'Meatstress' cuts her own path through male-dominated butchery field

DETROIT — It's not even 10 a.m. on a Monday morning and Larissa Popa is already putting her hacksaw to use. But instead of a metal pipe or piece of wood, the target of her sawing is a half-carcass of a 304-pound heritage breed pig.

Popa is leading a whole-hog butchery demonstration at Eastern Market’s Shed 5. Four participants have each paid $85 to learn to break down a pig carcass into smaller cuts from the woman they call “the Meatstress,” a tongue-in-cheek stand-in for “female butcher” that’s become Popa’s nickname and professional alter ego.

Decked out in a denim apron and shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black and red polka dot headscarf a la Rosie the Riveter, Popa is getting physical with the sow.

PETA Responds After Yoenis Cespedes Buys $7,000 Champion Pig, Sends It to Butcher

“Since she was an older pig, it’s going to be harder for me to bust through this area here so I’m going to have to saw through it,” she tells the crowd, which also included a couple  of culinary students helping out in exchange for knowledge.

“Older female pigs are really great for salumi and charcuterie — especially if they had babies, they’re even tastier,” Popa says to laughter. “I know that sounds wrong, but it’s true. If it makes anybody feel better, this was a mean pig.”

A craft revival

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t track data on gender breakdown in the butchery business, but it’s no secret that the industry has long been dominated by men. But the Meatstress is part of a growing movement of female butchers across the country, joining the likes of Indianapolis’ Loreal (Butcher Babe) Gavin, a Season 10 finalist on The Next Food Network Star, and Chicago’s Kari Underly, author of The Art of Beef Cutting and developer of the flat-iron steak.

“It has been a male-dominated industry because you need strength for the job,” says Anika-Kafi Grose, head of Detroit Kitchen Connect at Eastern Market, where Popa has held a handful of butchery demos. “Women have not been seen as strong enough to butcher a whole animal, but it’s less about being strong and more about using the tools and leverage and having confidence.

“These are things that our mothers and grandmothers knew how to do, but we lost it.”

A butcher's 6 secrets for saving money on meat

Popa’s own love for meat stems from her Eastern European upbringing. Her father emigrated  from Romania, and her mother’s side of the family came from Germany, Romania and Hungary through Ellis Island.

“Mom always was cooking,” Popa, 32, says. “There was always some kind of stew or goulash or paprikash. We were always eating good food and there was always charcuterie of some sort — smoked meats, different kinds of kielbasa.”

'It was life-changing' 

While she was growing up in Warren, Mich., where she still lives, Popa’s Byzantine Catholic family helped cater monthly banquets at St. John the Baptist church.

“As a kid you had to help, you had to do something in the kitchen,” Popa recalls. “You can’t just sit around and be a kid. Go work!”

But when it was time to go out and really work at 16, Popa’s pharmacist sister offered her a job as a pharmacy tech. Instead of trussing chickens, the future Meatstress spent the next decade filling prescriptions.

“I was making really great money, but I hated it,” Popa says.

About six years ago, she came across a homespun Hungarian cafe in the-middle-of-nowhere Ohio, with framed photos of immigrants on the walls, and the thought hit her: “I want a place like this.”

So at 26, she decided to make a career change, enrolling in culinary classes at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Mich.

“I felt stupid and out of place,” she recalls. “I sucked at butchery. I almost wanted to cry most days, because it just didn’t click yet. I was struggling. It just wasn’t making sense.”

By about the fourth week, though, it finally clicked, “and then I didn’t want the class to end,” she says.

At Schoolcraft, Popa says she was re-introduced to the charcuterie of her childhood, taking a class with prominent charcutier, chef and instructor Brian Polcyn.

But it was the trip she took to France after graduating from Schoolcraft that convinced her to go whole hog.

Popa says she was lucky to earn a scholarship through Grrls Meat Camp, a workshop group founded by nose-to-tail torchbearer Kate Hill that fosters and educates women in butchery, to study at Hill’s Kitchen at Camont, a farm and culinary retreat in Gascony, France. There, Popa learned the art of whole-animal butchery.

“Nothing went to waste there,” Popa says, explaining that not only were the pigs raised on the farm, but so was the feed for the animals. “It was life-changing. It was me.”

Up to that point, she’d still had the vision of the little Hungarian café in mind for herself. After the stint in France, it was butchery or bust.

“I really fell in love with butchery,” she says. “I feel like it’s second nature to me. It’s like yoga. When I’m breaking up an animal, it’s peaceful, it’s calming. It’s very zen for me. I’m a totally different person when I’m doing it.”

'Power to everybody' 

Coming back to reality at home, though, has been a struggle.

Although now a culinary school sous chef at Schoolcraft and leading educational butchery workshops, Popa says she’s had a hard time breaking through the male-dominated world of meat cutting.

“Trying to learn any further than what I did in France or finding a job in that field has been the biggest struggle ever and it’s been very frustrating,” she says. “I’ve gone to slaughterhouses here in Michigan and said, ‘I will work for you for free; I will clean your floors; I just want to learn; can I come watch?’ And ...  they look at you and they’re like: ‘Oh you’re a female.’ "

Popa recalls once being allowed on the kill floor of a meat processor and having a bull’s testicle thrown at her feet.

“I was like, ‘Hey, thanks guys. Can I get the other one?’ “ she says. “And they were like, ‘Whoa, she actually knows what it is!’ ”

Still, Popa is nothing if not determined. The end goal of a Hungarian cafe has been replaced with a small butcher shop that would only deal with whole animals from Michigan farmers.

“I know that I’m not going to become rich doing this,” she says. “But I want to make some sort of difference.”

With Detroit real estate prices rising quickly, that dream is likely still a few years off. So for now, she’ll continue to hold butchery demos and resume her post at Schoolcraft when classes start back up in the fall. She’s embraced both roles.

“I want to educate people so they know that food doesn’t come from the store — it comes from an animal who had a life who had to die,” she says. “And to show people that you don’t need to have 20 tenderloins for a party. Use everything. Nothing should go to waste.”

Her message, though, is not just for other would-be female butchers: “It’s not just power to women, it’s power to everybody to know what they’re eating.”

Follow Mark Kurlyandchik on Twitter: @mkurlyandchik