To start, buy the WHOLE roast “Boneless” – often McKenzie won’t do this but the ones from Swift will.
The only reason I say this is because the blade bone has ZERO utility here and you’re essentially paying for weight that you can’t eat or use.
If you’re not super confident with a knife – I’d make buying one like this a priority.
Find the Money Muscle, Remove it and Use as a Roast
The money muscle is found opposite the blade bone OR at the side of the roast.
When you’re buying pork butts, you can easily find this muscle in the packaging as it’ll always be at the edge; Ideally, the bigger the better.
To remove, start fat cap down, and look at the white “seam” at the edge of the muscle and then follow this with the tip of your knife.
Pull the muscle outward as you start to slice and it’ll naturally want to tear away from the meat.
After removing it’s essentially a fatter, but smaller pork tenderloin.
Unlike the loins though, you can push this muscle to around 180F+ and it won’t dry out because it has so much intramuscular fat.
This is uncharacteristic of most of the musculature found in pigs as most fat is INTER-muscular (it separates muscles) and not INTRA-muscular (between muscle fibers aka “marbling”).
Essentially any way you can think of to use a tenderloin – you can use this muscle.
- In the oven as a super small roast.
- Cut thin and against the grain for pork on a stick.
- Sliced thin and rolled up with stuffing or cheese.
- Marinated and then slow roasted in a crock pot.
- etc.
Cut Steaks with Half the Roast
After I remove the money muscle, I’ll cut 2-4, 1.5-2″ thick steaks with half the roast.
It doesn’t really matter what way you cut from, usually I just cut from the money muscle side, inward.
There’s like 12 muscles all colliding here so “against the grain” is a moot point at this stage.
Same deal as the muscle above, you can easily push these to ~180F and they won’t dry out – unlike a beef steak that only loses juiciness as we push the internal higher and higher.
Personally, I cook these over direct heat and use a mop like half way through.
But even just seasoning with salt, pepper and garlic is enough.
What About All the Fat Dylan?
Most people know that Pork Butt has a massive fat cap – and if you’ve trimmed the meat to this point you’ll start to notice those large pockets of intermuscular fat.
This excess fat I remove, put in a freezer bag and store until I have a substantial amount.
After you have a bunch – you can wet render into lard OR use for sausage making.
I have an entire article on how I wet render for purity’s sake – and while the article uses beef and renders tallow, I do the same thing for pork and lard.
This fat I often use for tortillas in place of crisco or for something like Carnitas.
Any “meat” that is in the boil after rendering the fat I remove and give to my dogs – so quite literally nothing goes to waste.
Okay, What About the Other Half
In almost all cases I grind the rest.
Where I live in New Hampshire they do not sell ground pork, at all; So the only way I have access to it for recipes is my own doing.
In terms of meat grinder – I use an attachment for my kitchen-aid.
Take the remainder and chunk up into pieces that’ll fit YOUR grinder.
Remove any fat and set aside for rendering and discard any connective tissue (like silverskin) – again I give this to my dogs.
Take the chunked lean pieces, put on a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet and put into your freezer for at least 2 hours; It’s also useful to freeze your grinder equipment too.
WARM meat DOES NOT grind well and will smear, especially the fat.
Depending on what you need the ground pork for you can use different plates (the holes) for your grinder.
Typically most people will do a first pass with a 3/8″ plate and then swap the plate for a second pass to say 3/16″ or 1/8″; Often I just do 2 passes with a 3/8″ plate.
I then freeze this meat flattened in freezer bags.
Cost Analysis
Most pork butt is $1.99 – $2.99/lb and most people just buy it to use for pulled pork or to slow roast.
We just made:
- 1 small pork tenderloin-like roast
- 2-4 thick cut pork steaks
- ~4 oz of lard
- 4-5 lbs ground pork
Typical costs of these items
- Pork tenderloin = ~$2.99/lb – $4.99/lb+
- Pork shoulder steaks = $3.49/lb-ish
- Pork fat (not leaf lard) like Bacon up = $8.38/lb
- Ground pork (90% lean) = $4-5/lb
So by doing all this yourself, you save quite a bit per pound just for slicing, grinding or boiling meat.
As a pro-tip, always be on the lookout for markdowns on this stuff, I’ve found pork butts as low as $1.49/lb even in 2025.
