# Beef Larding Needle!



## pops6927 (Mar 21, 2013)

For my birthday my wife asked me what I wanted, and I told her, "beef larding needle!".Even after 40+ years married to a meatman, she still gives me straaaaange  looks, shrugs her shoulders, but smiles and says, "Go for it!"

Ordered this out of Hubert Co.,  (www.hubert.com)   meat and restaurant supply.  $15.99 w/$10 shipping and $5 small order surcharge, $32 and change.













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__ pops6927
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Looks like a pretty simple tool; long, s/s shaft coming to a point with a hole in the middle, just like a needle!    The rosewood handle has one flat side to it so it won't roll off the table and you know that it will stay where you left it.   The business end can be pretty dangerous, I've seen many a meatcutter shove it through a finger, hand or arm many times by mistake, so you must maintain total respect for it.

It serves a single purpose; to shove butcher twine through a piece of meat.  You can hang beef roasts with it, tie up a flap to a roast, interior stitch meat together, etc.  The three boneless pork butts I just rolled and tied, if I didn't have stockinette, I could push a string through the roast and hang it from a ham hook.  We would tie tags on meats with it for custom cutting to identify it.

It is called a 'larding' needle as, in 'the olde days' you could tie on extra layers of non-related fat to roasts; ham, pork, beef, etc., both internally and externally with it; something now outlawed in the 60's.  You cannot add non-contiguous layers of meat or fat to any other piece of meat.

But, it does perform a service and it does do it well!  (for example, I pierced a tennis ball with butcher twine with mine that I brought home from work, tied a knot in the end of it, and hung the other end to my garage ceiling; When the wife comes home from work and she hits the tennis ball with her windshield, she knows she must stop at that point!)

item no: 61905

desc: needle, s/s roast beef

price ea.: 15.99

Ship: Fedex Ground

Shipping: $10

Small Order Fee: $5

Get online and you can get their catalog as long as you have a commercial business, or a good reason.


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## kathrynn (Mar 21, 2013)

Cool gadget!!! 

Kat


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## pops6927 (Mar 26, 2013)

Knew this was coming up, smoking the boneless pork butt roasts today, thought I'd give a demo on how to use it:

Fold the butcher twine in half a short ways from the end and push through the hole, it is elongated for that purpose:













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Pull it through, adjust it so it is about 1/3rd the length of the shaft, no more:













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Plunge into roast:













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Completely through until the twine is on the other side:













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remove twine from needle:













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and pull needle out, leaving twine strung through the roast, ready to tie (use a square knot so it won't come loose) and hang!













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However, on these roasts, I'll use stockinette for a nicer finish to the exterior.













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Hung in the smokehouse ready to fire up!  Started at 7am, fired up at 7:30am!













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You can also plunge the needle through the meat first, then push in the twine and draw it back through, too, you can stitch with it, tie a piece of meat to another, etc.  It is a wonderful tool to know how to use and the many applications it affords.


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## smokinclt (Mar 26, 2013)

Nice write up/description pops. I think I need to get one of these as well. In fact I am quite sure i need one of these. Funny thing is I never needed one until now. 
	

	
	
		
		



		
			






Doug


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## pops6927 (Jul 15, 2013)

One unique thing I did was string a tennis ball from my garage ceiling.  Pushed it through a tennis ball and tied a knot.  My wife stops when she enters the garage when the tennis ball hits her windshield!  She just lines the ball up with the center of her steering wheel!













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## bikerchef (Mar 20, 2016)

Sorry guy but that's not a *larding needle *and you're not larding the roast.

See **

Larding is an old method of adding fat to dried cuts of meat.

Lardons are thin strips of pork fat or bacon. Bacon lardons are used

in recipes from roux to salads.


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## SmokinAl (Mar 20, 2016)

bikerchef said:


> Sorry guy but that's not a *larding needle *and you're not larding the roast.
> 
> See **
> 
> ...



This post is over 2 years old. How did you find it?

I don't think Pops was trying to lard the roast, he was just showing a way to string a roast so you could hang it up.

He may have used the wrong terminology, but the photo of the packaging says it's a fish stringer.

Pops grew up in a butcher shop & maybe in the old days a larding needle looked like this one.

If he wants to call it a larding needle then I don't see why that should be a  problem?

Al


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## mneeley490 (Mar 20, 2016)

LOL! My father-in-law did the tennis ball trick, too. A working stiff all his life, he bought a used Mercedes after he retired. He loved that thing, and had the tennis ball set up so it would touch the hood ornament when parked correctly.


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