How To Butcher An Entire Cow: Every Cut Of Meat Explained | Bon Appetit

My name is Jason Yang and I am a

butcher

at Flashers Craft Butchery. Today I'm going to split a half steer into all the cuts that you would see at your local

butcher

shop, so we're going to start with the round which is the back leg of the wheel, so you're going to have a lot of nice big roads coming out of here right now. I'm actually removing the oyster filet, which is a small filet that sits on top of the H bone, which is a very tender, juicy, flavorful little cut, which is actually a good butcher cut that we usually take home, so you'll rarely see it outside of an artisanal butcher shop, so from here I'm removing the H bone, there's some strong tendons in there. cut that holds the femur in place, you want to make sure to cut those tendons as you remove it so you can remove the stem more easily.

You can start to access the other muscles and start to ungroup them. The H bone is excellent for stock. so we'll cut it later right now. In fact, I'm going to take the rod off and I'm using the lever on the table to push through these tough tendons and if you hear about an athlete who tears their ACL, MCL, or ACL, or LCL. I'm breaking it down all over right now, so removing the leg, which will be a tough set of muscles, but it's great for braising if you cook it properly and braised leg

meat

can make some of the most unctuous and delicious meals. .

So now we can start to group the four muscles that we're looking at, we're looking at our top round, we've got our knuckle, we've got our I round on the bottom round and you'll see this is interesting because it's all. seams, we could actually separate the muscles right now. I'm pulling the cap, which is a muscle at the top of the top round, so I'm just peeling it off, starting to open this up and you'll see something. nice open seams, it's really satisfying to do this. I'm literally moving my knife with the first quarter inch and now when I walk away you'll see the top round slowly peeling off.

My eyes are revealed. You see some of that fat. It is fashionable and it comes out of these seams, so now we are left with the femur bone, which will be what we will attack next so that we can access the other muscles, the femur bones will be the longest. marrow bone in the steer so this is great for bone marrow and a great winter meal so we have a nice marrow bone here this is great we can cut the knuckles off that will make a great broth and then the Marrow bone is cut into rounds or canoes.

Cut it right down the middle so it opens up and can be roasted. It's a really tasty addition. Now I'm separating our last muscles. We have our knuckle here, our sirloin tip which is right next to our bottom, so there's my. knuckle, let's leave that aside for now and we're left with the gooseneck, so it's going to be a combination of three muscles or around the bottom is like the outside of our leg and then the heel, which is the hard muscle . behind the knee, so here you are removing the I round, putting it to the side so you can do a nice roast later and then we have the heel that can be used for braising.

There is a nice cut called Merlot with a fairly tight grain structure. but if you cook it over medium heat and slice it then it can be quite good, so now we have our round base which will be a little more tender, but the whole shape is very good for roast beef, so when we are cleaning it these parts and we are cleaning some round parts right now. I'm cleaning the top round. I'm really cleaning this up, so we're getting to where we're going to sell steaks. Sometimes there is fashion. Sometimes there is. On the connective tissue there can sometimes be some blood or stains so I will shave it just to make it more presentable but also to cut it in such a way that allows it to cook properly or give it the best texture so from here I cleaned the top round, which we will see later and now we are going to look at round I, so here you can see the shape.

I'm going to leave all the fat because this may be very nice when I make the roast beef but we're going to take off a little bit of the fat sometimes you're going to have a little bit of fat that's not going to look good but then the fat will be like sheets to cover the muscles and then Here we're taking a look at the knuckles or the tips of the sirloin, just pulling out the kneecap. Here are two support muscles that we bring out that we generally don't use, but they can also be cut into small steaks, but what I'm doing.

What's really telling is the sirloin tip itself, which is made up of the side of the sirloin tip and the sirloin tip in the center. Many of these round cuts are thinner, so you may see some fat on the bottom, but they will generally be leaner cuts. You're going to have to cook them a certain way, so here's the breakdown of the round. Now I'm going to cut them even further into the cuts you would see at the butcher shop. Here we have our sirloin tip, so it was. Here we're going to cut up some nice sirloin tip steaks, this is also called knuckle, this is a delicious, flavorful steak, a little more texture, a little chewier, but it's definitely a very flavorful steak.

We also have our I round, which I think is a great small filet. The roast beef muscles aren't the shape we necessarily want them to be, but when you tie them into a uniform shape, they will cook more evenly. The bottom rounds also make a great roast, so I'll tie that in. above also for a much larger roast beef, you can see it's going to be delicious, a big sounding roast beef, give us great slices for the top round we mentioned earlier, it's great for tartar, it's also great for jerky, you can make as roast, but we cut it for our top round coated roast steaks here are the final cuts of the round later.

I'll go back to the leg and cut it with the band saw next. I'm going to break the spine, so let's take a look. on the tenderloin, which is two basic sections, here we have our drop and then we have our short tenderloin, so here I'm going to remove the flank first. This is a nice piece of lean

meat

that requires a very good marinade, still right on the side. grill. I'm just removing this. All of these things just sit on top of the membranes. They are actually very easy to remove because I am peeling them and essentially cleaning them.

