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Would you like to help support our friends at The Stop Community Food Hub this holiday season? It’s easy if you’re a member of the Sanagan’s 5 Star Rewards Points Program. For every 500 rewards points you chose to donate, Sanagans will donate $25 to The Stop. You give the points, we give the money. That's a lot of good will going around! !

You can make your points donation at either store, just ask a meat hawker. Or email info@sanangansmeatlocker.com The email should include the phone number of your rewards account and the number of points (500 = $25, 1000 = $50, etc.) you wish to donate. Or give us a call at 416-593-9747 and talk to Customer Service. We will be accepting Rewards Points Donations all the way until December 31st.

To see what the Stop Community Food Hub does, go here https://www.thestop.org/

Hunting season in Ontario generally lasts from mid-September to mid-December. As we roll into December at Sanagan’s, you won’t have to hunt for delicious offerings to fill any of your holiday needs.

One offering that may have eluded you in the past is our Hunter’s Pie. Chef Anne and her team in the kitchen have refined this recipe over the past few years to it’s near perfect current iteration. Rich venison, elk and wild boar are slowly simmered with red wine and paired with hearty lentils and aromatics inside a buttery, flaky crust, topped with a true trophy in the form of a piece of bone marrow.

Our Hunter’s Pie is the very definition of a special occasion dish. It is rich, and delicious, and one should likely fight the desire to enjoy it every day, reserving it for gatherings with friends and family. My suggestion would be to keep things simple, and serve this with a crisp green salad using a mix with bitter greens and a mustard vinaigrette.

We have a quiet Christmas planned this year, but our centrepiece on Christmas Eve will be one of Chef Anne’s delicious Hunter Pies. Happy hunting, and happy holidays!

Christmas and the holidays are a time to indulge any number of eccentric traditions. We hang totally dry socks on the fireplace. We encourage our children to sit on the laps of strange old men. We bring whole fir trees into the house. And strangest of all, we consume a medieval-ish “pudding” that’s not like any other kind of pudding.

If you’re reading this and you haven’t got your own old fashioned Christmas pudding aging in the basement, have no fear, because this December, Sanagan’s will once again have our wonderful house-made Christmas puddings and hard sauce, stacked like cannon balls, ready to fire into the shopping bags of our holiday feasters.

And let’s get this straight — we’re not just talking any old mass-produced Christmas-pudding-in-a-can. Ours are made by hand by our chartcuterie specialist Scott Draper, based on his grandmother, Verna Draper’s recipe.

The Draper’s lived on a farm in Stouffville and like much of Ontario’s U.K. immigrant population they emphasized the Scottish side things. Their style of pudding, made with brown sugar, dried fruit, suet, breadcrumbs, carrot, egg etc., has a slightly lighter finish due to the absence of molasses. And it’s contained steamed within a cloth as opposed to a metal or ceramic mould. And it’s Holidayliscious!

All you have to do is steam it in its cheesecloth wrapping for one hour, and then dollop on and the hard-sauce (butter, icing sugar and brandy).

Oh — I forgot the best part. Like all Christmas puddings worth their fruit peel, ours is best moistened with warm brandy and then set it on fire. Turn the lights down low and present the flaming pudding. Now that’s an eccentric tradition.

The Sum Of All Turkey Knowledge — Right Here If you want to get all fancy with your turkey - brining, butterflying, deep frying — go for it. But for a lot of people, simple roasted turkey really does the trick. Also, they may have a few hundred other things to worry about on Christmas day, so just throwing the bird in the oven and letting it go with minimal intervention, is an attractive proposition that doesn’t preclude a beautiful bird on the festive table. In pursuit of the most worry-free roast turkey, I’ve cross-referenced a number of classic all-purpose cookbooks (Joy of Cooking, Fanny Farmer, Canadian Living, Julia Child, The New Basics) and distilled them into the following turkey summary. All turkey cooking times are approximate. Your best bet is an accurate meat thermometer. When inserted into the thickest part of the thigh, not touching the bone, a reading of 180° F (82° C) will ensure your turkey is done. With or without a thermometer, estimate 13 to 15 minutes per pound with the oven pre-heated to 325°. When cooking turkey in the traditional breast side up manner, the breast may become dry. If the breast appears to be cooking too quickly, cover with foil. Ideal breast temperature is 165°. For stuffed birds allow for an extra 20 to 30 minutes in total cooking time. Bread stuffing must reach 160° F. All turkeys will benefit from a 30-minute rest before carving. Turned turkeys, where the breast is not continuously exposed to the refracted heat of the oven’s roof are a good way to promote even cooking. Consult cookbooks or on-line sources. Happy feasting!

