A Day at the Hawai'i Butcher Shop Making the World’s Best Spam

[soft upbeat music]

The Local General Store

is Oahu's first whole animal butcher shop,

sourcing exclusively local meats.

We have homes for every single cut,

every single piece of that animal.

We stock a lot of our cuts in the display case.

Cuts that don't make it in there, we turn into deli meats,

pate, spam, comfort food

that people here in Hawaii can relate to.

The whole local movement has grown a lot

in the past 10-15 years.

But what I think can be improved

is the access to local meat,

and that's exactly why we started this shop,

the accessibility of local proteins for local people.

[soft upbeat music]

Aloha, I'm Jason, Co-Owner and Head Butcher

at The Local General Store.

It's 5:30 in the morning, we got a lot to do.

Come on in.

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Here we have the butcher side, our meat locker right here.

We have a half pig and a bunch of meat coming in today.

This is Harley in the back.

She's a co-owner and my wife.

She runs the bakery side.

I like to do all the stuff that I absolutely want

to get done during the day before everybody comes in.

So today, we are going to make some spam.

So this is a chain mail.

It helps protect us in case we slip

when we're cutting meat.

It saves myself a few times.

Got a lot of projects today before the shop gets open.

So let's get started.

[upbeat music]

If anybody has ever been to Hawaii,

they know that Spam is a pretty big staple here.

Spam, Vienna sausage, corned beef.

You'll see those three meats all throughout Polynesia

that were actually brought by the U.S. military.

And it's essentially emulsified pork put into a can

and cooked inside the can.

One thing we try to do here is don't put as much sodium

and don't put as much preservatives

and also use locally grown meat here.

What we have in our Spam is pork trim

and little bits of homemade ham.

The spam is finely ground,

so we ground what's called a progressive grind.

So we'll grind twice through our large die,

twice through our medium die,

and we have a really small die here

that we'll grind twice through that.

One really neat thing

about being a whole animal butcher shop

is that all of our grind consists of what we call trim.

Trim is all the odds and ends of all of our steaks

and I roast that we have to square off.

And then all of that flavor gets

into one pound of spam here.

As the meat is going through our grinder,

it's heating up because there's so much torque

and so much horsepower in this grinder.

So we're gonna add some ice to it

as it's going through the second time through.

Okay, so now we're going to switch over

to our third and final dye.

We're going to add our spices,

salt, white pepper, paprika, sugar.

The potato starch helps absorb any excess moisture

that comes out from the ice,

gives it that kind of like bouncy snappiness.

You do see bits of meat and fat in here.

It's kind of speckled.

This fine grind will help even that out a little bit.

And what we're looking for is tackiness,

this kind of stickiness here,

which means the protein is breaking down.

So as the meat gets worked and ground into smaller pieces,

the protein or myosin on the outside starts breaking down

and it's creating these kind of like fingers.

And when they cook, they'll bind to each other,

creating this web in between fat particles.

We want to make a little tester.

We're tasting for texture as well as flavor.

See how it's kind of bouncing back

and that means we have a good emulsification.

Very good.

Tastes like Spam.

Has a nice crust on the outside.

Super juicy.

We do add nitrates to here.

Nitrates is to keep that pink color.

When oxygen binds to the hemoglobins in meat or in blood,

it then starts oxidizing or turns gray.

What nitrates do is it binds to the hemoglobin

before oxygen does.

As a result, the hemoglobin is able to stay red

and it doesn't turn gray or oxidizes.

Our Spam, we treat it like a pate.

Essentially, that's what it is.

One thing we wanna make sure is that

there is no air bubbles in our mold.

So I'll kind of cup my hand and make these balls

and then slap it down into the mold.

This is the work at a fine dining French restaurant.

This is a French pate technique.

Seven o'clock, we're just gonna wrap this up,

put it in the walk-in for now,

and then we'll pop this in the oven later.

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Another one of the value added items we do

is we make our own scrapple.

Scrapple was invented by the Dutch in Pennsylvania.

And it was a way for them to utilize the entire animal.

They use pork heads, they use organ meats, ground

and emulsified with cornmeal.

So it was a way for them

to kind of stretch the meat a little bit.

We have our pork head here, the ears,

there's some hocks in here or shanks.

And then the trotter,

the trotter adds a lot of that collagen and gelatin

so that the scrapple's able to set better.

So we're going to put some nitrates in here,

it help maintain that pink color

that we were talking about before.

Bay leaves help to kind of cut the gaminess,

that kind of porkiness of that pork head.

And then a nice hefty pinch of salt in there.

This is one thing that I was very adamant about

when we built out the shop was to have a water spigot

right where we had our stockpots.

This guy will go for about 4 to 5 hours

until the pork head meat is able to separate from the bone.

We'll pick up all the meat and then mix it

with some cornmeal, as well as some ulu and ulu flour.

[upbeat music]

8 o'clock, the pastry side is open.

The butcher counter doesn't open till 9,

so we have an hour to set up our display case.

At the end of every night, we put salt on the tables.

The salt helps to absorb excess moisture.

So the water doesn't expand the wood

and the butcher table doesn't crack.

Also that helps prevent a mold in our butcher table as well.

So before the start of every day,

we scrape off all the salt so we can cut on it.

So we have this card box that has all of the labels

of every single thing that we've ever made.

So we have our Ulu Scrapple under U,

Spam should be under S.

I'll put raw cuts on the bottom

and then cook things on the top.

Just in case there is spillage,

it doesn't spill onto already cooked things.

What Ashley's doing right now

is she's just cutting out silhouettes

of all of our cuts that we have.

