Trending in popularity with my customers these days are these three excellent eating proteins.

Calls for Wagyu beef are coming in almost daily from near and far away distributors and retailers looking for this deliciously marbled beef. In particular, they want ribeyes, striploins, tenders, sirloins and the ends for grinding. There’s a waitlist at most Wagyu processing plants and it’s hard to get your foot in the door to buy if you haven’t already been buying Wagyu on a regular basis.

Meat markets like selling Wagyu because its extreme marbling shows so well in the case and the Wagyu breed name commands a premium price. Chefs like serving Wagyu because it eats just so amazingly and also demands a premium on any menu. Wagyu middles are sold-out for the rest of this year at many processing plants that offer Wagyu. Good luck finding Wagyu tenders!

Duroc pork, with its great marbling, color and increasing availability has been a hit with my domestic buyers. Recently I did food shows in Central America and Miami and found a lot of interest in Duroc pork. To be fair, Berkshire pork is also excellent and I get asked for it often. I don’t sell Berkshire pork, but for those of you who do, are you seeing increased demand for this premium marbled breed? Has anyone done a cut/taste test with Berkshire and Duroc loin chops? I haven’t yet done this, but my guess would be that they would taste similar.

I have nothing against conventionally raised pork at all. It’s affordable and readily available, just not highly marbled. Heck, a whole boneless pork loin will feed your family for two weeks or more and is affordable. As for bacon, I’m not convinced the breed really matters as much as the curing and smoking process.

I grew up raising pigs on our family farm where we processed our own meat, including curing and smoking our bacon, hams and hocks. As a 4-H experiment, I tried using different breeds each year to see if the eating quality varied. We really didn’t notice much of a difference, but our experiment wasn’t well controlled. We fed the pigs pellets, cracked corn and all the scraps from the house. We had a 5-gallon slop bucket next to the kitchen on the back porch, and all the left-over peelings, veggies, fruits, breads and pastries went out the pigs each day. My pigs loved this diet! The pork was also delicious with that feeding regimen. For you commercial pig growers, how does the breed, the diet, or the curing/smoking method make a difference in the quality of the bacon?

Bison is also hot now. Bison ribeyes and tenders are hard to come by from many bison plants.

I really like a bison ribeye. It’s just amazing to me that the longissimus dorsi on a bison doesn’t marble like beef does when the animals are placed on feed; they just get bigger and the flavor improves. I have a few competitors out there selling grass-finished bison, and my question to them is always, “why?” Why would you want to sell grass-finished bison, since the taste is inferior and the carcass size is much smaller than grain-finished bison? Many chefs mistakenly believe all or most bison sold in the U.S. is grass fed/finished, but that is not true. Most U.S. and Canadian bison are feedlot finished, and have to be to get the carcass weights up. No matter how convincingly grass-finished meat is marketed, it’s indisputable that grain-finished bison and beef end up tasting better. Trends can’t trump taste!

What proteins trends are you experiencing?

Wagyu beef, Duroc pork and bison — the triply tasty trio

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