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KENTUCKY BACON
Father's Country Farms (Charles Gatton Jr.)
Father's Country Hams (Lorene Gatton)
Meacham Country Hams (Rodman Meacham)
Meacham Country Hams (William Meacham)
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Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans.
Ronny
and Beth Drennan
BROADBENT COUNTRY HAMS
6321 Hopkinsville Road
Cadiz, KY 42211
Ph: 800-841-2202
www.broadbenthams.com
The Broadbent family has been in the business of curing hams and bacon since 1920. All the while, the business has remained adjacent to the Broadbent family farm in Cadiz, Kentucky. In 1999, the Broadbent family sold their business to Ronny and Beth Drennan. The Drennans had previously made furniture and crafts, but they had always heard of Broadbent Hams. It took some time to learn the ins and outs of the curing business, but Smith Broadbent has been there to help. Today, Ronny and Beth carry on the Broadbent tradition of quality, and they have won enough awards to live up to the founder’s name. In fact, Broadbent’s won the prize for Grand Champion ham at the Kentucky State Fair this year. At auction, it fetched a record-breaking $340,000, the money from which will go to state charities.
• • • Listen to this 3-minute audio clip of Ronny & Beth Drennan talking how they developed their flavors of bacon. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]
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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: Ronny & Beth Drennan, owners
DATE: August 22, 2005
LOCATION: Broadbent Hams-Cadiz, KY
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans
Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Monday, August 22, 2005 and I'm in Cadiz, Kentucky--Western Kentucky at Broadbent Hams with Ronny and Beth Drennan…Could I have both of you announced your names and also, if you don't mind, for the record--for history's sake get your birth dates also?
Ronny Drennan: Ronny Drennan--April 7, '58
Beth Drennan: Beth Drennan--June 5, '59.
[C]ould y'all give me a little bit of history about Broadbent Hams and how y'all came to be in the business?
RD:
Of course. Broadbent Hams--the original family started the business in
1909. They actually went under inspection--federally inspection in 1966.
And they had basically been a farm-oriented family all the years and they
did mail order and had a gift shop here at the plant here and then they
built a new gift shop a few years back. And in 1999 we bought the business
from the original owners. At the time we bought it they had a mail order
business, the gift shop, and one wholesale customer that they sold to.
And since that time, we've promoted more in the wholesale business and
the mail order business to try to grow the business both--in both areas.
What made y'all want to buy the business?
RD: A good friend of ours that had--he was actually the broker I guess for Mr. Broadbent had just come to us and told us it was an opportunity that we should look at. Of course, growing up in west Kentucky we had always heard of Broadbent, so you know it wasn't something that was new to us and it was just something that we thought would be a good business to try. So that's--
What were y'all doing before?
RD: We were in the furniture business at that time.
BD: [Laughs]
RD: We made crafts and furniture.
And y'all just left that behind and got into ham and bacon?
RD: Yeah, yeah.
BD: [Laughs]
Was there a learning curve involved or is it--
BD: Huge learning curve, yeah. [Laughs]
RD: Yeah; there was a big learning curve, you know but of course we had--you know, Mr. Broadbent was still around you know, so if there was anything that we needed to know he was always willing and welcome to help us in anything that we needed.
What was his first name?
RD: Smith--Smith Broadbent, III.
Okay; and did he--do you know how his business grew when he began it and was it just a family producer and they--
RD: It--when he first started the business he was--they
were going to cure the hams and make the hams and they were going to be
the B&B actually started out to be Broadbent and Bingham’s which
at that time the Bingham’s owned the Louisville Courier-Journal.
And he was going to be partners with them and they was going to be the
ones that promoted the ham you know and--and sold it and Smith and them
were going to be the ones that cured it. But once they started through
a series of tragedies that some of the Bingham’s got killed and
illnesses and passed--you know that sort of come by the wayside over the--and
the Broadbent’s bought the business back out--their half from the
Bingham’s. But it always stayed Broadbent's B&B Food Products.
But that was the original intent--was it would have 
been
Broadbent & Bingham’s and they would have been the ones that
did the--you know promotion you know because they had access. They had
the newspaper and all that to--to get the name out. And so--
All right; well let's talk about what you do here. Coming from the furniture business, what--what did you have to learn first and what was the hardest to learn and--and what do you do on a daily basis?
