Heritage Craft Butchers

Our much beloved ramp salt almost lasted the whole year. We're busy making a new batch that'll be ready to go in about a week.

What is this, Three Post Tuesday? One more post for yinz... At 6pm TONIGHT, we are doing a butchery demonstration for the Ag Department at WVSU (West Virginia State University). Well, not AT WVSU, per se... but via Zoom. They said we could tell our friends, so that’s what I’m doing. This is 100% free to you. However, the Zoom session they have blocked out for this is limited to 100 participants. So, if it’s full and you can’t join, that’s just how it is. ... In about a week, the video of the session will be available for download. 6pm tonight... and here’s the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87247851142

As the weather gets better and those grills get fired up, we're supplying more of that delicious heat you're addicted to. Sure, we have great steaks, but we're quickly becoming the Hot Sauce Hub of southwestern PA. We carry the full line of hot sauces from both Maestro's and Bearded Devil, including Bearded Devil's newest flavor, Chloe's Chipotle. We're all stocked up in Marianna, and by this weekend, these little bottles of napalm will be on the shelves in Washington and Wa...ynesburg. These two hot sauce artisans put flavor first and the capsaicin provides the background vocals. Don't feel like you have to choose just one. I'd post a pic of my hot sauce shelf in my fridge, but it would beg the question of what other leather-bound skeletons I have in my closet. Hot sauce is the perfect garnish for all your masochistic mastications. Whether you're looking for a smoky, smoldering heat or the white hot sear of a thousand suns, Heritage Craft Butchers is your one stop shop for fire and brimstone. Oh crap, that just knocked loose a Hamilton fun-fact! Aaron Burr, in Wait for it, sings of his deceased parents and his grandfather being a "fire and brimstone preacher." His grandfather wasn't just ANY fire and brimstone preacher, he was THE fire and brimstone preacher, Jonathan Edwards! Do you remember that from 7th grade social studies with Mr. Golski? His sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," on July 8, 1741, was considered the catalyst for the First Great Awakening. And to think, they were probably eating bland porridge and boiled meat while taking verbal flagellation in the church on Sunday. Imagine going back in time and dosing their meals with The Ghost of Red or Mo' Poblanos Mo' Problems. The revolution would have happened before the Boston Massacre and Ben Franklin would have been young enough to be first president instead of George Washington. Hot sauce, man... it can change the world. Man, that’s a pretty picture. All those shiny little baubles waiting to cauterize your tongue like a culinary blow torch.

Hey! You know we're giving this thing away, right? The early orders for the GrillMaster Bundle have been very strong, but we still have another week of sales ahead of us. One of you are going to get this Traeger Grill when we draw names on April 26. The GrillMaster Bundles can be purchased online and will be ready for pickup on April 28, 29, and 30th. It's $300 and contains the following items:... 4 T-Bone Steaks 4 Ribeyes 4 NY Strips 8 Chicken Breasts 8 Steak Burgers 12 Chicken Wings 2 Racks of Baby Back Ribs 1 Brisket Flat 1 TriTip 2lbs Hot Italian Sausage The Traeger is a Pro Series 22 Pellet Grill and Smoker and it retails for $600. The winner will receive the grill, a grill cover, and a bag of pellets. If you win, we'll arrange for you to get your grill. You can either pick it up or we can bring it to you. Thank you! Have a great week. https://www.heritagecraftbutchers.com//p/grillmaster-bundle

Reminder up front- Red Fox Winery is at the Washington store today from 1-3pm with samples and bottles for purchase. The response to the GrillMaster Bundle has been tremendous! Thank you! Just a reminder, those will be available for pickup the LAST THREE DAYS of April. The Traeger has arrived in its big, sexy box (lol). We'll draw the winner of that early on in the last week of April. You can buy this and get entered into the drawing right up until Sunday the 25th.... Also, thank you to everyone who blew the doors off the 1 year anniversary Essentials Bags 2 weeks ago. We still haven't recovered from the hundreds of units ordered. In fact, we used the last week as a transitional week for the Essentials Bags. These are going to be an online-order ONLY item going forward into the summer. It's so variable week to week that we don't want to just leave it up to chance how many we have to put together and deliver to Washington and Waynesburg. So, going forward, you buy it on the website at the beginning of the week and we'll have them ready for pickup on Friday and Saturday. This week, we've got a High Steaks bag (I'm sorry, that was terrible) containing the following items: 1 Ribeye 1 Strip 1 T-Bone 1 Filet 1 Flank Steak 4 Chicken Breasts 1lbs Ground beef This bag is back to the usual $85 and a quick mental accounting would have the retail value of the items, if bought separately, at $99.50. You can pre-purchase your Essentials Bag on the website along with your GrillMaster Bundle and automatically get entered into our drawing for this Traeger Grill we have to babysit for the next 2 weeks. And finally, if you want to sign up for our monthly Butcher Bag subscription, you can do so on the website this month until April 15. Orders: https://www.heritagecraftbutchers.com/order Butcher Bag Subscription: https://www.heritagecraftbutchers.com/subscriptions

