Coppa Pork Steak

Outside of St. Louis, most Americans have never seen a pork steak. Inside St. Louis, it is practically a civic institution — shoulder pork cut thick, seared hard over charcoal, then finished low and slow either wrapped tight in foil with a generous knob of butter or covered in a pan with beer until the meat yields completely and the fat renders into something that has no business being as good as it is. The tradition dates to the late 1950s, when local butchers started slicing pork shoulders into steaks instead of grinding them, and the backyard cooks of the Midwest never looked back.

Ours is cut from the coppa — the same muscle we carry as a whole roast, the most marbled section of the pasture raised pig, the one serious butchers isolate and everyone else grinds. Where a standard pork steak comes from the Boston butt, the coppa sits above it, running from the collar through the upper shoulder. The marbling is finer, more evenly distributed, and it produces a result in the pan that a blade steak simply cannot match.

At 1.5 inches thick, this deserves reverence and requires a little patience. Sear it hard on both sides in a ripping hot cast iron or on the grill until you have a deep, dark crust. Then either wrap it tight in foil with a hearty knob of butter and return it to low heat, or transfer it to a covered pan with a generous pour of beer. Either way, give it 45 minutes to an hour until the meat is fork tender and what is inside that foil or that pan has reduced into something worth spooning over everything on the plate. Rest it ten minutes before you slice against the grain. 

One steak per pack, priced by weight.

If you want the same coppa in a format built for a long smoke or braise for a crowd, our Coppa roast is the same cut left whole. Our Boston butt covers the same low and slow territory with more yield. And our pork tenderloin is there for the night you want something from this animal that requires no patience at all.