BD: We had to learn everything. [Laughs]
RD: Right; of course we had people here that--you know curing a ham or bacon is not really hard. You know it's--once you--of course I did it--my dad cured hams when we were kids at home and--and bacon. Of course we do it on such a much larger scale that it's--but you know the hardest thing I guess for us you know you can't teach somebody how to go through a Christmas season in the--in the mail order business and all. You just have to go through it yourself you know…That's the hardest thing for us…But, you know, curing bacon--ham or bacon, you know we're talking about bacon so you know it's a very easy process. You know when our bacon comes in we actually hand-rub it; we'll mix our sugar and salt and we use some sodium nitrate in our--in the cure, so we mix all that together and then when the bellies come in we just lay them on the table and start rubbing them one at a time and then we'll stack them on the shelf.
So you outsource the pork? Do you get that from somewhere else?
BD: Yes…All of ours has been coming from Premium Standard Farms in Milan, Missouri. And that's because we're so small, a lot of the other companies don't want to talk to us. They won't--they won't deliver to us because we don't take a truckload at a time. You know that's the downside of being small but this company has been very good to us and they took real well--good care of us, so we have stayed with them.
Did [Smith Broadbent] ever raise his own pigs?
RD: When they originally started the business, they did intend to raise their own hogs and they raised some of their own hogs when they first started the business.
BD: Well for several years--Smith has a twin brother, Bob, and Bob raised the hogs and Smith then did the curing; he took care of this part. So they did that for I'd say until sometime in the '70s--late '70s or early '80s. I'd say they did it for quite--for quite sometime.
Uh-hm; and has Mr. Smith passed?
RD: No; he's still living.
BD: No; he's still living--he's 66 years old. {Smith Broadbent lives at the end of Broadbent Road, behind the business, where his family’s farm is. It is also where the ham house is located.]
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Well that's great; you still have a relationship?
RD: Yeah; he's in the--he has offices across the hall from us. We lease the building from him. So we see him lots of times every day.
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And you were saying you grew up curing bacon or with that experience in a--in a community, in a family or--can you talk about that a little bit on a smaller scale what that was like?
RD: Well, of course I was raised on a dairy farm and of course we had hogs and cattle and, you know, and everything. And there was six kids, so you know [my father] always killed his own hogs and we never got to eat the ham because you--he could sell the hams for so much more money and then buy bacon or something like that for that many kids. So I--I guess I was grown before I ate country ham much because we just didn't get to eat it at home. That's what he sold at Christmas and we got the--he bought bacon because it was a lot cheaper. But you know he--he would kill six, eight, to ten hogs, you know which back then seemed like a lot but to what we do now that's--you know that's nothing. But--and of course it's altogether done different, you know; when they put it in the old salt box and leave it and keep it covered up you know and--now we do it where we hand-rub them and try to put the right amount of salt where--that they don't get over salty and try to control it and we can control the temperature you know. Growing up like that you had to do it when it was cold because you wanted your average temperature to be down in the 30s and keep the hams where they wouldn't spoil and over the years you know after they come out of the--they'd call it the winter time--that would be about 38 degrees and they'd go through what we called spring and we call it equalization where it would be somewhere around 50 degrees for a while and then when it warms up to the summer when they call it summer sweats in ham, you know. So we control ours with the temperature; we start out at 38 and we go to about 50 and then we go up into the 70s and age all of our hams and we think we can get a more consistent flavor by controlling the temperature and the--and the humidity than just going by the temperature outside. If it gets too hot or too cold or something you know we can change--you know the flavor, so we think that you know--feel like we can get a more consistent flavor by controlling the temperature and the number of days that we keep everything and cure that way.
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And now the flavors of your bacon; I saw you have a sun-dried tomato bacon and Maplewood cinnamon and--
RD: Uh-huh.
How did--how did those get developed?
RD: When we bought the business we had--hickory was all we had and we decided to try a peppered bacon and it did real well for us, so--and then we had a large maple syrup company that we was making--wanted us to make bacon for them but they wanted something with maple because that's--that's what they did was maple syrup. And so they asked you know if we could smoke it maple or something so we come up and we--I said well we could try it. So I got some maple dust from a company and we smoked the bacon with maple dust, sent it to them, and they liked it. So that's how our maple smoked bacon--and so we knew we would have extra because of just doing it for one company we had ended up with some so we put it in our catalog and you know surprisingly on the--especially north, it has gone real well. Of course, northern people are more used to maple syrup and stuff and I guess--and they like the maple smoked better than the hickory.
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Hmm, and so let's talk about your sun-dried tomato bacon. How did that come about?
RD: That was her idea; she just--she said that you know everything about--that you read they were putting sun-dried tomato bacon or seasoning on it and so she, you know said she wanted to try it, so we called--I called the seasoning company and got them to send me some sun-dried tomato seasoning and we tried it[.]
