2018 American Cured Meat Championships Winners
A hog jowl sourced from Berea College Farm in Berea, Kentucky
67 producers entered 687 examples of charcuterie.
The Clarence Knebel Memorial Best of Show Award went to the shank-on boneless ham entered by the Country Meat Shop of Moberly, Missouri.
That ham was also the Grand Champion in the Cured Specialty Meats category.
Who was the master behind the ham? The owner of the Country Meat Shop Mark Reynolds.
Jake Sailer of Sailer’s Food Market and Meat Processing in Elmwood, Wisconsin was inducted into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame as was Gary Bardine of Bardine’s Country Smokehouse out of Crabtree, Pennsylvania.
Here’s the list of winners:
Andouille: Leiding’s Meats & Catering, Danville, Ill.
Bacon, Heavyweight: Leiding’s Meats & Catering
Bacon, Lightweight: Country Meat Shop, Moberly, Mo.
Braunschweiger: Fisher Packing, Portland, Ind.
Country Bacon: Dry-Cured: Merindorf Meats, Mason, Mich.
Cured Specialty Meats: Country Meat Shop
Dried Beef: AJ’s Lena Maid Meats, Lena, Ill.
Frankfurters/Wieners (Coarse-Ground): Merindorf Meats
Frankfurters/Wieners (Emulsified): Country Meat Shop
Ham – Bone-in (Heavyweight): Bardine’s Country Smokehouse, Crabtree, Pa.
Ham – Bone-in (Lightweight): Thrushwood Farms Quality Meats, Galesburg, Ill.
Ham – Boneless (Commercial): Bardine’s Country Smokehouse
Ham – Boneless (Traditional): Country Meat Shop
Ham – Semi-Boneless: Louie’s Finer Meats, Cumberland, Wis.
Jerky – Restructured: Bardine’s Country Smokehouse
Jerky – Whole-Muscle: Schmidts’ Meat Market, Nicollet, Minn.
Large-Diameter Luncheon Meat: Bardine’s Country Smokehouse
Meat Snack Sticks: Wood’s Smoked Meats, Bowling Green, Mo.
Meat Snack Sticks, Flavored: Louie’s Finer Meats
Old-World Dried & Fermented Sausage: Northwoods Locker, Clayton, Wis.
Ring Bologna: Jerome Country Market, Jerome, Mich.
Semi-Dried Sausage – Cooked, Non-Fermented: Dewig Meats, Haubstadt, Ind.
Hot Links: Tulare Meat Locker & Sausage Co., Tulare, Calif.
Small-Diameter Smoked & Cooked Sausage: Wyttenbach Country Locker, Prairie Du Sac, Wis.
Smoked Turkey: Edgewood Locker, Edgewood, Iowa
Specialty-Flavored, Small-Diameter Cooked & Smoked Sausage: Country Meat Shop
Specialty Game Meats: Hermann Wurst Haus, Hermann Mo.
Summer Sausage: Karl’s Country Market, Menomonee Falls, Wis.
Small-Diameter BBQ Sausage (2018 Specialty Class): Tiefenthaler Quality Meats, Holstein, Iowa
Sounds like a hell of a time. And we love that there were both lightweight and heavyweight categories for bacon.
American Cured Meat Championships.