The Hogtown Burger - Slow Fast Food

The Hogtown Burger is the inspiration of The Butchers Club Burger's Head Chef Matt Dick who incidentally hails from Toronto.  Today this burger has become one of the best sellers from the restaurant's ‘Not so Secret Menu’ and is a firm favourite of The Butcher Club's founder Jonathan Glover.

The story goes back to Toronto where it was nicknamed 'Hogtown' after the sprawling stockyards of the William Davies Company, one of Canada's earliest and largest meat packers. In the late 19th century, Davies was responsible for exporting cured pork and live pigs on a huge scale to the UK. To order to survive the travel across the Atlantic, bacon was packed in peameal (made from dried crushed peas) and it tasted pretty good too!  The Butchers Club produces around 1 tonne of peameal bacon per month using the traditional methods of curing and drying in peameal.

This is what makes a Hogtown Burger and how we have made used of the traditional handcrafted methods to prepare them.

1200 Man Hours - Dry Aged Beef

Let’s start with the patty. This 180g mound of flavour is made up of equal parts of rump, chuck and brisket from grain-fed Black Angus cattle. The primal cuts are initially wet-aged in their vacuum bags for 20 days. This process relaxes the meat and sets it up perfectly for the next step. The beef is then removed, dried off and wrapped in muslin cloth and placed in a special dry-ageing room for 30 days. The room's temperature, humidity and airflow are strictly controlled to create a climate that allows the meat to 'dry-age'. The product is moved around the room at different times of the month by a specialist butcher. In a nutshell the outer part of the beef creates a hard, dark crust to protect the meat inside, which is slowly undergoing an enzyme change. The connective tissues and fats dehydrate and, when cooked, render into the meat, making it more juicy and flavoursome. At the same time the flesh becomes more dense as the blood is dehydrated and develops a stronger beefy flavour with undertones of nuts and blue cheese. The outer dark meat needs to be trimmed off before making into burgers. In all there is around a 20% yield loss in this process. It is therefore an expensive proposition to dry-age beef for a burger, however, the gang at The Butchers Club feel it is well worth the cost and effort, and it does appear that their customers do too.

145 Man Hours - Peameal Bacon

The Butchers Club uses fresh Canadian pork loins for this recipe. The meat is lean, yet exceedingly tender, making it perfect for this traditional curing technique. The whole loins are cured in a solution of water, kosher salt, Prague powder, garlic, sugar, fresh thyme, sage, bay leaves and lemon juice for five days. Twice daily a butcher will turn the meat in the solution to ensure it is evenly cured. It is then removed from the brine, drained, patted with crushed dried peas and allowed to rest in the dry-ageing room for a further 24 hours before being sliced.

100 Man Hours - Pulled Pork

The Butchers Club uses Canadian pork shoulder for its recipe. The high marbling of fat in this cut means that the meat stays juicy and flavoursome during the long cooking process. The pork shoulders are initially brined for 24 hours in a similar solution to the bacon, but without the Prague powder. The meat is then rinsed, transferred to a vacuum bag with a BBQ sauce mix made from brown sugar, garlic powder, tomato ketchup, vinegar, salt, lemon peel and a few extra secret ingredients, before being vacuum sealed. The pork packages are then cooked in a sous vide water bath at 65 degrees Celsius for 72 hours. Once cooled, the pork is pulled apart using a couple of forks and mixed together with the remaining cooking juices.

24 Man Hour - Slow Prove Bread Buns using a 25 year old starter

The Butchers Club guys leave the bread making to baker extraordinaire Gregoire Michaud of Bread Elements.  His recipes are a closely guarded secret. However, we do know that he uses a slow-fermented sourdough technique, including olive oil and buttermilk for The Butchers Club Burgers' buns. Gregoire has a natural yeast starter that has been with him since he began his career 25 years ago. The dough is proved overnight at a low temperature before being baked fresh each morning.

24 Man Hours - The Finishing Touches

The Hogtown is topped with an aged smoked Gouda, a homemade beer, horseradish & honey mustard plus pickled shallots which are pickled in balsamic vinegar, white wine, sugar, salt and a secret medley of herbs and spices.

25 years in the making - Matt Dick, Head Chef, The Butchers Club Burger