Cheesesteaks and other sandwiches are on the menu at this Neptune City butcher shop
When Doug and Joelle Palmer opened their Neptune City butcher shop in 2022, their mission was to fill its cases with as much of the locally sourced animals they work with as possible.
The 200-pound quarters of grass-fed beef hanging in the freezer of Palmer's Quality Meats become not only steaks, ground meat and ribs, but the fat is rendered for tallow, which is used for frying. The bones are simmered for bone broth, and offal (organ meat) is sold as a blend for meatballs.
Refrigerators hold packages of chicken hearts, chicken and beef livers, and even chicken feet. Pork lard, rendered in house, makes a tender and flaky dough for empanadas filled with chorizo, turkey, braised pork and Italian ragu.
Sausage — "a big part of using the whole animal," Doug Palmer said — comes in flavors like cheese and parsley, sweet and hot Italian, and broccoli rabe and provolone, and is stuffed into long hot peppers.
But even with this dedication to whole-animal butchering, there is still meat leftover. How to use it all?
Sandwiches, which the butcher shop offers Thursdays to Saturdays. There is one hot and two cold options each week ($14 each), plus a cheesesteak special ($17).
"We started doing grab-and-go deli-style sandwiches (roast beef and turkey breast) for the summer, but they're a little different because they aren't cold cuts," said Palmer, 36, who previously worked for Whole Foods and Mid-Shore Meats in Toms River, as well as a cattle company in New Jersey. "We make the sandwich meats ourselves out of whole muscle. We drive to the slaughterhouse weekly to grab these animals ourselves, butcher them in house, utilize the prime cuts in our butcher case, and use the bones, fat, and less desirable cuts in the kitchen."
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Bottom round becomes roast beef, he said, and pork leg is turned into cutlets.
On a recent sandwich, those cutlets — coated in bread crumbs mixed with pretzel crumbs from E. Holland Sundries bakery in Bradley Beach and fried in tallow — were topped with kale Caesar salad. Another was roasted turkey with cheddar, lettuce, tomato and onion. Past options were hot roast beef with mozzarella and gravy; roasted pork with corn salsa and pickled onions; and pork cutlets with roasted long hots and chive dill mayo.
As for that cheesesteak, it is made with ribeye, caramelized onions, American cheese and cherry pepper relish. Mark your calendars, though: It is only on the menu every third week of the month.
Go: Palmer's Quality Meats, 40 Steiner Ave., Neptune City; 732-361-5599, palmersqualitymeats.com.
Sarah Griesemer joined the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey in 2003 and has been writing all things food since 2014. Send restaurant tips to [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Palmer's Quality Meats serves cheesesteaks, sandwiches in Neptune