So you’ve not only taken the time to subscribe to this newsletter but now you’ve gone to all the trouble of clicking to reach here. You deserve some real rewards for your effort and here they come! The insider tips. The behind the scenes low down. The scoop. Here are some of our lesser known deals, unsung winners and staff favourites that will make you a Sanagan’s Subscriber Smart Shopper. Picnic Chickens If we didn’t sell all of today’s hot rotisserie chickens, they become tomorrow’s cold Picnic Chickens. Look for them vacuum-packed in the deli department. They’re a steal of a deal. Smoked Pork Chops Cured and cold-smoked, this pork chop thinks it’s a piece of bacon. Fry em, grill em, bake em, broil em, put em under your saddle and ride to Utaanbaatar; these beauties offer endless affordable versatility. Goat One of the most consumed meats around the world, we try to always have some Ontario-raised goat on hand. If you don’t see any in the window please inquire, we may have some shoulder, leg or ribs in the back. Shepherd’s Pie All the convenience of straight from the freezer to the oven to the table with none of the chemicals or industrial flavours of supermarket frozen foods. Featuring equal parts beef, lamb and pork, topped with mashed potatoes enriched with butter and cream, these classics, in small or large, are what wholesome dining is all about. Guaranteed not to contain shepherds. Porchetta I don’t think Peter’s really costed this one out. The butchers put a lot of care into its preparation but it’s definitely on the cheaper side of the window. And a big porchetta is an effortless crowd-pleaser. Pork loin or belly wrapped with more pork belly, layered with Italianate seasonings. Just slow bake it, slice and serve. Così buono! Fats All butchers trim a lot of fat. But do they all melt them into lard, schmaltz and tallow? We do. And we sell them in 250ml tubs for next to nothing. Up your frying and baking game with our all-local fat. Dog Food Made up of ground beef and lamb from the very same meats you see in the window, our dog food will make your pooch happy and healthy. According to the dog owners I talk to, it’s a great deal. Look for it in the freezer. If you don’t see — please ask. Meat Your Salad The Sanagan’s kitchen makes some truly tasty salads that are great on their own but why don’t you do what a lot of staff members do and Meat Your Salad? We can slice you a little bit of salami, roast beef or ham from the deli and you drop it right on the kale, lentils or beets. Meat Your Salad deluxe? Drop some pâté en croute onto your greens. Dry Aged Beef Burgers If you want to sample what time can do to a piece of beef, you can buy our beautiful dry-aged steaks or you can try our dry-aged burgers, at about ¼ the price. Given their popularity, it may seem like a bit of a stretch to describe our D.A.B.’s as an insider product but, as a dry-age gateway, they have a lot of secrets to share. Marinades If you’re a fan of some of our classic marinated preparations like jerk chicken, Cuban bavette or souvlaki skewers, you can now buy just the sauces from our grab and go fridge and do your own marinating on whatever you like. Jerk your pork! Cuban your lamb! Souvlaki your bacon! These are just a few samples of what Sanagan’s has beyond big steaks and chicken breasts. And, of course, there’s more. The best way to find out is to come on in and talk to the staff. We like talking about food almost as much as we like eating it.

