In 1945 Otto Konozsi and his family, along with many others, were thrown out of their native Hungary by the Communists because they were of German descent. ”They let us take whatever we could carry by hand and told us we would come back in two weeks. They shipped us to a concentration camp in Germany, and we never went back home,” Konozsi relates.
It was in Germany that Konozsi learned to be a butcher. He signed on as an apprentice with a large family that had a farm and a butcher shop. Working from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., Konozsi learned his trade from the bottom up: He began by cutting grass for the cows and rounding up cattle; he didn`t actually work in the shop until his third year.
Konozsi, 53, came to the United States in 1957, and after working for several large meat-packing firms in Chicago opened his own store 18 years ago. He lives on the Northwest Side with his wife, Lillian, a cosmetician, and a teenaged son. Another son is in the Air Force. During a visit to Ott`s Hickory Market at 2677 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago writer Norma Libman learned some of the fine points of cutting and cooking meat.
To be a good butcher you have to be willing to work hard. People have to trust you. I like it when customers come back to my store because of the meat I`ve sold them. This is very important to me. I can`t say there is something I don`t like about this job. I don`t believe in that. I believe in hard work. You do a job. That`s all. You don`t think about what you don`t like.
If there is anything that bothers me, it`s that the big outfits push the little guys out of business. I have succeeded because I had such a good apprenticeship in Germany. In this country they don`t give the new butchers such a variety of experience in their training. In Germany I learned to kill the animals, cut the meat, make the sausage. We did everything. There is nothing like this here today. That`s why there is a shortage of skilled tradespeople in this country today.
There are certain occupational hazards in this job. One of the worst things happened while I was still an apprentice. I was learning to make sausages. We would put them in the smokehouse and heat them up. One time 17 of the wieners exploded. I was afraid that my boss would fire me when he found out, so I cooked them and ate them all. Then a few minutes later my boss` wife came in and called me for lunch. Just as I heard her say the word ”lunch” I became very ill and could no longer hide what I had done.
I`ve been injured several times, too. One evening a lady came in and wanted two pounds of bacon. I must have been getting pretty tired because I ended up slicing myself with a very sharp knife from my thumb, across my wrist and part way up my arm. This took 35 stitches to repair. Once I stabbed myself in the stomach, too. These are freak accidents. They happen once or twice a year. When you work around sharp knives, or even dull ones, these things happen. You can`t entirely prevent it, no matter how careful you are.
I like to joke around with my customers. If someone comes in and asks for brains, you can be sure I`ll say, ”If I had brains I`d be in Washington.”
Once in a while we get a grouchy customer, but most of them like it when I kid around. Of course, I know they won`t come back for the jokes; they`ll come back for the quality. I never forget that.
A typical day for me is a long day. I usually make sausage four days a week. I have to get to the store around 6:30 a.m. to begin working on it. Then I work until about 8 or 8:30 at night, cutting meat all day. Sometimes it`s hard on my family, but when you invest in a shop, you have to make it work. I have one employee at the store all the time and a second one on weekends.
I can produce any cut of meat a customer wants and just about any sausage. I make Hungarian, Austrian, Polish, Italian and German sausage. I make bratwurst and Hungarian headcheese. You name it. I brought most of the recipes with me from Germany.
The busiest time around here is 5 in the evening. That`s when everyone stops in on the way home from work. Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest days of the week. Of course, the busiest times of the year are right around the holidays. For Christmas it doesn`t get really busy until the last couple of days. People see how much money they have left over before they buy their food.
Nobody can fool me about the quality of sausage or meat. I select my own meat, and if I don`t like it I don`t buy it. If it doesn`t look good to me, I won`t sell it to you. Prime is the highest grade, then top choice and then the lower grades. I believe that a choice grade that`s been aged is better than a prime. And it`s a better buy, too, because it costs less. Prime has more fat inside the meat to make it tender. But aging choice meat does the same thing for it. You can wind up with a better steak this way. I buy my meat only from Omaha, Nebraska. That`s the best beef. Some of the other beef is dressed or skinned differently and gets an odor if you leave it hanging.
I believe in aged beef. You won`t get a fresh cut of beef from me. For that you can go to the chain stores. We get the cattle in forequarters and hindquarters, and I cut it and let it hang for a week to two weeks. After that is when it tastes good. Do you want to eat a green banana or a ripe one? A green one tastes like you`re eating grass. You want a ripe one, and it`s the same with meat. In a grocery store the meat comes in, they cut it and put it in the counter, and out it goes. But when you cook that meat, it can be like a piece of shoe leather. Aged meat is more tender and more tasty.
My favorite cut is the New York strip. This is the most popular cut, too, especially for cooking on the grill. The cheapest cut is the blade-cut pot roast. You can use it for soup. If you use it for roast, it can get a little stringy; you`d have to use a sauce.
Cuts of meat don`t really go in and out of fashion. They stay pretty much the same except for special holiday items. For the holiday season last year I made around 50 crown pork roasts. Most of the rest of the year I won`t have many of those. In the summer people eat more steaks. They grill them. In the winter they eat more roast beef. Ground beef consumption stays the same all year long.
I can tell you how to make a butt steak that`s as tender as a porterhouse. You just have to know how to cook it. Never use a tenderizer on a good piece of meat. That`s the worst thing you can do. All I use on my steaks is a little seasoned salt and a little pepper, which I put on 20 minutes before I cook it. And I go real easy on the salt.
I fry two or three slices of bacon and chop up some onion with it. Then I put the steak right in with it in the frying pan and cook it about 2 1/2 or 3 minutes on each side. It comes out delicious. I don`t like to use the broiler because it burns the meat on the outside, and inside it`s not done right. I use the same pan I make my eggs in.
This is the way I always make my steaks, unless I do them in a kettle grill. Then I let the coals get white hot, then close off all the air to the grill and leave the steaks 4 minutes on a side. This method prevents the flame from coming up and burning the outside of the steaks. I cut my steaks 3/4ths of an inch and cook them medium. If anyone wants his steak well done, I won`t cook it for him. It won`t turn out good.
What do I think about cooking in a microwave? I`ll tell you the truth: I don`t have a microwave oven and I would never buy one. I feel the same way about pressure cookers. I`m afraid of them. I don`t believe in them. Cook your food the natural way. Take your time, even if you have to eat a half an hour later. You`ll enjoy your food more without all these new fantastic inventions.
