Two ramen restaurant chains in Japan have put typically underutilized pork cuts at the center of the plate adding more value to U.S.pork exports. Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation president and CEO, explains USMEF develops relationships with food service in Japan to continually find new uses for U.S. pork.
“We’re constantly, in our various offices, looking at opportunities to add value,” Halstrom says. “It’s even more important today with the uncertain trade situation and some economic headwinds in some of these key markets. We’ve had some success here recently in our Japan market with a ramen noodle chain, actually called Ramen Kagetsu. They have 250 restaurants throughout the whole country of Japan, and we’ve recently worked with them to shift their current supply source, which was dependent upon EU pork belly, and now they will be shifting over to using U.S. false lean.”
False lean is a piece off the boneless loin on the shoulder end, which is very flavorful and highly marbled. The company projects utilizing 40 metric tons of the product each month.
“This is really a good example of adding value as false lean typically would go into trimmings or into some sort of lower value further processing, and the fact that we have positioned it into the center of the plate, so to speak, in food service, we’re really excited about that,” Halstrom explains.
The Japanese ramen chain, Kairikiya, has also switched to U.S. pork cushion meat, previously using Mexican pork picnic as its protein source for ramen noodle dishes.
“Effective in May of this year we’ll see 100% switch from Mexican picnics to U.S. cushion meat,” Halstrom says. “The usage rate is about 1000 metric tons per year, so this is very significant in terms of a volume shift.”
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