Nose-to-Tail Eating: Buying Organic Offal and Traditional Cuts in Ontario
If you are searching for organic offal, traditional meat cuts, or pasture-raised nose-to-tail meat in Ontario, you are not alone. More people across the province are looking beyond steaks and chicken breasts and rediscovering how previous generations cooked by using the whole animal with intention and respect.
At Meeting Place Organic Farm, nose-to-tail eating isn’t a trend. It’s how we’ve always approached farming and food. If you know Tony McQuail, you know how much he loves to cook beef tongue.
We raise certified organic, 100% grass fed beef, pork, and chicken, and make a wide range of traditional cuts and offal available to customers across Ontario through our online farm store and delivery routes.
What Does Nose-to-Tail Eating Mean?
Nose-to-tail eating means using as much of the animal as possible including organs, bones, and traditional cuts rather than relying only on a small selection of popular muscle meats.
This approach:
Reduces food waste
Respects the life of the animal
Provides nutrient-dense foods often missing from modern diets
When animals are raised on pasture, fed a natural diet, and processed carefully, these cuts are not only usable — they are deeply nourishing and flavourful.
Organic Beef Offal and Traditional Cuts Available in Ontario
Our grass-fed, grass-finished beef is certified organic and raised entirely on pasture. Alongside familiar cuts, we offer a range of traditional beef options that support nose-to-tail eating:
Beef liver
Beef kidney
Beef tongue
Beef cheeks
Oxtail
Beef bones and knuckle bones (with and without marrow)
Nose-to-tail ground beef
These cuts are ideal for bone broth, slow braises, stews, and traditional recipes from many cultures. Beef liver, for example, is one of the most nutrient-dense foods available, while oxtail and cheeks create rich, collagen-filled meals when cooked low and slow.Here's a recipe to try for Jamaican Oxtail Stew.
Pasture-Raised Pork Offal and Heritage Cuts
Our pork is pasture-raised and certified organic, living outdoors where they are able to root and wallow. Pork is particularly well suited to nose-to-tail eating, and many traditional cuisines rely on these cuts.
Available pork offal and traditional cuts include:
Pork heart
Pork kidney
Pork tongue
Pork trotters (feet)
Pork tail
Pork jowl and pork jowl bacon
These cuts are prized for their flavour, fat content, and ability to enrich soups, stocks, and slow-cooked dishes. Pork jowl, has long been used as a flavour base in traditional cooking, while trotters are naturally rich in gelatin for broths.
Organic Chicken: Using the Whole Bird
Whole-animal eating is especially important with poultry. Our organic, pasture-raised chickens and only raised between April and September because our midwestern Ontario weather is too cold for them to pasture outside beyond that. They are processed with care, and we make a full range of nose-to-tail chicken cuts available:
Chicken livers
Chicken hearts
Chicken gizzards
Chicken feet
Chicken backs and necks
Chicken feet, backs, and necks are excellent for deeply nourishing broth, while hearts and gizzards are traditional staples fried, stewed or sauteed. These cuts are often overlooked, yet they are some of the most affordable and useful items in the freezer.
Why Ontario Customers Are Choosing Nose-to-Tail Meat
Across Ontario, customers are rethinking where their meat comes from and how much of the animal they’re actually using.
Nose-to-tail eating appeals to people who want:
Less waste and more sustainability
Better value from high-quality meat
A stronger connection to their food traditions
Buying offal and traditional cuts also supports smaller organic farms by allowing the entire animal to be used, rather than only a small percentage of popular cuts.
How to Buy Organic Offal and Traditional Cuts in Ontario
Meeting Place Organic Farm offers online ordering and scheduled delivery routes across Ontario.
Availability varies seasonally, as we raise and process animals on a small scale, in alignment with organic standards and animal welfare. The best way to stay informed is to join our email list, where we announce restocks, bulk beef, pork, and chicken availability, and delivery dates.
If you’re new to nose-to-tail cooking, start small:
Add bones or chicken feet to your freezer for bone broths
Try ground meat blended with organ cuts, what we call our Nose to Tail ground beef
Slow-cook tougher cuts like cheeks or tongue
These foods don’t require complicated recipes just time, care, and good ingredients.
Eating with Intention
Nose-to-tail eating isn’t about perfection. It’s about choosing food that aligns with your values, respecting animals, supporting organic farming, and reconnecting with how food has been prepared for generations.
For customers across Ontario, we’re proud to offer certified organic, pasture-raised beef, pork, and chicken including the offal and traditional cuts that make whole-animal eating possible.
To see what’s currently available, visit the farm store and join the email list at the bottom of our homepage for updates on upcoming deliveries.
Two weeks ago I gave a short talk at an Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario dinner. As I prepared for the talk it got me thinking about how essential our work is as organic and ecological farmers. Food is the underpinning of society. Unless food is produced in a manner that maintains the ecological health of the land and water it depends on for its productivity it will fail and society with it. When I was in University 45 years ago there were studies that showed that “modern industrial agriculture” was using 10 calories of energy as inputs of machinery, fertilizer, pesticides and in the industrial food system to put 1 calorie of food energy on a plate. Our modern agriculture is a remarkable inefficient way to turn fossil fuels into food. “Pre-industrial food systems” had a range of energy returned for energy invested that went from 5 to 50 – that is for every calorie invested in human and animal labour, saved seeds and equipment somewhere between 5 and 50 calories of food were produced. As we respond to climate change we need to develop an agriculture that turns sunlight into food using a lot less oil.
One of the hopeful and exciting things for me is that an ecological/regenerative agriculture offers us so much. If you are concerned about climate change an agriculture that builds soil organic matter is actively sequestering carbon while at the same time building a soil that is more effective at dealing with both drought and deluge. If species diversity is your interest a small diversified farm provides far more habitat and food for a myriad of plants and animals above ground and soil micro-organisms below. If you want food quality and nutrient density a biologically active soil is the place to start producing healthy plants and animals. I am proud of the work we’ve done and know there is still much to learn and do to create a regenerative agriculture. I want to thank you for your support of our efforts as customers and friends. I am pleased that Katrina is interested in carrying on this work. At times it is hard physically and mentally. At times it is worrying as climate disruption makes our weather less reliable. But it is important work and gratifying to see both the changes on our farm and the growing awareness in our society. I’m glad to share the journey with you.
