Local Voices: And Speaking of...

And speaking of , have you ever wondered about our St. Louis pre-occupation with pork steaks? Or for that matter, all things pork related?

I recently found a recipe on the internet (it's actually a YouTube video) for a dish called Boudin Bacon Bomb Explosion. It's a low and slow Cajun delicacy. But that's a story for another time.

Growing up, my family was always BBQing pork steaks. St. Louisans of German ancestry are well-known for their version of "well done" BBQ, which tends to mean dry! I think their idea is that no piece of meat can be overcooked.

When I married, my father-in-law was a meat buyer for the Kroger grocery chain and they had recently moved to St. Louis from Ohio. I remember him saying how surprised he was with the amount of pork butts consumed in St. Louis. It seems, in other parts of the country, that part of the pig’s anatomy is considered, for lack of a better term, poor people food. We love our pork butts here and literally consume more of them than any other region. And they usually find their way onto our grills as pork steaks. 

I've always enjoyed my pork steaks medium rare and heavily sauced. Which brings me to another St. Louis BBQ tradition, arguing about when to put the sauce on the meat! Forget the fact that there are as many sauce recipes as there are people who BBQ. And for my money, it's always Maull's.

Before you can be taken seriously as a connoisseur of the pork steak, you must publicly commit to how you intend to apply the BBQ sauce. I understand the arguments of those who insist that the meat must remain unadulterated throughout the process. But what is BBQ without the sauce? And the only way to get the sauce to completely marry to the meat is to put it on while there is still enough heat to burn the tangy spices into the meat itself. That is why I prefer to par boil the steaks first and put them on the fire directly just long enough to bake in the sauce and get a little char on the edges. Good eating.

Now that's a recipe any pork-loving St. Louisan will appreciate.

You know, there are many things in life that we have a tendency to take way too seriously. Our love of the pork steak should not be one of them. Eat, enjoy, repeat should be the only qualification for fulfilling our addiction to all things pork. I'm just glad we can enjoy good pig together, while we argue about the sauce!