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Do you have a favorite style bacon or flavor?
BD: Well it depends on what we're doing--what I'm eating it--for breakfast most time we'll either the hickory or the maple. Now if it's sandwiches, I definitely want the pepper or the sun-dried tomato and both are good in salads, too--the pepper or the sun-dried tomato are both good in salads.
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And then the curing is that still the same as Mr. Broadbent did it?
RD: Uh-hm, yeah. We use the same recipes that they always used.
BD: He had a really good product; that was the one thing the company had going for it when we bought it was [that] he had produced a really good product.
What do think sets this product apart from any other hams or bacon?
RD: I think--of course I think we're still one of the few long cured hams; I think that's part of it that sets it apart is you know we--we cure them longer and give a little different--and the same way so many places have gone to adding water in their bacons, you know water added and what you buy in a grocery store is pretty much water added. You know when you throw it in a frying pan and you think it's grease, but it's the water shooting out of it. You know being dry cured you know we take the water out of it. I think it's just--for a lot of larger companies, you know they've gone more to dollars and cents maybe than quality. And you know we're still trying to stay with--with quality over dollars and cents.
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Well let's talk now about all these awards that y'all have received in the Fancy Food Show and y'all won best new product. Was that what it was?
BD: No; it was the outstanding meat pate and seafood. We won that twice for our pepper bacon.
And how--what do you think you can attribute to that kind of success? I mean that--that's a really important award.
BD: Yeah, we were amazed. [Laughs]
RD: No; I--of course I don't really know exactly how their
judging works, you know but it is--I guess of all the shows we've ever
won, you know because I know they have a lot more than one judge that
it is especially in the gourmet food industry it gives you a little recognition
that sort of you know--I guess it's probably the most prominent food show
that I know of out there. And so I don't know; I guess the Lord just blessed
us is all I know, because I don't know of anything that we did personally--you
know other than make--we 
just
do the best we can at what we make and--
Well and surely I would think that staying small and having it be more a hand-crafted product is what really sets it apart from other producers and people--
RD: Yeah; every package that's put--that we do out there is put in by hand, you know even--we do have some machines you know that vacuum it, but every package of bacon is somebody actually sticks a hand in a package and puts that package of bacon in and the same way with our ham. So you know it is, you know, small and you know we've sort of--you sort of try to find your niche in the market. You know there's a lot of big ham companies out there that you know we can't--we could actually buy hams from them cheaper than I can cure them myself but it's not--it wouldn't be a Broadbent Ham. So--and that's what you know people when they--when they call us you know even though they pay more for it that's what they expect and that's what we try to give them, you know and we work hard to keep the consistency year in and year out the same.
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Well what about these other awards that y'all have been winning and I also want to talk about the State Fair that's going on this week--right now and y'all are going to be participating in that?
RD: Uh-hm; of course we actually--that was actually--the ham show was last Thursday and we won four--four out of six classes of that, which--including grand champion which--and this Thursday the ham will be auctioned for charity at the Kentucky Farm Bureau Breakfast. [The winning bid for the Drennan’s Grand Champion Ham this year was a record-breaking $340,000, which will go to state charities.]
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Well when they judge your product is it basically on taste or is it--there's also a visual element involved to it or how does that work?
RD: At the--now at the ACM Convention--American Cured Meats Association it is always on--well you know they look at it you know outside--the color, the confirmation, you know, how much fat to it, lean, you know, workmanship; then--then they do cut it and taste it and they--they grade on 1,000 points and 400 points is actual taste. So you know--so at the American Cured Meats, a lot of it is taste and what--now at the Kentucky State Fair they do have a cut class for what they call you know for taste and they--you can win, but that class is not considered in the grand champion ham, the first four classes, and it's all on looks, confirmation, color and workmanship and aroma, which aroma is the number one--is worth more points than the--
BD: Because if it has a really good smell…it's going to taste good, so that's--that's how they judge that.
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What's your favorite thing about Broadbent's Hams and your business here?
RD: I don't know. My favorite thing--I guess you know we're--we're--you know we're small enough we still are you know--we can still have a good relationship with all of our employees, you know. It's something that they all get along good and we come in, you know--we all work together but we're all friends and you know when you get in big companies a lot of times the owners don't know who's working in the back and all and you know when we--when I pick out a ham everybody here has--I pick them out and trim them and all but I line them up out there and everybody here smells them, so everybody has a hand in it. You know I want them to feel like they're part of what we've done, you know. They feel good about--when we win they're happy you know because they've--you know they've had something to do. They've all give me their opinions, you know and it all--so they feel like they're just as important as we are.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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