Tags
5 meals from a Boston Butt, Cheap cuts of pork, economizing meals, Feed a family of 4 from a pork shoulder, homemade bacon, homemade sausage, save money, save money by portioning meat, thrifty meals
Pinch a penny save a penny. I try to keep my grocery budget at a reasonable level every month. Making most of our meals from scratch and growing our own organic produce in the warmer seasons really helps, but I still snag a deal when I can and make the most of it.
When my husband and I were low carb. eaters I learned how to make the most of a Boston Butt or the shoulder portion of a pig. If you don’t count stock made from the blade bone that lies in the center of this cut of meat I can get 5 meals from one 8 to 9lb. shoulder. At the frequent sale price that I find it of $1.29/lb. that makes the meals I get from this one hunk of meat dirt cheap.
The down side is that a Boston Butt is riddled with fat. If you aren’t squeamish about eating saturated fats from butchered animals then you may be willing to see what delicious meals you can get from one of these roasts.
If you are game, the layer of fat that coats the roast can be cut from the meat, sliced very thinly and heavily salted to make your own bacon. It lacks the smoked flavor of traditional bacon, but also the harmful nitrates and nitrites of modern commercially preserved bacon and cold cuts. We ate this many mornings when Atkins dieting with our eggs and slice of buttered whole grain toast. Almost better than the real thing. Allowing it to sit in a covered casserole dish overnight helps the salt to seep into the meat and fat and it’s ready for frying the next day.
Usually, however, I take the layer of fat from a pork shoulder and add it to the scraps that remain from trimming and carving the rest of the roast to make breakfast sausage. I can get two to three meals out of the amount of breakfast sausage that I make from a pork shoulder and this sausage can not only be cooked up with eggs and toast but be substituted for sausage in other dishes that call for Italian or other links. It is fatty, but if cooked on a griddle with a fat trench, a lot of the grease can be drained away. When I make it at home I know exactly what goes into my family’s sausage. I have no idea what is in those very greasy tubes of breakfast sausage from the meat case at the grocery store. And I can make it as spicy or sweet as I like. I don’t think any two batches of mine have ever been the same.
By slicing the meatiest portion of the pork shoulder across the grain, I can get ten nice pork steaks for grilling. This makes two meals for my family. An added bonus is that this meat can be used in other ways, once you’ve portioned it, for making the ground pork to fill wontons or egg rolls, cut into chunks to make sweet and sour pork, or into strips for stir fry, all from the same portion.
The remaining meat from a shoulder I either cook whole with the bone in, since I can’t get nice slices from it, or trim of all meat leaving the bone for stock. The trimmed meat can be used in any manner, but either it or the original portion of meat on the bone, is another portion that is large enough to make one meal for my family. It can also be cooked to death in a slow cooker to make pulled pork for wrapping in tortillas or adding bbq sauce to for pulled pork sandwiches, as can the pork steaks.
So, in a nutshell, here are my 5 meals portioned from a pork shoulder:
1. Bacon or sausage = 2 meals
2. Pork steaks = 2 meals
3. Bone in roast or meat cut from the bone and used a different way, bone used to make stock = 1 meal
For just a little effort I can stretch that one roast into several meals that break up the monotony of the vegetarian meals I try to feed my family a few nights a week.
And when I am too lazy to portion out the whole roast, I cook it using one of my favorite methods which is to braise the entire hunk in milk. It sounds odd, but the juices that mingle with the milk and the seasonings used make their own amazing sauce, and though the milk curdles and the sauce is not smooth, it is nothing short of wonderful. I ramped up the yumminess of this dish in the fall by adding apple cider and apple wedges to the braising liquid. The whole thing was melt in your mouth delicious.