Monmouth Street’s man of meats, Stew Goldstein shows off special cut of pork loin for the grill. (Photo by Jim Willis. Click to enlarge) By JIM WILLIS 
As grilling season heats up, PieHole is checking in with area butchers to find out what special cuts they like to set aside for themselves for home grilling. You are not going to find any of their selections shrink-wrapped in your local grocery store’s meat case.
In fact, lesser-known cuts like these are exactly the reason PieHole prefers to shop at the Green’s local butchers: affordable, great-tasting cuts that we’ve never heard of before. This week’s cut is something Stew Goldstein at Monmouth Meats in Red Bank came up with while experimenting with the fat that covers a bone-in pork loin. As far as he knows, there’s no name for the cut, so he just refers to it as “a $3.99 a pound piece of heaven.” A good butcher would recognize it as the cap or top of the bone-in pork loin rib-end. Typically, it will weigh about a pound and a half. Goldstein tells PieHole he likes to season it with a good pork dry rub, and then grill it on high heat and burn off some of the fat. When it’s done, he slices it thin, against the grain. “It doesn’t need to cook that long,” says Goldstein, “I just like to crisp the outside up. By the time you pour that vodka and tonic and have a couple of sips, it will be done.” Because this cut comes from the top of a sizable pork loin, butchers typically won’t have many of these cuts to spare. “So get your order in early,” advises Goldstein. See the other affordable grilling cuts articles in this series.
