Everyone is looking for ways to make a good meal on a budget. One way is to expand the menu to include meals that are less meat-centric. Another way to extend the grocery budget is to borrow a page from our mothers and grandmothers.
Butchers Cuts are Budget-friendly
Before we all got to be gourmet cooks, our frugal forbears knew how to make a meal from cheap cuts. Smart cooks knew your butcher was your friend, guiding smart shoppers to inexpensive cuts and sharing advice about how to cook them.
Growing up, many of us had very little beef on the menu other than hamburgers. Beef was too expensive. Flank steak was one of those cuts we never saw because butchers often kept these for themselves. It’s been “discovered” and is now becoming so popular it’s going up on price again! Still, it is a bargain as compared to say, steaks. It often runs half the price.
Now cuts available include teres major, lamb short ribs, picnic shoulder, top round, veal shoulder, which can be pretty unfamiliar to supermarket shoppers. Lamb neck is seldom seen but offers rich lamb flavor. Chef Chris Cosentino of Incanto and Boccalone, sees full utilization as more than a boon to budgets. His commitment stems from valuing the animal and respecting it by using all parts.
Old Skills are Back in Favor
The skilled butcher was going the way of the ice box. Too often, as the old butchers retired there were no apprentice butchers coming up behind them. Perhaps as an outgrowth of the new food consciousness, there’s an increase in the number of new butchers taking up the field. Certainly the availability of heritage breeds and their unique structures has driven some of the need for these skills.
Butchers have become the latest food celebrities, offering internships, classes and demos. Some such as Mosefund Mangalitsa specialize in pork butchering, even in heritage breeds, like Pigstock 2010. Boston’s Chef Jamie Bissonnette of Toro Restaurant in Boston, MA teaches butchery skills and fabrication techniques to maximize utilization of a full pig.
Joshua and Jessica Applestone, owners of Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats, in Kingston, NY has become a popular butchery training destination. They formalized a program and now charge $10,000 for the six to eight week training.
Women are a part of the interest in butchery as observers and doers, including the pair that launched the journal Meatpaper. Sasha Wizansky and Amy Standen have been “documenting the meat zeitgeist” and collecting as well as inspiring the dialogue on all things meat. The women-owned and operated butcher shop Avedano’s began in 2007 in the San Francisco butcher shop in existence since 1901. They specialize in sustainably raised, hormone- and antibiotic-free meats all butchered in old-fashioned ways.
- Read a terrific interview with Tracy Smaciarz, an Artisan Butcher. He shares insights about the importance of the last step of the journey from farm-to-fork.
- For a fantastic Flank Steak marinade, ask your Mom or maybe your Grandmother. For a delicious secret family recipe Rebecca Black's Marinated Flank Steak, click here.
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