Shocking results as pork roll titans Case and Taylor are challenged by smaller brands. Watch video
New Jerseyans love to eat -- and debate -- their pork roll.
Mostly, that debate centers on the question of whether it's appropriate to call the stuff by its pre-1908 name of Taylor Ham (as many north Jerseyans do) or, simply, pork roll.
To me, that's a bit of a tired topic. Especially when there are far more important pork roll questions that have gone largely and shockingly unexplored -- such as, which brand of pork roll tastes best?
New Jerseyans' collective porkrollian consciousness is dominated by the two most well-known producers, Taylor Provisions and The Case Pork Roll Company.
But if you stop at Taylor and Case, you have barely cut the casing off the wider pork roll universe.
There are at least a half dozen companies that produce some version of New Jersey's beloved mystery meat. This week, with two dueling pork roll festivals slated for Saturday in Trenton, seemed the perfect time for a deep dive into what company does it best.
Trenton doubles down on pork roll festivals Saturday
NJ.com food dude Pete Genovese and I set up shop at Trenton Social Restaurant, site of the Trenton Pork Roll Festival 2016, to conduct what we believe is the most comprehensive blind pork roll taste test ever recorded.
We participated ourselves, grabbed a few NJ Advance Media reporters, some Trenton Social regulars and (as is required of any proper taste test) the guy fixing the hole at the front of the restaurant where a guy being chased by police crashed his car.
We found that, when tasted alongside one another, there are clear differences in taste, tanginess and texture. The world of pork roll never seemed so deep, rich, and complex.
As Trenton Social owner TC Nelson says in the video, "It's a big pork roll world out there!"
Check out the video above to find out the surprising results.
And here's a rundown of the five types we tested. We used the pre-cut version of all five to avoid skewing the results with our own inconsistent slicing.
Taylor: The original brand first developed by John Taylor in Trenton in 1856 and sold as "Taylor's Prepared Ham." Taylor was forced to change the name of the product in response to Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, but much of north Jersey never got the memo and stuck with calling it "Taylor Ham." It's the original, also sold under the brand name Trenton Pork Roll.
Case: The other most well-known brand, developed in 1870 by George Washington Case, a farmer from Belle Mead, Case is still produced in Trenton. They produce both a tangy and mild version. We tested the tangy version.
Alderfer: Little known fact: if you buy a pork roll sandwich at any Wawa store, you're eating Alderfer pork roll. The Harleysville, PA company supplies logs of a tangy pork roll to the convenience store chain but does not sell the same product in retail stores. Despite my two-hour drive to the company headquarters, I couldn't procure any of the Wawa version. Company officials did tell me the one-pound package labeled "Pork Roll Sausage" is a very similar product, so that's what we tested.
Hatfield: Hatfield Quality Meats of Hatfield, PA also produces a product, widely available at Shop Rite and other supermarkets, labelled as "Pork Roll Sausage." Like Alderfer's product the word "sausage" is added to the label comply with labeling laws. As Tim Martin, vice president at Alderfer told me, "it's basically the same stuff."
Johnston's: The Battisti family produces Johnston's House Brand Pork Roll out of their Allentown butcher shop aptly dubbed, "The Pork Roll Store." They sell full 6-pound rolls and smaller 1-pound packages of the sliced stuff. The name Johnston comes from Johnston Avenue in Hamilton to where Gabriel Battisti, now in his 80's, moved the family butcher shop from Trenton decades ago.
Frankly, I had never heard of this brand before, and they did so well in our taste test that I had to swing by their factory immediately afterward to ask them what their secret is. I took a short video, which you can see below.
Do you have a favorite brand? Let us know in the comments below.
Brian Donohue may be reached at bdonohue@njadvancemedia.com Follow him on Twitter @briandonohue. Find NJ.com on Facebook.