Disappointing
I am glad you sent an email asking for a review because I would not have otherwise left one. I really wanted to support a local business close to my home and stop shopping in the big grocers. I thought finding this butcher would be an awesome new culinary adventure. I must say, so far, I am very disappointed.
I bought 4 full meat combos:
- Chicken Leg: The chicken legs are pretty small, I can get larger ones else where for the same sale price or lower.
- Chicken Breast: These were the most impressive!!- nice, large, plump. Of all the meat sent these were definitely worth it!
- Steak 8oz Striploin: The steaks were VERY sinewy. I had so much gristle and almost like silver skin, pieces of inedible tissue, it was such a waste of a piece of meat. Not one bit was tender (I eat my steak medium rare and I cooked it in a nice hot cast iron pan), and every single bite, I had to pull pieces of sinew from my mouth. I bought the full meat pack specifically for the steaks and these were not enjoyable.
- Pork Chop: These were so impossibly thin! They were like very thin, quick fry, not a nice proper thickness chop. The 4 of them stacked on top of one another would have made 1 decent thickness chop. While tasty, these were not worth the price. I was hoping to bread these and bake them in the oven and instead had to quick fry them, so they were a bit tougher. While tasty, they were not the nice juicy, super tender chops I was hoping for.
- 1lb Ground beef was obviously regular ground and not lean, it was extremely fatty. Again, while tasty, as it cooked it was just swimming in a vat of it's own fat. I thought I would be getting lean or med fat, but this was full/reg fat beef.
- Colombian Sausage and Mexican Sausage - these I haven't tried because I would like to grill them on the BBQ. Still hopeful they are flavorful, juicy and not too fatty. Will review in time, but I am looking forward to trying!
Prior to seeing the full meat variety pack, I was about to buy a large roast, which I still may try, but the the unpleasant experience with the steaks makes me overly cautious of spending a bundle on another product. I mean, most roasts if you cook them long enough will be nice and tender no matter the cut, but I'm just not sure. I always want to give a place a second chance, so we will see. Just not sure if it is overall worth what I paid.
The 5lb of bones I bought for osso buco were NOT AT ALL as advertised! NO long bones (a few inches long) full or marrow, like the photo. No, there was just a big bag of mostly random fragments of bones from the tops of femurs to sharp cuts of odd bone with zero marrow. This actually really upset me. I felt like I was mostly given random chucks of bones to make up the weight but NONE could be used for osso bucco. None. I made a bone broth as not to waste them, so at least there is that, but I could have made two big pots of bone broth for half the price by buying beef bones from Nations.
