinea, Mali and Gambia. “The Fulani people are a people who are interesting because they are very much known for cattle farming and producing milk and selling milk,” he explains. “We were always involved in the entire process of the meat that we consumed at home, which is a very normal thing to be involved in if you have family from overseas. It's very interesting how today I find myself in the U.S. involved in the cattle industry, even though that's something that's so prevalent in [Senegal] and other parts of West Africa.”
During our recent conversation, Sow vividly described the art of butchery, its resurgence, how it’s misunderstood and actually pays homage to the animals.
Audarshia Townsend: What was it like growing up in your family?
Abou Sow: I share a similar story with most people that have family from overseas. You may travel and you may have an aunt or a grandparent or an uncle who has chickens or a few goats running around in their backyard or front yard, and in a few days that's dinner. It's as simple as that. And so, whenever we needed meat, we would always go directly to the source, whether that be a slaughterhouse or a farmer, and we would always have a hand in preparing that meat from start to finish.
Townsend: So, that's how you got into butchering?
Sow: Yes, because of our culture. It's a very normal thing to be a part of. The only difference is I took a liking to it. So, while everyone (in my culture) may experience this, I just took a very strong liking to it. I always wanted to go to the slaughterhouse and get my hands bloody.
Townsend: What's that about? Why were you so interested? What interests you about that so much?
Sow: I think from a very young age, I always liked the idea of using a knife and cutting an animal's throat and then processing it after. Whenever my family would go without me, I would cry. That's how much I wanted to go. Like there were trips that I couldn't go on, and I would be heartbroken.
Townsend: Explain the process of how you became a professional butcher.
Sow: Well, I would always help out as a kid. And at 13, they allowed me to work at my uncle's local slaughterhouse. It was there that they really, truly taught me how to slaughter animals and process them. I worked there all through high school, and that's where I really got my training.
There's two sides to butchery, and butchery is any time you're taking a knife to flesh. There is the first side, which is the slaughter aspect of it, slaughtering the animal, removing the hide, gutting it, getting it down to its carcass form. And then the other side of it is meat fabrication, cutting that carcass down into retail or dinner plate-ready cuts. I started out in the first stage of butchery, which is slaughter, and then I slowly moved into meat fabrication, where I am today. I still have my hand in slaughter for sure. I'll never leave that. It's just such a part of me. But I'm more so focused on the actual fabrication of the cow and so forth.
Townsend: The way you describe it, it feels more like an art form.
Sow: To your point, yeah, it is an art form. We are artists. And I guess it starts with knowing the anatomy of the animal's throat, you know, you want to open up jugular to jugular on both sides. Those are the two main arteries so that the blood spills. You want to hang that animal so all the blood drains from it. It's a very intimate process. Very warm, of course, because of the blood process, and you're going to get your hands dirty. But you also have a lot more respect for that animal, taking that animal's life. And you start to appreciate consuming meat even more because of that as well.
After the hide is removed, after it's gutted, and it's hung and ready to be broken down into those retail cuts, as I mentioned, knowing the anatomy, knowing the bone structure, knowing where to cut, what tools to use, and also having a plan as to what cuts you need available before you start cutting.
You know, you wanna have a plan before diving in. What recipes are gonna be made from this animal? What quantities of certain cuts do I need, these are all things that you want to know ahead of time. And you know things like making sure your knives are sharp, that you have the proper storage, there's a lot to take into consideration because you're taking an animal's life. You want that life to be honored and used to the best of your ability.
Townsend: I'm sure it depends on what kind of animal it is, whether it's a chicken or a turkey or a cow. But how long does this process take for the blood to leave the animal's body so you can begin the process of cutting it down?
Sow: Sure, you know after you slaughter that animal you hang it and the blood can drain fully almost instantly within a few minutes. Obviously you keep it hanging and so even those smaller drips can come out a few hours for sure.
What is your favorite animal to slaughter and why?