There are not many dishes that shout “COMFORT!” much like meatloaf, are there? When the damp and cool fall weather penetrates your bulkiest sweater and runs a chill down your arms, you know it’s time to eat something warm and nourishing. Hearty soups fit the bill, as does a roast chicken. But meatloaf, that forgotten dish your mom used to make you eat on cool weeknights, can really warm you up, from your tummy all the way down to your toes. I usually make meatloaf with just meat, but I wanted to try something new, inspired slightly by the granddaddy of all meatloaves: the haggis. Much like haggis, I have bulked up this meatloaf with barley, a delicious addition which is rich in nutrients. You can omit it, but I feel like it gives the meatloaf an interesting consistency (not to mention lowering the cost per person)! Ingredients 1 lb ground beef 3/4 lb ground pork 1 cup barley, soaked in water for 2 hours 1/2 red onion, finely chopped 2 slices sandwich bread, diced 1/4 cup milk 1 egg, whisked 2 tbsp HP sauce 2 tbsp Montreal steak spice to taste salt and pepper 1/4 cup BBQ sauce Method: 1) Bring a pot of water to a boil over a high heat. Drain the soaked barley and cook in the booking water until tender and fully cooked, about 45 minutes. Drain and cool. 2) Preheat the oven to 350°F. 3) In a small bowl, toss the bread with the milk. Let the bread soak up the milk (about five minutes), before mashing the bread into a paste. 4) In a large bowl, thoroughly mix the ground beef, ground pork, barley, egg, bread paste, HP Sauce, and Montreal steak spice. Season to taste. To check the flavour, cook a small tablespoon of the mixture in a pan or a microwave. Adjust the seasoning in necessary. 5) Line a loaf pan with parchment paper. Fill the loaf pan with the meat and barley mixture. Spoon 2 tbsp of BBQ sauce on the top and spread it over the surface. Cover the loaf with aluminum foil. 6) Bring 3 cups of water to a boil. Place the loaf pan into a larger roasting pan, then pour the hot water into the roasting pan. This creates a "water bath", and the meatloaf will cook more evenly because of this. Place the roasting pan in the center of the hot oven, and bake for 1.5 hours or, using an internal thermometer to test, until the center of the loaf is 160°F. Take the loaf out of the oven and turn the heat up to 400°F. 7) Remove the aluminum foil and pour the rest of the BBQ sauce on top of the meat loaf. Spread the sauce to cover the meatloaf, then put it back into the oven for ten minutes, or until the crust is caramelized. 8) Cool slightly, slice, and enjoy!

Here’s an oft overheard exchange at Sanagan’s

Customer - “How long should I fry these pork chops for?”

Meat Hawker - “Um, that’s a tricky one.”

So first, let me answer directly.

1 ¼ inch-thick bone-in rib chops, fried at medium heat, take 12 minutes to reach the government approved 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

¾ inch-thick centre cut chops; 6 minutes 45 seconds.

But if you just follow these instructions and end up with under or overcooked chops, don’t blame me. You gotta read this whole thing to really dig the pig.

To explore the eternal pork chop frying riddle, I employed a plain old glass top stove, a cast iron frying pan, a reasonably accurate meat thermometer and a stopwatch app.

Method:

A medium-sized cast iron pan receives a long preheat on one of the stove’s large elements dialled to #5 (exactly medium). On my stove, this setting, once it’s fully achieved, is more like a medium-hot. A small dribble of oil is then added to the pan. I’m using canola oil here, mainly because of it’s high smoking point. My fire alarm appreciates the consideration.

All the pork chops were cooked straight out of the refrigerator.

All meats were also given the customary post-cooking rest. This allows the meat, especially the very hot surface of the meat to cool, thereby retaining more moisture.

The chops were seasoned with salt and pepper, just before frying.

1 ¼ INCH FRECHED RIB CHOPS

These beauties are from the loin adjacent to the rib cage. They are cut thick to accommodate the rib bones and provide you with delectable tender pig steaks.

This loin chop hit the pan with a fanfare of sizzle. Initially I turned it every two minutes, quickly increasing that to once every minute. Frequent flipping allows you to really fine tune your finish and keeps you in constant contact with the meat. This monitoring allows you observe changes in appearance, aroma and feel — is the meat still wobbly or is it becoming hard? Understanding these changes is the most reliable way to know when your steak/chop is done, rendering timers, thermometers and articles like this extraneous.

At the 12 minute mark I removed the chop from the pan. It’s temperature read as 157 and climbing, levelling out at 159. After a four minute rest it had dropped to 156. The chop was juicy and, truth be told, I couldn’t stop “sampling” it. As you can see by the photo, it had a beautiful crust. Some of our customers desire an even juicier chop and will disregard the official temperature advisory.