It's Turkey Time again. FINALLY, we're taking pre-orders for Thanksgiving turkeys. We have two great turkey products available this year. First, we have locally-raised, free-range turkeys from Craig Conforti in Beaver Falls. These are somewhat limited in availability, so we will take reservations until our 50 local birds are spoken for. These turkeys will range in weight from 16 to 22lbs. We'd prefer you are flexible on the weight so we can simply designate a turkey for you, ...but if you require one of a specific weight, we'll try to get as close to that as possible.These turkeys are 6.99/lbs. Because our local turkeys are so limited, we are also offering an alternative that we feel is a really good value. We'll have brined, stuffed, and trussed conventional turkeys. These turkeys will be oven-ready and cost 2.99/lbs and will weigh in between 14-16lbs. As we get closer to Thanksgiving, we'll probably develop some auxiliary products for your holiday table. We do have Pittsburgh Pot Pie Company's Pumpkin Pies in stock and we'll add items to go along with that. Now, if you would like to reserve your turkey, email us at [email protected] We'll send you an invoice for a $20 deposit and that will hold your turkey, regardless of which option you choose. We'd like to have all of the orders locked in by Thursday, November 19th. Thank you so much and enjoy the democratic process tonight!

Winner winner, chicken dinner! It was a tough call, and since so many people came in groups, we're out a few extra garments. Runner up best costume goes to Erin, Mike, and baby Theo. Theo brought home the gold so Mom and Dad get fly new hats. Best costume goes to Clem Cretaux and her friend who came dressed as "the guys." Those sausages are pretty sweet. Is this an example of rewarding pandering? Perhaps... but it was pretty cool to dress like butchers and drive from Pittsbu...rgh to Marianna for some meat snacks. So, Ms. Clémence and her comrade have a pair of hoodies reserved for them. We'll work out how to get those to them later. I just can't let it be... Anyone know the origin of the word "pander" or "pandering?" It entered the English language a few centuries after 1386, which is when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his translation of the epic tragedy Troilus and Criseyde. One of the side characters in this poem is Pandarus, who acts as a go-between for his niece (Criseyde) and Troilus. Pandarus advises Troilus on how to seduce Criseyde. Prior to the medieval depiction of Pandarus as a "fixer" of affairs, he was a powerful warrior in Homer's The Iliad. Giovanni Boccaccio subsumed the Trojan warrior into a new and lasting role as the licentious facilitator of love in his 1335 work, Il Filostrato. It was from this Italian work that Chaucer drew his inspiration to write a translation of the tragic love story that would eventually transform Pandarus into a verb in the 17th century. The connotation of *pander* has softened over time. Originally, it referred to facilitating sexual liaisons, but the sharp edges have been rounded off over time and it generally means to appeal to the baser instincts of man. So yeah, Clem and her friend definitely appealed to our own pride and vanity and we interpret their imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. But that skunk baby is wicked cute.

**Edit** Update- this case failed overnight and these items are not fit for sale. Everything we had in there is available in Marianna. I apologize for the inconvenience The Washington Brewing Company gave us a great deal on a new-to-us display case for the Washington store. We got it up and running on Friday and it's stocked with fresh meat items that are ready for dinner TONIGHT. ... We have stuffed pork chops, mini porchetta, various cuts of lamb, and an assortment of the local beef we cut this week. This is in addition to the frozen items we have available as well as our Breakfast Essentials bundle and the traditional Essentials bag at $65 and $85, respectively. The Washington store is open 12-4 today for your convenience. The Marianna shop is open 11-5 and they received a shipment of pot pies last night. We're pretty much sold out of pot pies everywhere else until those can get delivered to the various locations.

