Bonngard's Family Meats

Bonngard's Family Meats

Cottage Grove, MN

Tuesday is your special day!

As part of cleaning up, repairing, remodeling our farmhouse, we had a lot of someone else's trash to discard.   Part of that included massive pieces of bad electronics.   Bad enough we were stuck with them, we couldn't lift them and they needed to be recycled.

Turns out Tuesday was a very good day.   The Washington County Environmental Center takes electronics...big, broken-down electronic items.   And, they have manpower....to lift gigantic discards off the truck! 

Whew!   With the satisfaction of an empty, and much lighter, truck...it was time to scope out local lunch options. 

It was Tuesday.   That's a very, very good day at Bonngard's Meats in Cottage Grove.

Bonngard's family-owned meat market used to serve deli lunch sandwiches...but the sandwich-maker retired..so no sandwiches for awhile.

But now, the Monday thru Friday lunch service has resumed, with a hot sandwich each day.   Tuesday is PRIME RIB!

The lunch special is a sandwich (in this case the prime rib), a side of deli salad (Mrs. Gerry's seem to be the options), a brownie or a cookie, and a soft drink in a can.  You can upgrade to a larger bottle of soda, too.

The prime rib sandwich is delish!  Lots of good-tasting prime rib sliced into manageable pieces on a serviceable white bun.  The guys at the next table were done with lunch, so they brought over their condiment

selection...Boar's Head many pepper mayo, horseradish, and mustard.   Yup, we tried each one on separate bites of our sandwich.   The horseradish is perfect, of course. 

A really good lunch, centered around high quality prime rib.   This was the start of a wonderful visit.

After lunch, it was time to browse.

Road packs are an assortment of meat sticks and cheeses in bite sized pieces....great to snack on, yup, on the road.

Lots of dog and sausage choices...like Big Hound dogs (they're really big)....but we opted for the North County Sausage (we haven't tried it yet) and the ANDOUILLE!   We asked the owner the level of heat in the andouille---he said about a 7 (enough for those who want some heat, but not enough to kill you).  We put the andouille in our chicken and sausage gumbo.   It browned beautifully, as meaty

and fine-textured, and I think the 7 rating was spot on.....it held its heat in the gumbo...in a pleasant and not overpowering way.  The grandkids (who like spicy) said it was more to their liking than the last batch of local grocery store andouille...that washed out in the overall dish.

But our shopping spree wasn't over.   I spotted some packages of frozen short ribs...those are in our freezer now, waiting for a good cold-spell when some big fatty short ribs will be just what we need.

John gravitated immediately to the breakfast sausage sliders.   They come frozen as well, so I think they'll be up north in the freezer....I guess that's my incentive to go do more work on the farmhouse (or I'll never get to taste one).

Tons of options in the marinated or crusted chicken breasts, too.   Pamesan-crusted, Bangkok Thai, raspberry chipotle, tortilla  crusted, parmesan crusted.....lots and lots of choices.   We have a raspberry chipotle and a Bangkok Thai in the freezer...one is certainly big enough for two people...they are huge.   We'll be enjoying them on the days we choose to eat animal protein.  I'll dream up some recipes for each one to make a complete meal.

Note, too...Bonngard's has Ferndale turkey (!!!).   They do their own smoked turkey....so that's on our list for future purchases.  The also carry Boar's Head brand products, plus lots of condiments, items to make sides (we chose the Rice River Northwoods rice blend (I'll create something with that in the next few weeks), Sturdiwheat products (pancake mix, bread mix and more).

But, the other beautiful things are located in their meat cases.    





Some gorgeous bacon (I'm putting that on the top of the list for our next visit), wonderful steaks, big bone-in porketta chops, hams, it just goes on and on.   

Everything at Bonngard's Family Meats 

looks delicious!

The lunch sandwiches on the other days include carved ham on Monday, the Prime Rib on Tuesday.....and for W, Th, F...you're just gonna have to go and find out for yourselves.

Worth the drive....have lunch, shop, dream about some fabulous upcoming meals, repeat.

Bonngard's.....we like it....we think you'll like it too.

Details:
Website                          http://www.bonngardsfamilymeats.com/
Location                         Google Maps