¾ INCH CENTRE CUT CHOPS

Cut from further back in the loin, these succulent babies are what we call fast fryers and they’ll help you get a delicious dinner on the table post haste.

Pork Chop #1: 6 minutes = 153 F. + 1.5 minutes = 175 F.

Pork Chop #2: 7 minutes = 166 F.

Pork Chop #3: 6.5 minutes = 155 F.

And then I ran out of centre cut pork chops. So I’m guessing when I say that 6 minutes and 45 seconds gets you the perfect 160 F chop. But it’s a very educated guess. And, incidentally, all of the above chops tasted, more or less the same; as in - great.

So, as you can see, there are a lot of factors involved, all of which can effect your times. Is your stove’s “medium” the same as mine? How does your pan conduct the heat? Is your thermometer, if you’re using one, properly calibrated? And every pork chop is ever so slightly different — they are muscles from living animals, cut by humans not machines.

The above times are a useful guideline, but, given all the variables, the best way to accurately cook steaks and chops is to read the signs. Constant close observation will allow you, with experience, to read the meat.

Ten years ago, I wasn’t sleeping very well. I had just opened Sanagan’s Meat Locker to little fanfare, and I wasn’t sure how well I was doing. The customers were coming in, but I had no idea how to operate a business to make sure I didn’t lose any money. My focus was simply on taking care of my customers and making sure the quality of the product was high. I didn’t think about my prices enough (as it turns out, they were too low), or what kind of people I should be hiring (friends would have to do), or how to file WSIB (which I did a year later). There were many, many things I knew little about, and the thought of what I didn’t know weighed on me. Also, my days started at 7:30 am and I worked until 8 at night, six days a week (I saved the seventh day for banking). So, I wasn’t sleeping very well. Life was going full tilt and I was just trying to hang on, making decisions on the fly that would affect how well the business did that day, that week, or that month. I was scared shitless and didn’t have many people to turn to, and my pride and ego prevented me from asking for help anyways. But, funnily enough, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was a wild time in my life, and the life of the shop. I learned how to run a business, and I did it because of my customers, my staff, and my partner. My pride and ego may have prevented me from asking for help, but I got it anyways, and for that I am forever grateful. Anniversaries are a time for reflection, and I was encouraged (by Claire – Store Manager and long time all star) to format my reflections in a list. Some memories are of difficult times, and some are of funny times. I tend not to remember the “great” times, as I have a weird complex that doesn’t allow me to be satisfied in any achievement for too long. I find the stressful times make for the best stories anyways. So, without further ado, here is a list of a random assortment of memories, in no particular order. 1) The time that the gravity coil on the ceiling of the walk-in refrigerator fell down, overwhelmed by the amount of ice that had built up on the coils. I came into work one morning, opened the walk-in door, and was greeted by too-warm air. The cooling unit had actually fallen right out of the ceiling and landed on a stack of boxes. I lost a bunch of products because the temperatures were too high. That really sucked. 2) That Saturday when I was renovating the larger store before moving in, and overnight some graffiti “artist” bombed the entire front of the store with some garbage tag. I spent the whole day on my hands and knees, cleaning the windows and frames with nail polish remover and a razor blade. I met a lot of people that day, all commenting on “why bother – it’ll just happen again”. It has, but none were that bad. 3) The time when our giant walk-in cooler broke down three days before Christmas, and Alia, Brian, and I had to hand-bomb the entire contents of the fridge down a flight of stairs (at 11pm) to the back-up cooler, which wasn’t big enough but we managed to make it work for the evening while the main fridge was repaired. Did I mention this happened three days before Christmas? Yeah. 4) The time I was at my in-laws for a holiday Monday while the store was closed and I decided that “for once, I’m going to leave my phone in the bedroom while I unplug and go outside”. I forgot that I had a repairman at the shop, who was taking advantage of the fact that the store was closed and no one was there to do some fridge repairs. What he forgot was that the latch on the walk-in cooler door was broken and he locked himself in the fridge. He tried calling me 20 times but, of course, I had “unplugged”. He finally got a hold of his daughter who called the police, and they came and broke into my store to rescue the repairman. When I finally looked at my phone again and found out what I had missed, I realized that he had almost died. So now I don’t “unplug”. It’s not worth it. 5) The time I had ordered 100 turkeys from a farmer for Thanksgiving, pre-sold them all, then found out that a pack of foxes got into the turkey barn a day before they were supposed to go to slaughter and ate them all. Because of this, there were only a few days until Thanksgiving and I had to find another source for turkeys for all of my customers. I ended up meeting a farmer in a parking lot in Mississauga to make the trade off. They were all beautiful organic birds, and almost double the price of what I had promised my customers. Whatcha gonna do? I took a hit, sold them at the quoted price, and put a hex on foxes as a group. 