A Week Like a Country Song

New Items in Stock

In sorting through our storage freezer I found some new cuts that our butcher cut for us and I forgot about! This is great news in light of our dwindling pork supply and piglet shortage. When we transitioned from selling only wholes and halves, to selling cuts on our website I seriously underestimated the task of product management. This is the game of guessing what consumers will eat, and at what rate. Then distilling that information into a cut sheet for our processor and circling back to the spreadsheets and pricing to make sure we are staying profitable.

Most of these decisions I would describe as presentation choices by the butcher. Do you cut that muscle thin or thick? Leave the bone in or boneless? Each of those decisions yields a different presentation, cooking strategy and of course the never-ending encyclopedia of meat cut names. 

This week I would like to introduce a few new cuts, which are just that, new names to the same muscle groups, cut slightly differently.

Country Style Ribs

Pictured above, the country style rib has a great name. For those of you who are missing our Bone-In Pork Chops these are a great alternative! They are cut thick at 1 1/2 inches, and great for grilling or a slow roast in the oven and great for the smoker. With excellent marbling they are full of flavor.

So what is a country style rib?

Cut from where the loin begins to transition to the neck, or the pork equivalent of the ribeye, you can imagine why this is such a tasty cut. Some butchers call this a rib chop, and when I first learned to butcher I just called it a pork chop. I thawed one out to take some pictures, and I’ll let you know what recipe we try. If you’re wondering why the cutting board has marks and scratches on it…that’s because it’s our kitchen cutting board.

St Louis Style Ribs

Do you love Pork Spare Ribs? Then you’ll love this variation. We learned about this from our processor and friends at Eagle Bridge Smokehouse, and they know a thing or two about cutting pork. I love pork ribs and didn’t think you could make spare ribs any better.

Then I tried St Louis Style. 

Pork spare ribs is the entire section of ribs off the belly of the pig. This includes a portion of the sternum bone, and the little cartilaginous bits that are at the end of the ribs. If you love spare ribs, you know all about these guys, half way between bone and meat, they are just hard enough to make you chew around them and they make a fun little pile on your plate.

St. Louis Style takes a more artistic approach to the spare ribs. We lay out the ribs, which have a triangular shape as the ribs taper in length. Then we sort of square them up, we take off the sternum bone, and the cartilage bits and it makes a neat looking, rectangular package, improving your presentation and helping the whole cut cook more evenly.

Give them a try!

Pork Sirloin Chops

I mentioned these tasty chops in an email, and I want to highlight them here. In my personal opinion I think the pork sirloin chop has more flavor than our regular (loin) pork chop. The sirloin is a lean and flavorful cut, so do not overcook as it will dry out. 

The sirloin is the muscle group headed towards the tail from the pork chop (loin) area of the pig. With a portion of the hip bone we cut these bone-in sirloin chops to have some bone to add to the flavor and cooking experience.

Week like a country song

If I were a country music artist, or perhaps a blues singer this week would have been great material. The song would go something like this:

It wouldn’t stop raining, and the power went out, but at least my house is dry and the generator works. Then a pin on the tractor broke and fell out, so I had to use a hitch pin to make it work, and the next day Otis went to do chores and got out there only to find one of the rear tires on the tractor was going flat!

No problem, we thought, we’ll just fill it back up and keep going. Surprise, the valve on the tire was leaking! So we borrowed Tully’s huge, 100hp IH tractor to finish chicken chores and it was so hot Susu the dog had to take a nap.

Then it rained again and cooled off so we went for a walk in the woods and found chanterelles! All’s well that ends well.

End of song.

Inflation report:

We are not a tractor heavy farm. We only have one tractor and our tractor use has been as little as an hour a day to move chicken coops, but now it’s up to about 3 hours per day with more chicken coops. So I am not as familiar with the rising cost of repairs to machinery as some folks. 

I was astounded to hear from our local tire service company that to repair what is called the “valve stem” (similar to what you have on your car to fill the tire with air) one needs to remove the tire completely and install the valve stem from the inside. Since our rear tractor tires are filled with liquid for weight, this means pumping out the liquid. To have a technician come and do that was $1200! 

We found another company in VT that could do the repair for less if we brought them the tire. Chad jacked up the tractor, took off the tire and we fashioned a ramp to roll the 900 lb tire into the bed of our truck since we didn’t have a tractor to lift it!

The very helpful tire technician also let me know that our tires were coming to the end of their life and a new set of tires (with an eco-friendly tire liquid made from beets, cool!) would cost $2500. So I made a note to put that in the budget for next year.

Maybe I should try to work inflation into the song?