When meat touches meat,

it tends to oxidize or it turns gray.

But if we put a piece of pink butcher paper between,

it prevents it from oxidizing

as well as soaking up all that excess blood and juice.

The chickens are from Ludovico Farm in Waialua.

Innards are taken out,

but they come to us with the head and feet on.

So very much a very whole chicken.

We use the feet and the heads in our stock.

We're actually one of the few people

that sell parts of local chickens, as well as wholes.

A lot of the things that you buy through our shop

are only available through us.

A lot of people don't know

that Oahu actually has a lot of meat.

It has a lot of beef, it has a lot of pork

and a lot of chicken.

That's one thing that we're trying to offer

is the accessibility of local proteins for local people.

Looks like the truck just pulled up for our deliveries,

so we're getting our beef delivery in right now.

[upbeat music]

So this is gonna swing out to here,

and then they're gonna cart the beef

right into the middle of the shop

and then they'll just drop down.

Hi, is it double stacked or we have two pallets?

Okay, that's one?

That's huge.

Every time the meat comes in, it's always like a production.

And I feel like I'm always anxious

every Thursday morning when I...

Thank you, sir.

So here we have our slaughter summary.

Each carcass gets assigned a code,

the time that it was slaughtered,

how old it is, less than 30 months,

and then also the weight of it dressed.

So the two cows we got in, the first one was 842 pounds,

and then the second one is 703 pounds.

Total of 1,500 pounds of beef we got in today.

I like to put all of our hindquarters in first

so that they'll go right up against this rack.

The front quarters are a little wide,

so you're not able to turn them

if they're in front of the rack.

The spot where this walk-in is situated

is a little bit shorter than traditional walk-ins,

so we had to get it custom made.

This window allows the customers

to see the meat that's hanging,

the fact that we do get in whole carcass local animals.

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So all of our meat's been put away in the walk-in.

We're gonna start breaking down this quarter

just to get our display case filled.

So this is the cross rib primo

that we're pulling off right now.

And then the arm roast right on this side.

Most of this will go right into our display case.

And then we have our chuck.

Chuck eye right here,

and then the chuck roast, the rest of the chuck primo.

Let's take off our skirt steaks.

This guy's progressively getting lighter.

It's important to do whole animal butchery

because to be more sustainable,

in order for us to actually truly support

all of the farmers and what they do,

we have to buy what they produce.

And it's fun.

I love doing this.

So this is our rib eyes right here.

And then we have our short ribs on this side.

We'll cut four ribs on here, hugging the fifth rib.

And then making a nice face cut is what we call it.

So everything is nice and squared.

We'll use this fat in our sausages.

This is what's called English-style short ribs.

When we cut it individual, coloration and fat,

it's a key indicator of the animal's diet.

I don't know specifically what grasses that these guys ate

to get this type of like dark yellow-orange color,

but high in beta-carotene.

Now we are cutting our pork.

What we're after is our pork legs.

Pork leg is what we use to make our Char Siu.

The skin, we like to remove all in one piece

because we make pet treats with the skin.

So we just strip them of the fat

and then dehydrate it into like little twists.

We're going to cut this piece, which is our top round,

and then just tie it up.

So once it gets seasoned and roasted,

then it gets handed over to the pastry team.

The pastry team then slices it

very much like a deli meat.

And then they season it

with our house-made char siu marinade.

Consists of fermented red bean paste, ginger, garlic,

shoyu, and brown sugar.

And then that gets rolled into our croissants.

We do a 1.5% by weight in salt,

and then a quarter of that in black pepper.

So this is gonna sit overnight in our walk-in,

and then we're gonna roast it tomorrow.

It is just after 12:15 right now.

Last production task of the day is finishing the scrapple

that we started earlier.

[upbeat music]

So this is our pork head that we put in in the morning.

It's going on like four or five hours right now.

So as you can see, all of that meat has fallen off the bone.

And see like some of the bone is like perfectly clean.

It's easier to pick off all the meat when it's warm and hot

because all of the collagen is still soft.

Nothing is really set back up yet.

We were fortunate enough to get some ulu from the Ulu Co-op.

They purchase it from the farmer directly.

They core it, they peel it, and they par-cook it.

We're just gonna small dice this

and then fold it into our polenta on the stove.

So our polenta, it's a little loose right now,

but that's totally fine because once we add our ulu flour,

it'll be able to tighten up a little bit.

So ulu flour, it's just ground up ulu.

It adds a nice nuttiness to the scrapple

and also adds kind of that binder

instead of using traditional flour.

This is great.

You can see all the little bits of ulu in here.

It does have that flavor from that ulu flour as well.

We just put up some chopped up sage in here too.

So this is gonna then be put into our terrine molds,

set overnight.

So the polenta hardens and then that stock

is able to congeal and then we're able to turn it out

and then slice it up for customers to buy.

Customers are starting to come in.

It's getting a little busier right now,

so we're gonna tend to the case after this.

[upbeat music]

So it's one o'clock, we're all done

with our production tasks for the day.

Now it's just a matter of keeping the case full.

Our everyday comprises of helping our customers

as they come in, if they want a specific cut

that's not in our display case,

we're gonna then go into the walk-in,

cut it for them and bring it out.

Trim it up to their specs,

wrap it up and check them out.

It's starting to get really busy right now.

We have a lot of pastries to sell.

We have a lot of meat to sell

and a lot of customers to serve.

Thanks for coming out to The Local General Store

and seeing what we're doing,

but you guys really gotta go.

We have a lot of meat to cut.

[upbeat music]