Gobble Gobble!

 

Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching and we wanted to let you know that we are ready and raring to go with some delightful holiday offerings. We are selling heritage and broad breasted turkeys from BN Ranch in Bolinas. Broad breasted turkeys have more breast meat and mild flavor. Heritage birds are a gamier, more flavorful alternative. They have more dark meat and are one of five heritage turkey breeds. But how do you cook your turkey?

We would like to introduce you to the "Turchetta". Hopefully you are already familiar with the Italian street food, Porchetta (if not, you should come in to the shop and try some), it is a deboned pork belly and loin seasoned with fennel pollen, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper, rolled, tied and roasted. We have applied Porchetta principles to Turkey cooking. We are offering your turkey, deboned and stuffed with duck fat, garlic, rosemary, sage, thyme, salt and pepper, tied up and ready to go in the oven. No pesky bones to carve around, no need to worry about your white meat drying out, no need to brine, all you have to do is stick in the oven, and slice it!

For those of you who are cooking for 2 to 4 people, we are going to be offering ducks, guinea fowl, ham and cornish game hens as well as our usual selection of local, pasture raised meats. Here is a full list of our offerings:

Thanksgiving Offerings

BN Ranch Turkeys from Bolinas, Ca

Heritage Turkeys: $7.50/lb

Broad Breasted Turkeys: $5.50/lb

Liberty Ducks: $5.50 lb

Game Hens: $9.50 each

Guinea Fowl: $12.50/lb

Turchetta: (deboned turkey rubbed down with Garlic, herbs (rosemary, sage, and parsley), salt + pepper and duck fat, rolled and tied into a roast:  Price of Turkey + $85

Turkey Deboning fee: $20

Turducken: We will debone birds for Turducken, but we do NOT make stuffing for them or put them together.  There is a $40 deboning fee which will get you a deboned duck, chicken and Turkey (the Turkey will still have the legs unless   specified otherwise).

Llano Seco Boneless Hams: $11.50/lb

Turkey Stock: $8 qt.

Gravy: $12 qt. $6.50 pt.

Pork, Porcini and Sage Sausage for Stuffing: $11.00/lb

Brine mix: $7.00

Call soon to your reserve your turkey and help us make your holiday as seamless and easy as possible! 

(415) 285-MEAT

Meet Magruder Ranch

This week we want to introduce you to another one of the farms that supply us with delicious pasture raised meats.  Magruder Ranch is located in Potter Valley in Mendocino County, California.  The ranch is currently run by Mac Magruder, his wife, their daughter Grace and a couple of ranch hands.  The ranch has been in the Magruder family since 1919, when Mac's great grandfather purchased the land to raise sheep.  Mac's grandfather shifted the focus towards pear production and pears remained the focus until Mac took over in the '70s.  Mac took out the orchards and has dedicated the ranch to raising Angus cows and mixed breed pigs.  Mac has been building his grass fed beef program since the 70's, long before grass fed beef was fashionable, and earned early recognition from bay area taste makers Chez Panisse as well as a handful of other early converts to grass fed beef.  We receive a side of Mac's beef every other week and age it for a minimum of two weeks (it has one week of age when we receive it).  We cut one quarter cow every Friday for the shop and generally continue to age the short loin (for porterhouses) and rib roast (for ribeyes and cowboy steaks) for another week or two.  Mac's beef has a wonderfully full beef flavor, which is further enhanced by the aging that we do at the shop.  What you get is a beef that is more rich, nutty, complexly flavored and tender than unaged, grain finished beef.  Mac's cows are raised entirely on pasture and eat nothing but grass their entire lives.  The cows are rotationally grazed on the farms 2400 acres as well as 7000 acres that the Magruders lease from their neighbors.  The ranch sends roughly 175 cows a year to market. 

While pork production has only been going on at the ranch for a handful of years, the pigs Magruder raises are some of our favorite.  The pigs are raised on pasture  and are a cross between wild boar and either Berkshire or Duroc pigs.  The wild boar gives the pigs the instincts necessary to live out of doors and take care of their young, and gives the meat a beautifully dark color and a deep, robust flavor.  The pigs are fed spent beer grains from Lagunitas Brewery as well as brewer's yeast, whey, and wheat that the Magruders mill themselves.  But probably most important for creating the unique flavor profile that we love is the wild forage that the pigs eat from the 200 acres of oak woodland that they roam.  When you conjure up an ideal vision of where your pork comes from, it probably resembles the pig heaven that is Magruder Ranch.  We receive two pigs every other week from the Magruder's.  The annual pork production is roughly 200 pigs.

We've been working with Mac for most of the time that we've been around as a store and look forward to many more years of bringing his superb meats to our shop for all of you to enjoy.  So come by and pick up some chops or a roast and we're sure that it will be some of the finest meat that's ever graced your table.

Dine with Riverdog Farm

 

Our Salmon dinner was such a success that we have decided to do a series of dinners featuring our various farmers and purveyors. We are excited to announce our next event will feature Riverdog Farm in Guinda, California. If you've been to the shop, you've hopefully tasted their succulent, heritage breed, pasture raised chickens. Or perhaps you've dined on their delightfully marbled pork? We love this farm, and we are ready to showcase all of their wonders in a five course dining extravaganza. Each course will be paired with wine from Cahill winery in Graton. The fine farmers of Riverdog Farm will be here to teach you about their organic farming practices and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

The dinner will take place from 7 to 11pm on Saturday, August 17th, and will cost $150/person.  Call now to reserve your spot. It is bound to be an evening to remember!

