At the Muslim Butcher

This guy met his maker Dec 2008 in the Port Blair Market

Last year when crew wanted some mutton I asked one local muslim girl where I could find mutton as many muslims eat mutton in Thailand. So, I was introduced to a butcher that is living near the Lotus market on the way to Surin Beach. The next time I went to buy mutton he told me to buy the whole goat otherwise he would not sell. As my freezer was not working well at that time I did not buy the whole carcass as it would have spoiled rotten.

Anyway, now that my freezers were fixed in Langkawi I decided to get some mutton for the boys and we drove to the butcher after our weekly grocery shopping at Supercheap with Richard.

The butcher was still the same and when I asked for mutton he asked if I'll buy the whole thing and I said, yes. Then he asked if we wanted to choose the goat so I thought why not and off we went, he on his tricycle and we followed with our car. Near the Victory monument, before reaching it, he turned right into a small utility road and after some distance we arrived to a small coop were the goats were kept.

He asked which one we liked and I asked Richard to choose one, he chose a black small goat. The butcher grabbed his hindleg and dragged the goat out of the coop and then unceremoniusly slashed his throat with a knife. Then he let the goat bleed dry and die after which he loaded them (he killed another one I suppose for another customer) onto his tricycle and back we went to his house.

At the house the carcasses were thrown into the abattoir where the goat was first gutted and all the innards taken out. After that the goat was hung onto a metal hook and the skinning started. The butcher started from one of the front legs around the neck. Cut the ears off. Then continued to the other front leg and from there eased the skin down to the hind legs. When he reached the testicles he just plopped them out of their pouches and then cut the skin off right down to the hind hooves.

After that the carcass was taken down, the hooves cut off, the head was cut off. Then the torso was chopped into pieces so we did not have to do it onboard. Richard said he wanted the brain so then the butcher chopped open the skull and removed the brain. The head was also skinned and the tongue removed. After this the intestines were taken in a bag (brain, tongue, liver, heart, testicles and kidneys). Richard did not want the stomach so that one and the skin was discarded.

The whole process sort of gave one perspective of how our meat is gotten (to the meat counter in the supermarket). Pretty gruesome but in the end of the day, there probably would not be many goats and cows around if not for human consumption...

In the end we got from a 20kg goat about 10kg of meat that cost us 3000THB. That evening Richard made the most delicious mutton curry, yum-yum....