Every part of the chickens, pigs, cows, lambs, and goats that arrive at Grass & Bone in Mystic, Connecticut, get used. Take the fat: It gets turned into beef-fat chocolate chip cookies, made into candles, and used to cook with instead of butter or canola.
“It’s easy for us to sell the New York Strips, filet mignons, and ribeyes, but you’ve got also rumps and shanks and neck and fat and bone and oxtail and liver,” says co-owner Dan Meiser. “Not only do we not want to be wasteful, but we’re also paying for all of it, and to make the model work, you have to sell every pound.”
Instead of simply selling meat, Meiser and his business partner, James Wayman, opened a butcher shop with a restaurant inside. The two-year-old eatery serves not only as a place to pick up hamburgers or learn how to cook a new cut of meat, but also as a place to get a meal. All the while, the owners and staff are working tirelessly to reconnect area residents to their local meat producers.
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