Each day we will pick a new breed to CELEBRATE HERITAGE BREEDS WEEK, Tuesday is the Berkshire pig! This is the pig of English royalty, the pig of choice in Japan where it is sold as Kurobuta, and the most successful of all the heritage breeds for its marbling and flavor!

No group works with the Berkshire pig more than butchers and so we dedicate this post to them! While chefs influence how we dine out, our local butchers have the greatest impact on how we dine in. A butcher’s handiwork can be seen in the frenched racks, trussed chickens, and freshly ground burgers that grace our most important celebrations. Butchers are strong figures in our community — it’s always a good sign when a neighborhood has a butcher in it! — they provide us an essential link to healthy food and sustainable agriculture, and their stores are a joy to visit, from the diverse meat counter to the shelves filled with the highest quality delicacies from rare soy sauces and barrel aged vinegars to mustards and mayos from around the world!

We always applaud the butcher – they have done so much to preserve good farms like the ones we work with, throughout 2020 especially! We salute them and admire them forever! Thank you to the butchers at Fatted Calf, Bi Rite, Eli's, Ottomanelli's, Citarella, Fifth Quarter, Marlow & Daughters, Union Markets, Dickson's Farmstand Meats, The Meat Hook, Foster Sundry, The Local Butcher Shop, & Sons, Round Swamp Farm, Saraghina Bakery, Four Star Seafood, Windsor Terrace Food Coop, Gentile's Fine Foods, Pat La Frieda Meat Purveyors, Paradise Locker Meats, Blackberry Farm, Premier Meat Company, Tempesta Market, and Contimo Provisions.