- 5 months ago
Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Jason Chow, co-owner and head butcher of The Local General Store in Honolulu, Hawai'i. As the first all-local butcher on O'ahu, Jason and his team are on a mission to make sustainably sourced, locally raised meat more accessible to the local community.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The local general store is Oahu's first whole animal butcher shop sourcing exclusively local meats.
00:07We have homes for every single cut, every single piece of that animal.
00:11We stock a lot of our cuts in the display case.
00:14Cuts that don't make it in there, we turn into deli meats, pet tastes, spam,
00:19comfort food that people here in Hawaii can relate to.
00:23The whole local movement has grown a lot in the past 10-15 years.
00:27But what I think can be improved is the access to local meat, and that's exactly why we started this shop.
00:33The accessibility of local proteins for local people.
00:39Aloha, I'm Jason, co-owner and head butcher at the local general store.
00:43It's 5.30 in the morning, we got a lot to do. Come on in.
00:49Here we have the butcher side, our meat locker right here.
00:52We have a half pig and a bunch of meat coming in today.
00:56This is Parley in the back. She's a co-owner and my wife, she runs the bakery side.
01:01I like to do all the stuff that I absolutely want to get done during the day before everybody comes in.
01:07So today we are going to make some spam.
01:10So this is a chain mill. It helps protect us in case we slip when we're cutting meat.
01:15It saves myself a few times.
01:18Got a lot of projects today before the shop gets open. So let's get started.
01:22If anybody has ever been to Hawaii, they know that spam is a pretty big staple here.
01:29Spam, Vienna sausage, corned beef.
01:31You'll see those three meats all throughout Polynesia that were actually brought by the US military.
01:37And it's essentially emulsified pork put into a can and cooked inside the can.
01:42One thing we try to do here is don't put as much sodium and don't put as much preservatives and also use locally grown meat here.
01:51What we have in our spam is pork trim and little bits of homemade ham.
01:56The spam is finely ground. So we ground what's called a progressive grind.
02:00So we'll grind twice through our large die, twice through our medium die.
02:05And we have a really small die here that will grind twice through that.
02:10One really neat thing about being a whole animal butcher shop is that all of our grind consists of what we call trim.
02:18Trim is all the odds and ends of all of our steaks and our roasts that we have to square off.
02:23And then all of that flavor gets into one pound of spam here.
02:29As the meat is going through our grinder, it's heating up because there's so much torque and so much horsepower in this grinder.
02:35We're going to add some ice to it as it's going through the second time through.
02:39Okay. So now we're going to switch over to our third and final die.
02:44We're going to add our spices, salt, white pepper, paprika, sugar.
02:50The potato starch helps absorb any excess moisture that comes out from the ice, gives it that kind of like bouncy snappiness.
02:58You do see bits of meat and fat in here. It's kind of speckled.
03:03This fine grind will help even that out a little bit.
03:08And what we're looking for is tackiness, this kind of stickiness here, which means the protein is breaking down.
03:15So as the meat gets worked and ground into smaller pieces, the protein or myosin on the outside starts breaking down and it's creating these kind of like fingers.
03:26And when they cook, they'll bind to each other, creating this web in between fat particles.
03:31We want to make a little tester.
03:33We're tasting for texture as well as flavor.
03:38See how it's kind of bouncing back? And that means we have a good emulsification.
03:42Very good. Tastes like Spam. Has a nice crust on the outside. Super juicy.
03:48We do add nitrates to here. Nitrates is to keep that pink color.
03:51When oxygen binds to the hemoglobin in meat or in blood, it then starts oxidizing or turns gray.
03:59What nitrates do is it binds to the hemoglobin before oxygen does.
04:05As a result, the hemoglobin is able to stay red and it doesn't turn gray or oxidizes.
04:12Our Spam, we treat it like a pate. Essentially that's what it is.
04:16One thing we want to make sure is that there is no air bubbles in our mold.
04:22So I'll kind of cup my hand and make these balls and then slap it down into the mold.
04:30This is to work at a, like a fine dining French restaurant.
04:33This is a French pate technique.