Stuffed chicken breasts going in the Marianna case this morning. Easy breezy dinner solution for this evening. Stuffed chicken breasts are the original hot pocket.

For customers of the Marianna shop- bring your kids down and let them grab a bunch of candy while you shop for meat!

We doubled down on those mini porchettas we had last week (porchettino) and made enough to have them available at all three locations this weekend. There are a handful in Waynesburg, two handfuls in Washington, and a wheelbarrow-full in Marianna. In addition to that, we have some really nice stuffed pork chops in Marianna, as well as a plethora of local beef. We have Keys Farm and Flat Stone Lick Farm beef, Soggy Hollow Farm pork, and Elysian Fields lamb in abundance in the ...Marianna shop. Waynesburg customers- I'm picking up this week's milk order from Brunton Dairy today. I will have the Waynesburg store stocked with that tonight and ready for you Saturday. We also have our Breakfast Essentials bags available at all three locations. Remember, if you come to the Marianna shop this weekend, wear your Halloween costume for 10% off your purchase and a chance to win a Heritage Craft Butchers zip-front hoodie or hat. Have a great weekend! We'll see you soon.

Today is the last Farmers Market of the season for Washington. We'll be there 3-6pm with an array of individual items. Thank you for a great summer of selling stuff in the parking lot! It was a lot of fun and it was really nice to see everyone each week.

It's Halloween weekend and we'd like to have some fun. We have some great meat shop products this week, but we'll cover that in another post. The Lovely Leah decorated the Marianna shop yesterday. It's pretty festive on its own, but we'd like you to add to the festivities. Come to the Marianna Shop this weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) IN COSTUME and get 10% off your purchase AND someone on staff will take your picture. Sunday night, we'll pick the top two costumes and po...st the winners on Facebook. Best Costume gets a free Heritage Craft Butchers hoodie and the runner up gets a free hat. Bring your kids down to the shop, too. The big butcher block up front will be covered in individually wrapped Halloween candy and the meat case will be filled with an irresponsible quantity of hyper-local beef. SO MUCH BEEF. Happy Halloween Charlie Brown!

We want to thank everyone for the outpouring of support for the new Washington location. It'll take a bit of time to get fully up to speed, there, but we are working on it. When we opened, we didn't expect an article in the newspaper about it, so we had a lot more customers this weekend than we had planned for. That said, the primary function of this location is for our Washington Butcher Bag subscribers to have a convenient location to pick up their monthly bags. That's bee...Continue reading

Good morning Facebook! We didn't stop with the Ossabaw and the Wagyu. We received those two beautiful Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs from Soggy Hollow Farm just outside of Deep Creek, Maryland on Thursday. Old Spots is an English breed of pig also called the Orchard Pig or the Cottager's Pig. When you think of an old English homestead out in the rolling hills of Gloucestershire and there's a pig pen off the kitchen with 3 fat pigs- those are Old Spots. The breed was formally...Continue reading

With all the Ossabaw and Wagyu flying around here it's definitely fancypants meat weekend at HCB but I had to share some love for our beautiful standard local pork that always sets the bar high. Thanks to our friends at Soggy Hollow Farms for this well raised and loved Gloucester Old Spots pork!

This week, we have some incredible meat gracing our butcher block. First and foremost, this is Ossabaw Weekend! We picked up two of these monsters Tuesday from Autumn Olive Farm and they'll be turned into amazing cuts of buttery pork this afternoon. It's been a while since I explained the magic of these pigs and we have so many new social media friends, so here's an abbreviated summary. In the 15th century, Spanish explorers left sheep, goats, and pigs on barrier islands alo...Continue reading

Breakfast! It's the most important meal of the day. This week, we have a special offer to help you start your day off on the right foot all week long. Breakfast Essentials. This week's Essentials Bag focuses on that A.M. Yum Yum and is only $65.... In this Breakfast Essentials Bag, you'll get the following- 2 Steaks 2lbs Breakfast Sausage 2lbs Dry-cured Bacon 1 Dozen Local Farm-Fresh Eggs 1 Jar of BroChachos Salsa Start the day off right with the Breakfast Essentials Bag. This is available Thursday at the Farmers Market (3-6pm) and all weekend at our 3 locations, while supplies last. If you read about our Washington store in Saturday’s Observer-Reporter and want to stop by to see what we’ve got, this would be a perfect foray into our stuff.