“It was a little bit of a fluke,” Jason Custodio admits. “I had a bunch of pork, prepped and ready to go, but the store opening was delayed by several weeks. So I had this pork that was dry-aging in my fridge next to my beef.” His shop, Custodio’s Meats and Eats is a neighborhood whole-animal butcher shop known for high quality locally sourced meat. “Once we eventually opened, people were absolutely amazed by the pork product. That’s when the alarms bells went off.”
Refrigerated, commercial pork is ordinarily sold within a week or ten days of slaughter, however Custodio treats his pigs more like high-end beef. He allows for the full loin racks to age for weeks and even months in his Roncesvalles Avenue shop. His dry-aged pork recently made its way onto Toronto’s radar when Custodio’s old industry friend, chef Patrick Kriss, opened Alo.
“Patrick gets it,” Custodio says about why he ages Alo’s meat for four to six weeks and then vacuum seals it. In one case, he aged the pork for eight weeks. “It was a little too funky to serve to customers,” says Kriss. “But there was real depth. And the fat was reminiscent of blue cheese.” The pork cuts sold at Custodio’s Meats and Eats are typically aged for three weeks by comparison.
Due to the careful, consistent resting conditions at Custodio’s, dry-aged pork is just as safe to eat as fresh pork. The temperature of the fridge hovers around two to three degrees Celsius and 60 to 70 percent humidity. “Fresh pork is full of water and inedible fat that feels like bubble gum” Kriss says. But over time, the enzymes in the meat work like natural tenderizers and begin to break down muscle fibers and connective tissues, creating meat that melts in your mouth. The meat also loses moisture and starts to shrink, leaving a similar taste and smell to charcuterie. As the pork ages, carbohydrates slowly turn into sugars and proteins into amino acids, such as glutamate. This molecular process gives the pork rich, beefy umami flavor compounds.
Custodio is a patient curator. He allows time to turn the simple hues of limp pink pork into a crystal-like blend of purple amethyst and deep ruby red, mimicking the saturated tones of beef. The fat becomes velvety like cultured butter and the meat that rests against it is a subdued garnet. Traces of candy apple red appear along the rib bones, blushing amid pockets of funky fat.
Image: Sai Sumar
At the back of the butcher shop, Adam sprinkles two pork belly chops with salt, pepper, and a few strokes of olive oil and tosses them over the fire until medium rare. He slices up the chops and serves it on a plastic tray with grainy mustard smeared down the middle. One is a Tamworth chop aged for three weeks and the other is a Yorkshire chop that’s only a week in.
“There’s just no comparison,” a butcher named Jared proclaims. He eats another slice of the Tamworth. “You don’t even have to chew that.” In comparison, fresh pork, or even the one-week Yorkshire chop, tastes diluted.
The three-week-old chop reestablishes itself as matured and unafraid as it takes on the complexities of aged beef with dramatic characteristics. The nutty fragrance is hypnotic. The sweet, buttery fat is addictive. And while the flavors are dense, the meat just dissolves on your tongue.
