Smithfield has left a very bad taste in my mouth from my business with them on the retail level. I'm not a fan of Smithfield. Equally, I do not shop at Wal-Mart. However, I've noticed come comments on Facebook about Smithfield Extra Tender butts and ribs and I wanted to give them another peek so I stopped at my local Wal-Mart in Harrisonburg, VA, last evening to check them out.
The butts were nothing special that I could tell. They ranged form 7 to 9lbs, but the money muscles seemed very small. Some of the money muscles on the butts seemed to have been cut or trimmed. Not a lot of fat cap on these butts which is not really a bad thing, but makes me question the marbling inside the cut. Lots of blood, or red something, inside the packs which I'm not used to seeing in packaging from IBP or Swift.
On the St. Louis ribs I actually saw straight bones. There were about 10 packs of ribs on the shelf and all but about 2 of those packs had straight bones worthy of competition BBQ. But they were thin. Not much meat on those bones. When selecting my racks for competition I've always looked for meaty, well marbled, racks with straight bones. I don't claim to be an expert in KCBS competition cooking, but I cook a lot of racks of ribs in a year and I just do not see what's so special about these ribs.
I decided to take the Pepsi Challenge, though. I bought two butts and two racks to cook side-by-side my typical restaurant supply cuts. We'll see how it goes....