At 4:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, the two butchers at Foragers Butchers in Dekalb Market Hall were preparing meats for tomorrow—15 pounds of lamb and 10 pounds of pork that would be marinated for sausages, and 20 pounds of beef that would be made into meatballs. After that, they had to break down a lamb into individual cuts for the display case.

Greg Brockman, 31, is the lead butcher at Foragers Market and the manager of its Dekalb location. He is responsible for all the meat purchases across the company’s three locations in Chelsea, Dumbo, and Dekalb, hiring for Dekalb, and, of course, for cutting meat.

Seven years ago, Brockman was working as a personal assistant for the late author Jean Stein. But he found office work tiring, so he quit and got a job making sandwiches at Foragers Market in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The loosely structured back of the house gave him leeway to do some meat cutting, and with the help of a book named “The Art of Beef Cutting,” he taught himself to butcher meat. In 2012, he officially became a butcher at Foragers Market.

After putting on his apron, Brockman bent over and searched the refrigerators for pieces of beef wrapped in butcher paper that he called “scraps”—cuts that are either too hard or unpopular in the neighborhood, he explained. With a thin boning knife, he quickly trimmed off the silver skin and oxidized parts that are turning brown, and sliced the beef into cubes. The beef would be used to make meatballs later that day.

“Anyone can learn how to break animals down, the difficult part is figuring out how to do with the parts that don’t go into the display case,” Brockman said, with sweat on his forehead.

Tuesday started late for Brockman: one of the butchers had called in sick in the morning, and Brockman had to cover the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. He said he needs to do something like this four or five times every week, due to personnel changes at the shop.

He also needed to train Michael Lee-Edwards, an 18-year-old high school student who works part-time at the shop. Tuesday was Lee-Edwards’ second day here, and with the other butcher’s shift ending in less than an hour, Brockman decided to have a quick dinner at 5 p.m. so that the trainee wouldn’t be left in the shop alone.

Dekalb Market Hall has 40 food vendors ranging from Caribbean food to ramen, but Brockman’s favorite is the cheeseburger at Andrew’s Classic Roadside Hamburgers, where he ordered a double with pickles, ketchup and mayo, and a root beer. Then he walked to a corner bench near the entrance, where it was cooler.

The double cheeseburger with pickes, ketchup and mayo that Brockman downed in four minutes. Photo: Yiwei Xu.

“I want to make the break as short as possible, so it is rare for me to sit down and eat,” he said. “I usually just shove some food in my face, or just stand near the oven [at the butcher shop] and down the burger in two minutes.”

He was done with his meal four minutes later. Then he hurried back to the shop and started instructing Lee-Edwards on the steps of making meat balls.

A lot of the time, Brockman doesn’t even have meals. He snacks all day, tasting the batches of meat and vegetables from Forager’s salad bar—a kiosk right next to Forager’s butcher that Brockman oversees—to make sure they are up to his standards.

At 6:30 p.m., Brockman went downstairs to get a 50-pound lamb that he would break down into sellable pieces. Lee-Edwards looked at the animal, which occupied two-thirds of the counter, and stopped mixing the ingredients for the meat balls.

Greg Brockman breaking up a lamb with a boning knife. Photo: Yiwei Xu.

“That is a lamb, right? Can I film how you cut it?” Lee-Edwards asked.

“Normally I would say yes, but you still have work to do,” Brockman said, pointing at the giant mixing bowl.

Brockman broke down the animal with ease, alternating between a boning knife that he used to cut meat and tendons and a butcher saw for bones, occasionally using his own weight to help break thick bones like the spine. As he worked, he recalled cutting himself a lot when he first started.

“When you find something hard in the meat, your natural instinct is to go hard, and when you break it like that, the knife will just keep going, and that’s how you cut yourself,” he said.

The butcher shop closes at 10 p.m., but Brockman had to stay until 11 p.m. to clean up. He said if he doesn’t work the late shift, he either goes home and eats a light dinner or has some food that he likes at the market hall, like scallop handrolls from Daigo Handroll Bar.

Brockman occasionally brings home meat from the butcher shop when he wants to have a nice meal with his girlfriend. His favorite cut of meat is secreto, a belly cut from pigs that he likes to pan-sear. But most of the time, he prefers a small meal after eight hours of cutting and trimming. For that Tuesday, he was planning on having some toasted bread with beans made by his girlfriend, along with an egg.

“I just want to go home and have something easy and nice that doesn’t have much cleanup,” he said.

Yiwei Xu