04:36Seven o'clock. We're just going to wrap this up, put it in the walk-in for now.
04:41And then we'll pop this in the oven later.
04:43Another one of the value added items we do is we make our own Scrapple.
04:50Scrapple was invented by the Dutch in Pennsylvania.
04:54And it was a way for them to utilize the entire animal.
04:58They use pork heads, they use organ meats, ground and emulsified with cornmeal.
05:03So it was a way for them to kind of stretch the meat a little bit.
05:07We have our pork head here, the ears.
05:10There's some hocks in here or shanks.
05:13And then the trotter, the trotter adds a lot of that collagen and gelatin.
05:17So that the Scrapple is able to set better.
05:20So we're going to put some nitrates in here.
05:22Help maintain that pink color that we were talking about before.
05:25Bay leaves help to kind of cut the, the gaminess, that kind of porkiness of that pork head.
05:33And then a nice hefty pinch of salt in there.
05:37This is one thing that I was very adamant about when we built out the shop was to have a water spigot right where we had our stockpots.
05:44This guy will go for four to five hours until the pork head meat is able to separate from the bone.
05:52We'll pick up all the meat and then mix it with some cornmeal as well as some ulu and ulu flour.
05:58Eight o'clock pastry side is open.
06:02The butcher counter doesn't open till nine.
06:04So we have an hour to set up our display case.
06:06At the end of every night, we put salt on the tables.
06:09The salt helps to absorb excess moisture.
06:12So the water doesn't expand the wood and the butcher table doesn't crack.
06:17Also to help prevent a mold in our butcher table as well.
06:21So before the start of every day, we scrape off all the salt so we can cut on it.
06:26So we have this card box that has all of the labels of every single thing that we've ever made.
06:32So we have our ulu scrapple under U.
06:34Spam should be under S.
06:37I'll put raw cuts on the bottom and then cook things on the top.
06:42Just in case there is spillage, it doesn't spill onto already cooked things.
06:48What Ashley's doing right now is she's just cutting out silhouettes of all of our cuts that we have.
06:53When meat touches meat, it tends to oxidize or turns gray.
06:58But if we put a piece of pink butcher paper between, it prevents it from oxidizing as well as soaking up all that excess blood and juice.
07:07The chickens are from a Ludovico farm in Waialua.
07:17Innards are taken out, but they come to us with the head and feet on.
07:23So very much a very whole chicken.
07:25We use the feet and the heads in our stock.
07:28We're actually one of the few people that sell parts of local chickens as well as holes.
07:35A lot of the things that you buy through our shop are only available through us.
07:40A lot of people don't know that Oahu actually has a lot of meat.
07:44It has a lot of beef, it has a lot of pork, and a lot of chicken.
07:47That's one thing that we're trying to offer is the accessibility of local proteins for local people.
07:53Looks like the truck just pulled up for our deliveries, so we're getting our beef delivery in right now.
07:58So this is going to swing out to here, and then they're going to cart the beef right into the middle of the shop and drop down.
08:10Is it double stacked or we have two pallets?
08:13Two pallets.
08:14Okay.
08:15That's one?
08:16That's huge.
08:17Every time the meat comes in, it's always like a production.
08:23And I feel like I'm always anxious every Thursday morning.
08:27Thank you, sir.
08:29So here we have our slaughter summary.
08:31Each carcass gets assigned a code, the time that it was slaughtered, how old it is, a less than 30 months, and then also the weight of it dressed.
08:43So the two cows we got in, the first one was 842 pounds, and then the second one is 703 pounds.
08:51Total of 1500 pounds of beef we got in today.
08:54I like to put all of our hind quarters in first, so that they'll go right up against this rack.
09:01The front quarters are a little wide, so you're not able to turn them if they're in front of the rack.
09:07The spot where this walk-in is situated is a little bit shorter than traditional walk-ins.
09:12So we have to get it custom made.
09:14This window allows the customers to see the meat that's hanging, the fact that we do get in whole carcass, local animals.
09:23So all of our meat's been put away in the walk-in.
09:26We're going to start breaking down this quarter just to get our display case filled.
