Old Station Craft Meats Is My Butcher. Here's Why.

Airline chicken breasts? Cross-cut veal shanks? Bavette steaks? A bone-in leg of lamb that will fit into your roasting pan? No problem.

Have you ever tried to follow a recipe that starts with, “Ask your butcher to….”?

Once upon a time, most supermarket counters had butchers who could pretty much do whatever a recipe specified. Not so much anymore. Even if they have a dedicated staff behind the meat counter, I haven’t found anyone who, for example, will break down a chicken exactly the way you want it. I’ve been looking for skin-on boneless chicken breasts for ages. And I’ve finally found a butcher who will do them for me.

That butcher is Nick Lenters and staff at Old Station Craft Meats (450 6th St., Waukee; 515-452-0150). The store is dedicated to “whole animal butchery,” which means they work with the entire animal, allowing them to offer a lot of cuts that most supermarkets do not.

They also offer top-quality meats, mostly from local farmers, including sustainably raised, heritage breeds of pork (Kerns Farm and Berkwood Farms). While their chicken comes from Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania, it’s a quality brand you’ll sometimes spot proudly highlighted on restaurant menus.

How to Shop at Old Station Craft Meats

My recent haul at Old Station. Clockwise from top: bavette steak, veal osso buco, whole chicken (cut just the way I like it—see below), Italian sausage, ground lamb, veal cutlet, ground pork.

Lenters tells me that if they have the meat available in-house, you can get it trimmed the way you wish (e.g., London broil cut to a specific thickness, or those aforementioned chicken breasts). However, if you have a very special special order—e.g., you’re looking to get a turkey spatchcocked for your Thanksgiving—you might need to call ahead.

Yet if you simply pop in, you’ll find dozens of great options. The fresh meat case is, above all, steak city—Denver steaks, chuck eye steaks, Delmonico steaks, sirloin, rib eyes, New York strips, filets; you’ll also find beef chuck roasts as well as prized pork cuts including porterhouse cuts, French bone-in chops, and boneless chops. Sausages, too. And the chickens.

The end of the work week brings even more.

“Toward the weekend, we’ll start putting out special items, like our Mongolian beef skewers, Korean BBQ short ribs, and gourmet burgers—like jalapeño-cheddar, and we’ll have a few more steak options, such as porterhouse, T-bones, tomahawk steaks and dry-aged rib eye steaks,” Lenters told me.

The frozen cases, which line an entire wall of the place, are even more of a treasure trove. That’s where I spotted some cuts I’ve been looking for, without success, until now.

Here are some of the cuts I took home, including how I cooked (or plan to cook) them:

Airline Chicken Breast

The airline breast of chicken (front) would work beautifully in my recipe, Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Ricotta and Fines Herbes. Find my recipe here: https://onfoodandfrance.substack.com/p/everyone-who-loves-french-food-needs

Often featured in polished restaurants, this skin-on cut is boneless except for the drumette. Easier to eat than a bone-in breast, but much more flavorful than a skinless breast, it’s a best-of-both-worlds cut: the bone keeps the meat moist during cooking, the skin adds flavor and texture (especially when cooked to crispy perfection), and the overall cut, with very little bone, is effortless to slice and eat at the table.

To get this cut from Old Station, you’ll need to buy a whole chicken and request that the breasts be cut airline style. I also asked them to bone the thighs, but leave the skin on. A chicken cut this way easily feeds four diners. They finished this special order in the time it took me to complete the rest of my shopping.

Duck Breast!

Duck breast from Old Station Craft Meats. I cooked it with a dried-cherry-studded reduction sauce. That recipe is in my head, but one of these days, I’ll write it down, if you wish!

Old Station Craft Meats isn’t the only place in town that sells Maple Leaf duck breast, but as long as I was there, I picked up a two-pack. I love these boneless, skin-on breasts, with their rich flavor and somewhat flank-steak texture. Duck breast is, in my mind, one of the easiest of the gourmet meats to cook (even if I did cook the one in the above photo a little past the medium temperature I prefer).

Veal Cutlets

Where have all the veal cutlets gone. It’s high time to revive these gems.

Whatever happened to breaded veal cutlets? This classic meets at the intersection of delicate and homespun, and the cutlets I found at Old Station were perfect for the job. Find my recipe in the comments section. I haven’t had this dish for years, and I’m so glad I can now make it any time I want.

Bavette Steak

Bavette steak topped with a compound butter made by stirring cilantro, sriracha, and garlic into softened butter. Served with a Beet Banh Mi salad I picked up at Nourished DSM. Also good on any salad platter. Or with fried potatoes.

Bavette is also known as “sirloin flap,” but Lenters and I had a good laugh over that one. “I mean, who wants to eat something called ‘sirloin flap?’” he asked.

Much more appropriate, then, to call it by its French name, bavette. Besides, it’s a quintessentially French cut you see often on casual menus throughout France, sometimes as part of a steak-frites duo. But no matter what you call it, this richly marbled and deeply flavored cut, which comes from the sirloin area near the lower belly of the cow, is worth any beef-lover’s attention.

Take care, however. It’s easy to overcook this guy, which can make it chewier than you want. Medium rare is best. And if you really want to ensure tenderness, opt for marinating it. Also, be sure to cut it across the grain (perpendicular to the grain, that is).

Cross-Cut Veal Shanks for Osso Buco

These cross-cut veal shanks are still in my freezer, but I’m willing to bet they’ll be great in a classic Osso Buco Milanese.

Osso buco (that’s “bone with a hole,” in Italian), are cross-cut veal shanks, and I haven’t seen them anywhere in town since Dahl’s closed (how I pine for the days when they put out their specialty meats on Thursdays!).

I’ve only ever made veal shanks into a classic osso buco Milanese—the long-simmering braise with vegetables in white wine and tomatoes. My own recipe came from a cookbook I inadvertently let go a long time ago; however, this one looks very much like the one I’ve memorized from that book.

Other Cuts

As you can see from the photo, I also picked up some ground pork, ground lamb, and Italian sausage (this tasty version was fennel-enhanced—as you’d expect—but wine-laced, for an added bonus of deep flavor). There’s so much more—from all kinds of sausages to lamb shanks, grass-finished beef cuts, and splurgy cuts like prime rib.

One more thing: I adore the packaging for the ground meats, and I wonder why other meat retailers don’t do it as often. The flat packs fit beautifully in the freezer, and they thaw more quickly (in the fridge, people!) than those square packages you often see.

Announcing the First Whole Hog Jubilee

Pork-lovers and farm-to-table fans will want to know about the first annual Whole Hog Jubilee. This harvest celebration dinner will team up products from local producers—including a whole hog from Nick Lenters at Old Craft Station—with a pitmaster, chef (Aaron Holt), and mixologists to “taste and see the full bounty of what our community can create.”

The first 50 people to purchase their tickets by October 1 will enjoy an early-bird discount. Get more details here.

What I’m Working On Next:

• I plan to revisit The Webster in Iowa City. Is it still the best restaurant (IMHO) in Iowa? I’ll report back!

• I’m also doing a tour of Dubuque and some Mississippi river towns in northeast Iowa. I’ll feature a story or two in time for you to plan a nice autumn break for leaf-looking!

• I visited one of the city’s more talked-about new high-end restaurants. Is it worth the glowing accolades it’s received so far? I need another visit to decide!