A customer called me out for dirtying up the pork shoulder and I changed my whole process

Last Saturday some regular told me I was leaving too much silver skin on a pork butt I was trimming for him. He said it makes the bark tough and the fat doesn't render right if you leave that film on. I always thought a little silver skin was fine but I tried his way on the next one I prepped. Spent an extra 3 minutes per shoulder scraping it clean and the finished product was way better. Has anyone else had a customer teach them something they'd been doing wrong for years?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake63828d ago

Honestly that customer sounds like a real one. I had a similar thing happen with brisket a few years back where some guy told me I was trimming too much fat off the flat and it was drying out. I figured he was just being picky but I tried leaving about a quarter inch on there and it made a huge difference in moisture. It's wild how a random person can just drop knowledge like that when you've been doing it your own way forever. Now I always ask customers what they prefer before I even start trimming.

jordan10827d ago

Kinda overthinking it, it's just meat.

oscarc5318d ago

Yeah but @jake638 brings up a good point though, a lot of times customers just know what they're talking about from years of cooking at home. So what I'm wondering is did that guy actually watch you trim the whole thing before he said something, or did he just call it from across the counter? Because if he was really paying that close attention from the start, he's probably a pitmaster himself or at least a serious hobbyist. Either way it's crazy how one little detail like that can change the whole end result, and now I'm second guessing everything I thought I knew about trimming. Makes me want to ask my next few customers if they see anything I'm missing before I wrap it up.