What it's like to do a butchery course: No meat ever goes to waste

We tell Scott that and he laughs. “Uh hah hah.”

“You see,” we tell him. ‘You even sound like Elvis. He did that at the end of Blue Suede Shoes.”

Scott Rea is the founder of the Scott Rea Project. It’s an online sensation that has thousands of subscribers around the globe. Scott makes YouTube videos on all things butchery and his fans follow his methods, try his recipes and offer feedback after they’ve viewed.

“The Scott Rea Project has gone ballistic,” he says. “It is literally a worldwide thing.”

Scott lives in Worcester and curates his Scott Rea Project in his spare time. Typically, he’ll go hunting with friends – shooting deer, and stuff – and head out to the country for the weekend to trap crayfish. They’ll he’ll prepare them, cook them, video the whole caboodle and share it with his huge online community of followers.

In his spare time, he also runs bespoke butchery courses, so that fans, followers and those in love with meat can learn how to break animals down properly, so as to preserve all the finest cuts and ensure nothing goes to waste.

“I learned from the best,” says Scott. “I went into butchery after leaving school and had a brilliant mentor. He taught me everything I know and I still adhere to those traditional, old-fashioned methods.

“The skills are changing for the modern era. But butchery is at its best when people follow the age-old traditions.”

Scott is as good as his word. And in addition to following old-fashioned techniques, he also buys up vintage equipment. So his ‘butchery shed’ – a mini studio/butchery that’s located in a shed in his garden – houses plenty of equipment that would probably cost a fortune if bought by collectors.

“I love the history of it. It’s a great profession. The old, vintage ethos is something that I’ve bought into.”

Scott is a fascinating character. He looks like a bad ass rockabilly dude, with tattoos across his fingers and arms, but his manner is as gentle as a doctor and his sense of humour as rapacious as a stand-up comic.

I’ve booked an experience with him that involves catching, butchering and cooking rabbits. The one-day session follows the release of his debut book – Ahead of the Game: The Catcher and The Rea (and he scores a 10/10 for coming up with that title) – which focuses on the history, harvest and preparation of wild rabbit. In the morning, we head out to the country to work with one of his rabbit catcher friends. Rabbits are caught humanely, as ferrets flush them out of their warrens and they are caught in long nets. They are instantly dispatched, without suffering, and the countryside is unblemished by their activities.

“It’s part of the humane harvest,” says Scott. “This is where meat comes from. We’ve been doing this since the cavemen were around. I have a friend who’s an intellectual gamekeeper and he did research about the impact that various crops have on the planet. He found that a diet including humanely-dispatched rabbit and other wild meats had a lower carbon footprint than foods typically found in a vegan diet. It’s all to do with nitrogen and carbon, apparently. In short, it’s better for the planet that we eat this stuff than not.”

Enough of the foodie politics. We crank on the Johnny Cash tunes and head back to his shed.

Scott has a number of pre-killed rabbits that we’re going to butcher. “There are a couple of ways of removing their fur,” he says, making a small incision with a knife. He shows one way, in which the fur remains intact so that it can be used as material, and another where the fur is cut in two and then put into the compost. “Nothing ever goes to waste,” he says.

And then it’s time to break down the rabbit. Scott sharpens his knife, removes the legs and delicately trims out the fillets. He’s remarkably gentle as he does so. “It’s all about being respectful,” he says. “The animals shouldn’t give up their lives if they’re not going to be treated well by people afterwards. It’s important to butcher the animal well and then to use all parts of it: meat to eat, bones for stock.”

We spend an hour working our way through the various butchery techniques before retreating to Scott’s kitchen.

“The point of it is that it ends up in the pot. Some people are squeamish about where their meat comes from. I’m not sure why that is. I think it’s better to be honest about it all. It’s better to be truthful because then you can be more respectful. Some kids imagine their meat comes from the fridge counter in the supermarket. For me, it’s better to learn the story of field to fork so that people aren’t being misled.”

In the kitchen, there’s a blur of activity, a flurry of ingredient-mixing and within an hour we’ve knocked up two simple dishes: rabbit satay and rabbit koftas. They are utterly, jaw-droppingly delicious. None of the meat has gone to waste, we’ve not had a negative impact on the environment and we’ve eaten ethically – the rabbits led the wildest of lives before coming to an immediate, pain-free end.

“People are into the idea of eating sustainably,” says Scott. Indeed they are. He reveals that his debut book pre-sold 500 copies before it was even released, with fans in America, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Scandanavia and elsewhere.

“It’s an amazing time we live in,” says Scott, channelling his best Elvis psycho killer look. “I’m just very grateful that people are interested in preserving the age-old techniques, in being respectful of wild animals and in creating tasty dishes that are easy to cook at home.” It sounds like the perfect recipe – little wonder he’s got tens of thousands of fans around the world.