Frugal Shopping - Pork Neck

Today I decided to take a walk down to the Asian supermarket - the 168 Market here in Ottawa. It is just outside of Chinatown and not very far at all from my house. Wow, what an incredible experience! I hadn't been there in about 7 or 8 years, but after this visit I decided I will most certainly make regular visits from now on. It is like taking a vacation in the Far East because it is a pretty large supermarket, and there are virtually no products at all that are recognizable to a westerner like me! Mystery and excitement in every aisle!!! Even better is the fact that the prices are so reasonable.

I was especially impressed with the butchery and fish counter. I eyed some pork neck that was being sold in large chunks for 99 cents a pound, and after spending a half hour or so going through the whole store to check out every shelf, I came back and got a chunk. The butcher cut it up into several smaller chunks, and weighed it at 1.815 lb or 824g, which came to $1.80. I'm all about being frugal, and that seemed like a really good deal. So I was excited to get it home for a little experiment!

What I decided to do was to cook it in the pressure cooker for about 15 minutes, then let it cool and separate the meat from the bones. I then weighed the bones to see how much of the total weight they comprised. As it turned out, about 1/3 of the weight was in the bone - 268g of the 824g total net weight.

The other day I picked up some pork tenderloin on sale at Loblaw's / Superstore, and it was $3.28 / kg, which works out to about $1.50 / lb. Which given that my pork neck was 99 cents / lb and 1/3 bone, means that my pork neck was about the same price for the meat, as the pork tenderloin. So not as great of a bargain as I had originally suspected. But honestly still not that bad of a price, and certainly a better choice than pork tenderloin for soups or broths, or anything else where you want the flavour addition of the bone.

I actually returned the bones to the pressure cooker when I was done, added some more water, and cooked them for another half hour. I'll probably can the broth.