Pork Shoulder Butts, also known as Boston Butts are one of the most readily available and versatile sub primal cuts of fresh pork. The pork shoulder butt or simply “butt” is the top half, of the pork shoulder primal located between the upper neck and loin. It contains some of the lower neck and the shoulder blade bone. Retail ready pork shoulder butts have the neck and chine bones removed and usually weigh in at 6-9 pounds each, yield over 95% after de-boning and average around 80% lean.
Whole butts can be pot roasted, bone in or boneless, hot smoked, BBQ’d and made into pulled pork in sauce. Cut up sliced into pork steaks, chunked for stews, skewered for kabobs or made into carnitas. Cuts can be fried, broiled, braised, smoked, grilled, or steamed. They can be breaded, encrusted, glazed, or sauced.
Whole boneless butts cured, tied, and cold smoked are a great variation creating a well marbled ham-like product.
Butts can also be ground for pork burgers or seasoned and made into sausage. I use them for country pan sausage, bratwurst, smoked polish sausage, and many more varieties.
One of my favorite products made from butts is Butt Bacon. I will share directions on how to make this delicious bacon in an upcoming post.
De-boning butts is not difficult since the small blade bone, or scapula is all that needs removed. For the benefit of those who may not have the experience I’ll try and walk you through it here.
I start with the fat side down and the cut edge of the bone facing me. This leaves the flat side of the scapula up.
First inspect the surface of the butt for small bone fragments and remove. Then, using the point of your sharp boning knife make your intital cut in this area.
Cut the meat free from the flat side of the scapula shaving as close as possible to the bone.
Cut the meat free from the edge of the bone and work around to the scapula spine going up and over, staying as close to the bone as possible.
Continue around to the curved edge of the bone and cut it free.
Thats about all there is to it!
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Meat Cutting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