Sow: To slaughter I would say … it's funny no one's ever asked me that question. Usually they'll ask, “What’s your favorite animal to butcher?” But they won't dive into the slaughter; they stay away from it. I'm very happy that you're sticking to the slaughter. It's such an important part to this that a lot of times is overlooked. I would say sheep or lamb, which can often be done alone.
Townsend: What is the difference when it comes to slaughtering animals?
Sow: No matter what the animal is, you’re always going to be cutting the throat so that the blood can drain. But I would say with the poultry, that can always, almost always be done alone, as well as lamb and sheep and goat. But when you start to move into the larger animals, like cattle, for instance, that can weigh up to 2,000 pounds plus, you definitely need help in doing that.
And so even with that, you want to make sure that the animal is slaughtered humanely. And generally speaking, humanely meaning, slaughtering that animal with as little to no stress on that animal or suffering on that animal. You must be especially careful if you're slaughtering an animal with partners. There's a role to be played with each person and making sure that that person knows their role in order to get that animal in position to have its throat cut takes a lot of planning and experience.
Townsend: I can imagine. I can totally imagine. So, who are your customers? Are they retail? Is it business to business, a combination?
Sow: Right now, primarily business to business. We're working with several restaurants, charter schools, cafes and even senior centers throughout New York City.
Townsend: I noticed that you offer different classes where it looks like some of them are like kind of like social outings where people can rent a butcher and learn the craft. Can you talk a little bit more about how it's trending in a sense that people want to learn more about the meat that they're consuming and how this is possibly helping them and learning more about the animals that they're consuming?
Sow: Great question. A large part of our company is centered around education and informing people on what the product is and how it got to them. The entire process of our process is buying local livestock from farmers within just hours away from us, having those animals slaughtered, then butchering them in-house and providing New Yorkers with these cuts. Providing a hands-on experience where people can learn to butcher, a lot of them for their first time, gives them insight into what it takes to actually have a stake (in the food) on their plate. It’s become something that we've been able to do with adults and even high school students as well.
Townsend: What are some of the most interesting aspects of those type of gatherings? Like what is it that they learn from some of these experiences?
Sow: They learn what hard work butchery is, specifically our style of butchery, which is whole animal butchery. That's one of the more sustainable practices of butchery. But what’s most interesting to me all the time, whatever workshop it is, is how interested and involved the participants are. A lot of times butchery can be looked at as something gross and will often make people squeamish, but anytime we do this, the people are all in, no matter if they're high school students or adults, they jump right in and they go all in.
And it's very interesting because butchery, it has sort of a dark cloud over it.
Townsend: It does?
Sow: A lot of times, as a whole, meat fabrication and butchery is looked at as something old school and kind of like sinister, kind of messy, bloody. You know, old grumpy guys with a white coat on behind the counter, chopping things, right? It has sort of that aesthetic to it. We’ve worked very hard with our company not to have that same aesthetic. I think maybe that's working in our favor.
Townsend: Do you have the perception that your craft is kind of taken for granted? I'd like you to talk about that and whether or not you think that it's in vogue.
Sow: I think the pandemic had a lot to do with the resurgence of butchery. What the pandemic showed is that we should have a more streamlined way of food consumption, a more direct line of food consumption, with less hands involved. That also includes less transportation steps, which results in less chances of contamination and fresher products as well, meaning meat and other food items as well.
So I think that the pandemic definitely showed that, exposed that, and people are a lot more educated on that as well. You saw what happened during the pandemic where a lot of the major meat factories had to shut down. There was a meat shortage. We sold meat all through the pandemic, our company. And that was because we don't participate in that industrial food system. We work on a very small level directly with local farmers. And so we had meat all throughout the pandemic. And so did other small, locally sourced butcher shops as well.
Townsend: There’s a professional group for pretty much every profession now. What can you tell me about the butchers?
Sow: There is a nonprofit organization called Black Butchers United that I'm a part of with maybe 30 or 40 members. We're really focused on providing opportunities to each other that we may come across. Before joining the organization, I didn't even know any other Black butchers outside of my family members. All the other butchers I knew did not look like me. I was so happy when they found me, because now I'm amongst so many others that I just didn't know existed.
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Great interview!