Author
Elias Roybal
Butchering and meat care · Marfa, Texas
Elias is a third generation meat cutter in Marfa. He worked a locker plant counter, then went mobile so he could reach animals while they were still worth reaching.
What does Elias cover here?
Carcass cooling, the gutless method, keeping hair off meat, and the order of operations when one person is working alone.
He comes at field care from the meat side, which changes the priorities. A caper wants the hide intact. A cutter wants the carcass under 40F. Those two goals fight each other on a warm afternoon, and most of what he writes here is about how to lose that fight as slowly as possible.
He also does the knife hygiene material, which is less exciting than steel talk and matters more. A blade that has been through a punctured gut and then goes into a backstrap is a food safety problem, not a technique problem.
How Elias got here
His grandfather cut meat in Presidio and his father ran the counter at a locker plant in Marfa. Elias worked that counter for six years before buying a trailer.
Mobile processing changed what he sees. At a counter, an animal arrives after the mistakes have already happened. In a trailer parked at a ranch gate, he watches the mistakes happen, which is a better education and a worse mood.
What does Elias get wrong?
He rushes the cape when the meat is at risk.
Given a warm animal and one pair of hands, he will open the carcass first and deal with the hide second, every time. That is defensible for meat and expensive for a shoulder mount, and Wren has had to repair two brisket cuts he made in a hurry. The guides on this site say to make that call deliberately instead of by reflex, which is a rule written for him as much as for anyone reading.
More about how this site works is on the about page. Everything Elias has written is filed under field notes.