They begin picking up pieces and removing the meat from the bones by hand. The luscious stock left behind continues to simmer.Then, six Dietrich’s employees-Bill Moyer, Andrew Dietrich, Anson Dietrich, Andrew Pike, Emily Kutz, and Becky Zinn-gather around one of the bone carts. He then drains the liver-and-skin vat, the contents of which lands in large plastic buckets with a strong plop! The scrapple sauna smells of iron ore, wooden crates, nutmeg, and that strange sweetness unique to organ meats. The bones on the cart will cool until they are safe to touch, about an hour. Larry’s forearms strain.“So you’re the muscle, huh?” I say.“Either that or the dummy,” he responds.Larry transfers the cooked bones to several large stainless-steel carts. Golden broth streams from the giant colander. Larry hoists a long-handled strainer up and into the pot of bones and lifts. He’s stocky in a powerful way, and you immediately learn why. “Let me get Larry.”Larry Kutz struts into the sauna as Marlin departs. Sliding a morsel of what may have been a pig’s foot between his lips, Marlin nods. “It’s ready when you can pull the meat off the bone,” he says. Next to the bone vat is a separate vat filled with liver and skin, some of which will eventually join the meat to enhance its richness.Periodically, Marlin plucks a hunk of animal product from the tub. “But the government won’t let you do that anymore if you want to sell it.”The bones, left over from the week’s slaughter, will boil for at least four hours. The entire rooms sweats.“Back in the day, the Pennsylvania Dutch would cook their scrapple in cast iron over a wood fire,” Marlin says. I feel the heat from the roiling cauldron against my temples. The largest, Marlin tells me, contains 500 pounds of pork and beef bones. Steam rises from two massive stainless steel vats. and I’m standing in what can only be described as a scrapple sauna. Scrapple was part of that.”It’s 7:45 a.m. Dietrich’s, a family-run operation, has been butchering, curing, smoking, and slicing at their facility since 1975.“We’re carrying on tradition here,” says Marlin Dietrich, a barrel of a man whose hands look like they could crush stone. Even thick-cut bacon can’t match its flavor.Curious as to how scrapple derives its powers, I spent the day at Dietrich’s Meats & Country Store in Lenhartsville, PA. But sliced into quarter-inch-thick rectangles, hot-cooked crispy around the edges and slightly soft in the center, scrapple is a two-textured treat of salty, porky deliciousness. The processed pork product has the size, shape, and color of solid concrete blocks. Out here, you’ll find scrapple on just about every diner menu-and if it’s not, you had better find a different diner.Scrapple, as locals joke, is made of “everything but the oink,” meaning that you’d make scrapple out of whatever parts of the pig you had leftover after cutting bacon, chops, ribs, and loin. A region 20 minutes east of a place where there are still horse-drawn carriages, Amish farmers’ markets, and towns with names like New Holland. Part of scrapple’s unpopularity is likely due to its name, which contains both the words “scrap” and “crap.” But the other part comes from the fact that most people have no idea what the hell scrapple actually is.That includes me, a longtime resident of the unofficial scrapple region of Pennsylvania. In the world of breakfast meats, scrapple ranks as the most underappreciated.
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