One arrives at the Duma Meats and Farm Market from any direction after driving through bucolic Ohio farm country with barns and livestock littered in picture-perfect fields.   Near Canton, the market has grown from a small butcher shop set up by great-grandpa Lawrence Duma, a Romanian immigrant in the 1920s, and is now shepherded by Dave Duma with several of the fourth generation working in various aspects of the business.

First, let’s get this out of the way…..you WANT to visit this market.   You’ll be amazed at the locals pushing huge carts of grass-fed beef or free-range chickens, both frozen and fresh, toward checkout.   The market is as large as a small grocery store with all things related to beef and pork and a smattering of Lake Michigan scallops and locally caught fish.    There’s fresh cheeses and dairy products, an amazing deli assortment and a well-stocked selection of organic fruits and vegetables.

We were honored to accompany three master chefs, Veronica Cili, Debbie Thomas and Angela Perkins, on a tour behind the scenes with the master himself leading the way from specialty room to specialty room.    What is most evident is the love this family brings to feeding the region with high quality products.    Someone on site knows the answer to any question you may have about a certain cut or how to prepare anything they sell or how to get deer jerky made during hunting season.

Chef Veronica mugging with Dave Duma in the meat locker

Then it was into the sausage room where he showed off the equipment to stuff various combinations of meats while explaining the fat content virtually required for good sausage as 20-30%.   “It just isn’t a taste anyone would buy when we’ve tried to make it less fat content,” he says while encouraging us to move on through plastic panels into the next room.

There’s a five-by-five-by-five-foot drying oven specifically designed to allow rolling racks to glide in and out to make multiple types of jerky at a time.   While they can’t purchase and resell deer meat by law, they are allowed and have a healthy business in butchering and making jerky for hunters.   Each fall this part of the operation gets extra staff members to handle the regional load at the same time others are preparing holiday turkeys and hams.

Only a quick glimpse was possible of the jerky oven in operation

Dave showing smoked hams in the smoke room

We moved through more rooms of bacon smoking, deli items and cold storage for all the dairy products they purchase for the store.    As we make our way back through packaging machines to the customer service area it is clear the business is both booming and healthy.   Staff are all busy and have a way of not getting in each other’s way as they handle hundreds of customer requests at a time along a fifty-foot counter area.

Dave turns us over to a senior staffer who shows us how he uses a basic band saw to cut tenderloin chops to size or thick pork chops sliced through quickly and efficiently.   We were taking steaks home for the chefs to prepare later so he cuts up a tenderloin into eight 2-inch thick filet mignons and offers the choice of taking the trimmed fat for other purposes or an equivalent weight in ground chuck.    The chefs opt for the chuck and add in bone sliced in four-inch wide pieces for bone marrow stock.   The giant femur is adeptly cut through the same saw and packaged up in less than a minute.

Slicing beef bones for marrow

Whether you get a behind-the-scenes look or not, you won’t be disappointed with a visit to Duma Meats.  You can find out more information, including the recipes, at www.dumameats.com.