09:30So this is the cross rib primal that we're pulling off right now.
09:35And then the arm rolls right on this side.
09:37Most of this will go right into our display case.
09:42And then we have our chuck, chuck eye right here.
09:46And then the chuck roast, the rest of the chuck primal.
09:49Let's take off our skirt steaks.
09:54This guy's progressively getting lighter.
09:56It's important to do whole animal butchery because to be more sustainable,
10:01in order for us to actually truly support all of the farmers and what they do,
10:05we have to buy what they produce.
10:08And it's, it's fun.
10:09I love doing this.
10:10So this is our ribeyes right here.
10:12And then we have our short ribs on this side.
10:15We'll cut four ribs on here hugging the fifth rib.
10:19And then making a nice face cut is what we call it.
10:23So everything is nice and squared.
10:27We'll use this fat in our sausages.
10:30This is what's called English style short ribs.
10:33When we cut it individual coloration and fat, it's a key indicator of the animal's diet.
10:40I don't know specifically what grasses that these guys ate to get this type of like dark yellow orange color.
10:48But high in beta carotene.
10:51Now we are cutting our pork.
10:54What we're after is our pork legs.
10:56Pork leg is what we use to make our charsu.
10:59The skin we like to remove all in one piece because we make pet treats with the skin.
11:05So we just strip them of the fat and then dehydrate it into like little twists.
11:11We're going to cut this piece, which is our top round.
11:16And then just tie it up.
11:18So once it gets seasoned and roasted, then it gets handed over to the pastry team.
11:23The pastry team then slices it very much like a deli meat.
11:26And then they season it with our house made charsu marinade.
11:29Consists of fermented red bean paste, ginger, garlic, shoyu and brown sugar.
11:35And then that gets rolled into our croissants.
11:38We do a 1.5% by weight in salt and then a quarter of that in black pepper.
11:45So this is going to sit overnight in our walk in.
11:48And then we're going to roast it tomorrow.
11:51It is just after 1215 right now.
11:54Last production task of the day is finishing the scrapple that we started earlier.
11:58So this is our pork head that we put in in the morning.
12:06It's we're going on like four or five hours right now.
12:10So as you can see, all of that meat has fallen off the bone.
12:14And see like some of the bone is like perfectly clean.
12:19It's easier to pick off all the meat when it's warm and hot.
12:23Because all of the collagen is still soft.
12:26Nothing is really set back up yet.
12:28We were fortunate enough to get some ulu from the Ulu Co-op.
12:32They purchase it from the farmer directly.
12:34They core it, they peel it and they par cook it.
12:37We're just going to small dice this and then fold it into our polenta on the stove.
12:42So our polenta, it's a little loose right now.
12:45But that's totally fine because once we add our ulu flour,
12:49it'll be able to tighten up a little bit.
12:51So ulu flour is just ground up ulu.
12:54It adds a nice nuttiness to the scrapple.
12:58And it also adds kind of that binder instead of using traditional flour.
13:02This is great.
13:03You can see all the little bits of ulu in here.
13:06It does have that flavor from that ulu flour as well.
13:10We just put up some chopped up sage in here too.
13:14So this is going to then be put into our terrine molds set overnight.
13:19So the polenta hardens and then that stock is able to congeal.
13:23And then we're able to turn it out and then slice it up for customers to buy.
13:28Customers are starting to come in.
13:30It's getting a little busier right now.
13:32So we're going to tend to the case after this.
13:37So it's one o'clock.
13:38We're all done with our production tasks for the day.
13:40Now it's just a matter of keeping the case full.
13:43Our everyday comprises of helping our customers as they come in.
13:47If they want a specific cut that's not in our display case,
13:51we're going to then go into the walk-in, cut it for them and bring it out.
13:54Trim it up to their specs, wrap it up and check them out.
13:58It's starting to get really busy right now.
14:03We have a lot of pastries to sell.
14:04We have a lot of meat to sell and a lot of customers to serve.
14:07Thanks for coming out to the local general store and seeing what we're doing.
14:10But you guys really got to go.
14:12We have a lot of meat to cut.
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