I've had more than a little explaining to do lately. If you work at a butcher shop that only gets local, whole animals raised on small family farms you kind of have to.
With all this explaining we've been doing to our customers I thought it would be a good idea to just lay out a quick and dirty guide to buying meat at our butcher shop since it's not like any other shop in the city.
1) Animals are not made out of pork chops and rib eyes.
One of the most common questions we get is "Uh, do you guys have any steak?" meanwhile they have been standing in front of case full of five kinds of steaks for ten minutes. Why can't they see the steaks? Because a lot of the time we're sold out of the name brand steaks like NY strips, porterhouses or fillets (keeping in mind that only say 15% of the animal is loin) and they simply can't imagine anything else qualifying as a steak when, in reality, the fun butcher's cuts are cheaper and often better in terms of pure beefy flavor.
This is the crux of the matter: Industrially raised and processed meat makes sure that the upper class can have all the name brand steaks they want (because they don't take whole animals, just the parts they want) while the cheap but interesting steaks end up across town being sold at carnercerias where people either can't afford or don't want to spend the extra money. Either way they're buying box meat where the loins of the animals are taken off, cryo-vac'ed and loaded into boxes with a bunch of other loins.
2) Real Food Costs Money
Where did the animal this pork chop belonged to come from? How was it raised? How did it die? Who knows! Chances are if you don't know and can't find out it's because the less you know the better.
A lot of super creepy information is out there about the way that commercial pork, beef and poultry are raised.
Yes, they are cheaper than sustainably raised local meat killed at a small slaughterhouse but most industrial meat:
A) Tastes like nothing because it is fed crap, kept indoors or on a feed lot and/or is not a mature animal when it is killed and chilled.
B) Is treated with prolonged programs of anti-biotics (which help create new anti-biotic resistant strains of germs) and growth hormones that make sure it gets big fast and stays sort-of healthy no matter what kinds of shitty conditions it's exposed to. Conditions that, by the way, would KILL the animal if it's wasn't for the drugs.
C) Doesn't benefit the local rural economy, meaning that when you buy industrial meat your money that you pay at the super market is going to packing houses in the mid-west instead of to a slaughterhouse and small farmer in your own state who are probably not receiving any farm subsides because they don't farm industrially. Your cheap meat is costing you more money than you think because you're paying for it in taxes that support unsustainable farming practices that benefit another state that you wouldn't visit on purpose.
3) Shop with an open mind.
Because we do whole animals only you aren't always going to get the specific cut that your cook book recipe asks for. However the chances are that we have a cut that will work just as well, if not better and might even be cheaper.
If you're making a ragu that calls for veal shanks but we don't have them because veal isn't in season try a cross-cut pork shank. It'll work with the flavors in the recipe and taste better. No fillet? Try a faux fillet it'll actually taste like something and be almost as tender. We're not going to lie to you and sell you something that won't work.
4) Be adventurous.
We have a lot of weird and wonderful cuts you won't find anywhere else. Try some!
Want to sleep out under the stars without leaving New York City?
Join us on the farm anytime and we'll set you up in the orchard at 5p.m. We'll have dinner, bluegrass, a DJ and dancing, a camp fire, pie, watermelon, capture the flag, breakfast the next morning and of course, enough kegs and cluckers to go around and then some.
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