A Meaty Independance Day for All!

 

Here we are, only days away from one of our nations meatiest holidays and we, the fine folks at Avedano's, are ready for the grilling bonanza! So fire up your slip n' slide, put on your short shorts, crack a beer and get grillin! Here are all the meaty delights you can expect to find at our shop for your 4th of July needs:

Marinated Half Chickens from Skyelark Ranch

Organic Pork Spare Ribs from Llano Seco

Bacon Hot Dogs from 4505

100% Grassfed ground beef from Magruder Ranch

Ground Beef from 5 Dot Ranch

Ground Beef with Ground bacon for your decadent burger needs!

Our extensive selection of house-made, fresh sausages

Dry aged, bone-in Ribeye Steaks from Magruder Ranch

 Ribeyes from 5 Dot Ranch

New York Strip Steaks from 5 Dot Ranch

Home made BBQ sauce

the best darn pork chops you've ever had from Llano Seco on sale for $12.50/lb

AND MORE

Come and get it you patriotic, meat eating folk! 

Happy 4th!

Salmon-chanted Evening

We are excited to announce that we will be hosting an educational feast on Friday June 28th in the Udder Room (the gorgeous dining room attached the butcher shop). Do you love salmon? Do you feel like you are in murky waters trying to decipher what seafood is ethical to eat? Do you like to sing sea shanties? Then you, my friend, are going to love this dinner. We are co-hosting the event with our friend and seafood purveyor, Small Boat Seafood. Dinner will start at 7pm, you will learn how to fillet a whole salmon, meet a captain of a salmon fishing vessel, sing educational shanties with a fourth generation musician/fisherman and, of course, feast on salmon! This dinner is very exciting to us and we hope to make it one of many, for what is better than simultaneously eating and learning!? Call the shop today to reserve your seat.

3 Courses and infinite memories for $50, BYOB.
Friday June 28th, 7pm
Call (415) 285-MEAT

Adventures in Organic Farming: LLANO SECO RANCH

Llano Seco Ranch has been in Charlie Thieriot's family for seven generations, and is about as big as San Francisco! It is one of the last existing Mexican land trusts. Llano Seco was originally a conventional farm, it's main crop being walnuts (by the way, I learned that 60% of the worlds walnuts are grown in the central valley of California).Charlie did not intend to be a farmer. He grew up in San Francisco and spent his summers hunting and fishing at the ranch. He pursued a career in advertising which led him to Argentina (where his mother is from) and New York City. It wasn't until he had a son that Charlie even cared about organic food. All of the sudden he was very concerned about the quality of food that he was feeding his child, and consequently, himself.  With a passion for pork and a passion for organic food, Charlie returned to Llano Seco and began the formidable task of bringing organic practices to a conventional farm.


Charlie had stopped by Avedano's around Christmas time to give us each a wild duck that he had hunted and some of the heirloom beans that he has been growing at the Ranch. He invited us out to visit the Ranch so we decided to make it our first stop in our quest to visit all of the farms we source our meat from.

We drove about three hours north, following Charlie's car out into the country, south of Chico. Before we were given the lay of the land we were treated to pastrami sandwiches and crisp white wine and then taken skeet shooting. I had never shot a gun in my life, whereas Christian, who grew up in the south, is a dead shot. I decided that I would buck up and give it a go, and I actually hit one of the skeet!

Here I am with Charlie looking far too confident with that shot gun. Watch out!

Back to the pork! Llano Seco is the only pork that we buy that is not pasture raised. What gives? Llano Seco pork is lighter in color but always incredibly flavorful, well marbled and has a perfectly proportioned fat cap. The pigs are a mixture of Duroc and Yorkshire breeds. The reason the pigs are not pasture raised is because they are organic. How does that make sense? For pork to be certified organic, the pigs must never consume antibiotics or hormones. When pigs are out to pasture, they are much more likely to pick up strange bacterias and illnesses that require antibiotics and other medicines to treat. Fear not, these pigs are not confined in tight quarters. As you can see in the picture below, these pigs have plenty of space to walk around and plenty of dirt to get their snouts into.

Why do we like Llano Seco? They are trying to cut out the middle man. They have opened up their own processing facility, they use a certified organic slaughter house that is only 20 minutes from the ranch, they feed their pigs organic grains and legumes,  80% of which is grown right there on the ranch. Most of all, we like Llano Seco because their pork is delicious. Charlie is one hell of a guy, he cares deeply about the pigs he raises and how they are cooked and butchered after they leave his ranch. He is always excited to hear what we have been cooking up at the shop and we feel proud to sell his pork to our customers. We'll be cutting up Llano Seco pork this week, you can taste it for yourself.

We're BLOGGING!

Welcome to the new and improved Avedano's Blog! We are back and better than ever. Why do we want to blog? We want to share information about the farms we source our meats from, we want to share our recipes and inspiration, we want to spread the carnivorous passion across the wide waves of the internet! We have been up to some exciting things, roasting potatoes in rendered porchetta fat, learning to shoot skeet at Llano Seco Ranch, selling our meat online through the inspiring distributor, Goodeggs, teaching butchering classes, sourcing new and exciting local fish from Small Boat Sea Food, cutting up quarters of dry aged beef from Magruder Ranch and more. We can't wait to tell you all about it.

Until next time, I sure do hope you're getting enough protein!

-Gracie

Coming Soon: A Very Exciting Visit to Llano Seco Ranch