Barbecue season is in full swing this month, bringing with it long, sunny days spent grilling and chilling in the backyard or at the park.
Of course, everyone in the Land of Tri-Tip (i.e. the Central Coast) has his or her own special way of prepping and cooking meat; it’s when it’s time to take the meat off the grill that trouble tends to arise.
“Everyone asks me, ‘How do I know when it’s done?’” says Tim “Woody” Woodbury of Woody’s Butcher Block in Santa Maria.
We’re sitting in an office at the back of his shop on East Main Street as his stepson, Josh Bachrach, deals with some over-the-phone orders.
“Here’s what you do,” he says. “Hold up your right hand.”
He tells me to touch my pinky finger to my thumb, and he does the same.
“Now feel right here,” he says, pointing to the fleshy base of his thumb, the muscles of which are now gently flexed.
“That’s rare,” he explains, referring to the texture of the muscle.
Together we move each finger, one at a time, to our thumbs: ring finger (that’s medium), middle (that’s medium-well), and pointer (that’s well done).
The differences among the texture of the increasingly straining muscle are so apparent—and I’m so excited to learn this new cooking trick—that I fail to realize I’m comparing my flesh to cooked meat.
That measurement system is just one of the many tips Woody has for people who barbecue.
Here are some more:
“Let your meat come to room temperature or close to it, sitting for about 45 minutes to an hour,” he says. “It’s still a muscle; the closer it is to room temperature, the more tender it is.
“Don’t use the hooks! I know a lot of people in Santa Maria want to kill me for this, but don’t use hooks to take it off the grill,” he adds. “Turn it with tongs or gloves.”
Why is that so important?
“Because you’ve just spent all this time cooking the meat so it will be juicy. Poking a hole in it will cause all the juice to drip out.”
And last but not least, Woody says, “Let the meat rest for at least 10 minutes [after it’s done cooking]. It’s not going to get cold; it’s going to get better. It allows the juices to go back into the meat instead of running out on the plate.”
If there’s one thing Woody knows, it’s meat.
“I love to talk about meat,” he tells me—and it’s safe to say he likes eating and selling it, too.
He opened the Butcher Block about a year and a half ago after spending 28 years as a distributor for Cisco Foods.
“I decided 28 years of 100-percent commitment in a very aggressive industry was enough,” he explains. “It was a Tuesday afternoon; I called my wife and said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ and she said, ‘Then quit; we’ll figure it out.’”
After about a month of relaxation, he started applying for new jobs. That’s when his wife asked him the magic question: “What about the butcher shop?”
He’d penciled out a plan for a butcher shop about 15 years prior, but never acted on it—until his wife and stepson Bachrach started pushing the idea. The end result is the Butcher Block, which boasts an impressive list of specialty beef cuts, a lineup of house-made sausages, veal, elk, and an assortment of poultry, pork, lamb, and seafood selections. Woody’s also makes its own signature-brand beef jerky and various meat seasonings and has an in-house sandwich deli.
“Our mantra is, ‘Quality, quality, quality, quality,’” Woody told me. “We only sell the best quality products, from our beef all the way down to the napkins for our sandwiches, which are like disposable bath towels.”
The shop’s “entry-level” beef, as Woody calls it, is certified angus beef, which is used primarily for the ground round and tri-tip and sells for $6.99 a pound.
The next step up is the Wagyu beef, which has a higher marbling ranking and a lower fat melting point.
“It allows the fat to get into the meat sooner,” Josh says of the melting point.
“And it gives you that rich, satisfying fat flavor,” Woody chimes in, adding that the Wagyu beef ribs are the shop’s most popular item.
“[Wagyu beef] has almost as many Omega 3 fatty acids as fish, so it’s a healthier beef, too,” he says.
The final level is Kobe-style, which is produced domestically by cattle ranchers in Idaho. Kobe beef first came from Kobe, Japan, and its production involves giving the cows daily massages, feeding them beer, and playing music for them.
“It’s a completely stress-free life,” Woody says.
However, Japan no longer exports Kobe beef, so it’s incredibly rare to see it stateside. The Kobe-style beef Woody gets comes from a herd of cows whose ancestors come from Japan.
Another popular cut of meat is the Delmonico rib-eye steak, which Woody calls a “prime rib lollipop.”
“We tease our customers that they’ll have to go to Confession after eating it,” he says, “because it’s a sin to eat something that good.”
And don’t forget those house-made sausages: Caprese, Santa Maria style, raspberry habañero, blackened bleu, chili verde, spicy Italian, chicken chorizo, beer brat, a breakfast sausage, and the newest addition, gustoso, which translates from Italian to “tasty” and is made with chicken, artichokes, roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, and feta cheese.
Woody says his staff and he created the gustoso sausage because some of his customers asked for a milder, chicken-based link. While Bachrach and he prefer some heat in their meat, they’re almost always willing to fulfill their customers’ requests.
“When we order something for a customer, we’ll usually have some extra and we’ll try it and if it rocks, we’ll carry it,” he says.
Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at [email protected].
