Pork Shoulder Roast > 3#

Our pastured pork shoulder roast (aka Boston Butt) is made from Heritage breeds raised in wooded pastures right here on our local Wisconsin farm. Our pork shoulder is free from GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, crates, and MSG.

Sizes currently range from about 3 to 5 lbs so if you have a preference, let us know on the checkout form! 

Perfect for carnitas, and sliced or pulled pork. Usually more tender and meaty than a picnic roast. However, the picnic roast is more flavorful. There is much debate on the internet about which cut is preferred to make great pulled pork. I think either cut will be just fine, so long as they are cooked low and slow, giving the otherwise tough connective tissue time to be transformed into self-basting, juicy little bits of goodness.

Boston Butt vs. Picnic Roast

The most simple way to look at it is that the whole shoulder is made up of two separate cuts, the butt and the picnic.

The pork butt is referring to the shoulder. The term butt comes from the way that the pork shoulder cuts were packaged into barrels back in the day and these barrels were referred to as butts. These barrels were used for packaging and shipping. To complicate things even more, our good friends up in Boston were cutting the pork shoulder in such a way that it was referred to in other regions of the country as the Boston butt.

The picnic is the portion closest to the knee, and the butt is the portion closest to the spine of the animal (furthest from the knee). Normally a Boston butt will be rectangular in shape. The picnic tends to look like a cone, with one side being larger and a smaller side having the look of an actual leg, bone and all.

The take home message is as follows: The term pork shoulder is generally used to describe the cuts of meat found within the pork shoulder, the butt or the picnic, or both.