The Meat of Things

So a whole world opened up to me when I met M. Aside from having tons in common, working together daily, and her just being too smart to NOT like - M loves food. She comes from a Hungarian family and loves to cook. M also steered me to my first butcher.

Butcher? Big deal Alise. NO NO NO it is a BIG deal!!! I grew up in the age of meat plastic wrapped and nondescript waiting for you in the local grocery chain. Long before the terms - farm-raised, organic, grass fed, local, etc. You just picked it up and fried it up and GULP. Not a thought as to how the meat was butchered or even what a WHOLE cow looks like.

I have always been a big fan of meat. Red meat in particular. Now I know the health dangers of too much red meat. I eat it in small amounts and infrequently BUT oh how I am a carnivore at heart. I went through phases due to politics or moral dilemmas that I cut out meats. My famous "no meat" days. Not quite a vegetarian - just no meat on certain days. But I always go back to eating meat.

So when M recommended a local butcher I thought I would give him a try. Devon Meats is located in the Park Ridge just east of Cumberland and Devon. The butcher shares space with the Morningfields Market, a small grocery that is trying to blossom into gourmet foods. Cash and check only but this is a family run business. The kids are behind the counter and their dad is always around. They make their own canadian bacon (thick slabs of pink, salty goodness), amazing stuffed chicken breasts and pork chops (each one seasoned and topped with a pat of butter), and wonderfully tender london broil.

Over the last year, my friendly butcher has ordered plump turkey breasts for Thanksgiving, a delightful and HUGE capon (the cadillac of chicken he proclaimed proudly). He recently offered to chop my next capon in half to save me from having to consume the whole bird in one week. Capon is good but even I will get sick of it after a week. I used the Zuni Cafe roasted chicken recipe (mom highly recommended it - she's a fabulous cook!) and that bird was the best I had ever made!

So why a butcher?

• He knows where his meat comes from
• He can prepare the cut of meat any way you need it! ( cubed, fileted, deboned!)
• He knows exactly what temp and for how long to cook the meat
• The prices are actually lower
• The difference in taste is amazing

I highly recommend my butcher. Give one a try. You will appreciate the difference. Next up I am going to order a pork loin cubed to try my hand at Clotilde's cider stewed pork.

And thanks M for the food advice and great friendship!

Devon Meats
800 Devon Avenue
Park Ridge, IL 60068
Phone: (847) 696-4200