Heritage Foods Meat Shop

by samplrs

I first learned about Heritage Foods when I started listening to a wonderful weekly podcast series by Dave Arnold called Cooking Issues. Cooking Issues is only one of the twenty-five that are made possible by The Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting from the back of Roberta’s in Bushwick.

Heritage Foods buys humanely raised meat products from Heritage Farmers around the country and sells these items to local chefs, restaurants, and anyone looking for high quality, naturally raised meat. By practicing this, Heritage Foods has brought over $20 million back into small-farming businesses in the United States.

Heritage Foods provides some of the highest quality meats on the market. You can find chicken, pork, beef, and duck at the shop on a daily basis. Other products include goat, turkey, bone marrow, and pig trotters.

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Honig, the Director of Sales for the company. I visited Dan’s shop in the Essex Street Market in hopes of seeing some of his highly regarded heritage meats. Upon my arrival, Mr. Honig treated me to a full-blown tour of his display cases, walk-in coolers, and butchering equipment. As if that wasn’t enough, he also gladly offered samples of his wide range of locally cured sausages and meats. I was in heaven.

Charlito’s Cocina provides several incredible sausages for Heritage Foods. Charlito’s founder Charles Wekselbaum sources his pork from Heritage to make his sausages and then resells his final product through the Heritage Shop.

One sample, in particular, stood out: the Trufa Seca, or dry cured truffle sausage. This sausage had the original tang you would get from a similar dried product, but with a pungent aroma of black truffle and the flavor of the earthy tuber itself. Along with this specialty sausage, various saussicons and country hams are available for purchase. Be sure, too, to get a slice of the lamb prosciutto, as you probably won’t find it anywhere else!

I walked out of the Heritage Meat Shop with a better understanding of naturally raised meat products and what it takes to raise a heritage breed. Also, I couldn’t leave without something to cook. So I chose two of my favorite things: pork belly and bone marrow. I cooked half of the pork belly sous vide with Asian flavors and the other half was simply roasted with salt. Each were equally tender, crisp, and fatty—everything we all love about a pig belly. What could be better?

- Andrew Black

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