6) The dozens of times my alarm company would wake me up in the middle of the night to say there was a burglary alarm going off at the store, but when I drove to the shop at that hour I would find out it was just the wind blowing a door just enough to jostle the alarm contact. It took me at least 12 times of going to the store for no reason at three am to figure out how to stop that from happening. I started ignoring those three am phone calls. 7) That time I ignored a 3 am phone call from my alarm company, and found out the next day that someone had broken in to the shop, went directly into my office where I kept the safe, and stole the whole thing with about $15,000 inside. It remains a mystery to this day who did it, and unfortunately, I have become less trusting because of that experience. But my new safe is steal-proof! I think. 8) The time water started leaking through the ceiling on the second floor, and we didn’t know where it was coming from, and then the ceiling collapsed because there was so much water coming down from a burst sprinkler pipe on the roof. It was - 25°C outside, and my staff soaked themselves trying to fix the problem. They are all awesome, that day sucked. 9) That time I was bringing food down to the Drake Hotel to host a BBQ on their patio, and when we got there, we realized that the food had all fallen out of the back of the van on the way down because the driver forgot to latch the door properly. We had to change the menu really quickly that night…. 10) I could keep going on with stories about things that didn’t work out so well, but I think I’ll end this list with a positive story. The time Alia and I got the news that we were going to have a son. I was standing in my office at the time, and I immediately teared up. We had been trying to have a child for a really long time, and I hadn’t been sure if we were going to get to be parents. Alia had been pregnant for weeks by the time of this phone call, but it’s almost as if I was in denial. Then, when we got that call, emotions and thoughts of promise flooded over me. Desmond was born a few months later, and after years of working overtime, all the time, I decided to change my daily routine. I decided that I didn’t need to be at the shop for 12 hours each day, or look over my staff’s shoulders to make sure they were doing it “my” way. They were quite excellent at doing it their way, which to be honest was just as good or better than mine 99% of the time. I am now able to focus my energy on how to make their lives better, and the experience of our customers. I am able to be a better business owner because of them, and because of our customers, who continue to enjoy what we do. Here’s to the beginning of the next ten years. We have some exciting projects on the horizon, and I will leave you with a bit of a sneak peek. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope to be writing to you in another decade. On the Horizon: 1) Contest Alert! In celebration of our anniversary, we will be giving away a few valuable gift cards. Look for signs in-store for more details, and follow us on Facebook or Instagram (@sanagansmeatlocker) for upcoming details. 2) We have been slowly, but surely, building a new website. This website will have tons of info on cooking meat, and what cuts to choose. But most importantly, it will be a shopping site, where you can order your favorite cuts and have them delivered straight to your door. Look for this early in the new year. 3) Speaking of delivery, we will be launching our official catering menu at the same time as the website. You can order online or by calling the shop and we can have a party tray delivered to your office or home the very next day! 4) The biggest project of all is the cookbook I have spent the last two years writing. This one is going to be huge. I can’t talk too much about it yet; all I will say is that it will be the only meat cookbook you will ever want. No big deal! We’re shooting for a fall 2020 release, so you have plenty of time to get excited! Thanks again to everyone for helping make Sanagan’s such an awesome part of the Toronto food scene. We’re so happy to be a part of it, and glad you can join us for the ride. See you in the store soon! Peter