You will see that there is not much. I'm going to do this later because it just comes out and we have our flank and it's all ready to go, so we can throw it right in in case we need to do it next. I'm just going to cut a little bit. A little bit of the drape here just to make it a little bit easier for me to see my flat sirloin and I also get rid of a little bit of fat so the flap is a big cut called bavette in France means bib and it's going to look like a bib. when we pull it out, this is actually a great cut that has a really nice grain structure, full of flavor, a lot of times with great marbling and easy to throw right on the grill, so I'm just going to peel it and chop it up a little bit. of the trimming there and now we are left with our short loin, so now I'm going to remove the rest of the suet.

This is the internal fat that lines the kidney and protects these organs here and is great for rendering. make tallow, you can use it for candles, skin care products, we have a variety of people who buy it from us, but I think it is a great fat for frying, now we are going to take out the tenderloin so that the tenderloin has a big head with Two barbed arrows and they'll go through it and then they'll narrow into a thin tail, so here you'll see me working on both sides because it's so big you won't be able to. to remove one side, peel the rest, so with this boning process I'm going to work one side, I'm going to work the other first and then I'm going to meet somewhere in the middle and then I'm going to take out a lateral muscle here, the psoas minor, so that the tendons the psoas major this is a Sohus minor is the CH Annette in French cuisine a little bit of tendons there but it's one of my favorite cuts so now we have a strip loin and now I'm going to separate the section of the loin that Are we going to get our sirloin steaks or New York shell steaks because of the bone structure around them and we're going to have our sirloin bone and then we'll have our sirloin now?

I'm just pushing down. use leverage use gravity have a good support point to be able to dislocate the spine of the sole, so I want to take a look at the sole in resection with my favorite cuts. I'm going to start boning this, so it's an interesting bone because it's concave, so it really curves inward, so you have to keep the knife rotating towards the bone, so now I'm going to take the tip of the ball out here. to trim it, it's a little bit of the tip of the sirloin that's left behind and I want to take off the tri-tip, which is a really nice cut, very popular in California, you'll hear it as the Newport steak, it weighs about a pound and a half, It's great for grilling, throw it on the grill in Texas, they smoked them. and then now we have our top sirloin, so here's the breakdown of the tenderloin.

Now I'm going to cut them even further into butcher-ready cuts, so here we go ahead and cut up some fillets. I'm going to go through the feather bones then finish with my saw. I think there's really an obsession with tenderness here and a lot of times people say I want sirloin specifically or what's your most tender cut and I think it's okay to chew and have interesting textures, there's nothing as tender as sirloin I've definitely cooked steaks that I thought they were as tender as the loin, but I think nowadays I'm looking for more complex flavors, good textures and you can find that anywhere on the animal here are the final cuts of the loin. is what you've seen in the carnage case next I'm going to break the rib so let's take a look at the rib so this will look familiar to

every

one I mean if anyone has ever seen the The Flintstones are going to think about this giant rack of ribs, you know, there are a couple of good cuts that I'm going to harvest from here or I'll take a look at the skirts right now, so we have our outer skirt and our inner skirt, so right now .

I was removing some of the membranes, which can be a lot of membranes to cover bones or cover muscles. These are heavy duty membranes that are going to come off and once I take them off I can start to have access to my skirts here here. When you remove the outer brisket, it will be the darkest, richest, has minimal flavor, very similar to a hanger steak, a little more tender, this is what you will see with braised beef on the Brazilian BBQ with the inner brisket. You could leave it whole, we can cut it into portions, but generally we cut it along the grain just to make it more tender, like a mechanical form of tenderization.

Every time you cut across the grain you shorten the muscle fibers to increase tenderness, so next I'm going to To remove the belly button there is some cartilage that holds all of this in place and that goes along the ribs , so here we use it as a basic hand saw and it's great because you can do a lot of this with just a hand saw, a boning knife and a table it's really fancy using the lever on the side of the table pumping by gravity also, so we have our plate here, a short rib plate and now we have our rib, so here is the breakdown of the ribs, now I'm going to clean them. and divide them further into the cuts you would see at the butcher shop.

Belly button, which you can smoke to make beef bacon, for example, is a fairly tough cut, so it can be braised. Old clothes is a very popular dish, so remove some of the cartilage here and then we'll have our belly button right now. I'm just cleaning some of the membranes off the skirt steaks, you know, inner skirt and outer skirt. I want to get rid of some of the hard fashion, but I want to leave some of the fat on as well because I think some of the fat in there is nice, it doesn't have to be completely fat free and then for the rib, I'm going to hand polish the edge here, I'm basically lining up my saw so I can go through the spine web and I'm cutting so I can eventually cut the fillets by hand.

In this case, I am going to take the loin and the feather bones all at the same time so that there is raised meat. I'm going to sit on the outside of the steer, so this is going to be difficult, so I'm going to accomplish this and then I'm going to cut the fillets by hand now that the loins and the feather bones are gone. hand Tufts and I swear mice these are the final cuts of the rib later I will go back to the short rib plate and cut it using the band saw next. I'm going to break out the Chuck, so this is for me the most interesting cut just because there are so many things you can get out of here so many flavors so many textures I'm removing a little bit of the gizzards here that the slaughterhouse left very delicious the best chicken nuggets that you've never tried.

Basically, I'm going to cut off the top of the shoulder collar, all in one piece. I like to do it this way so I can decide what I want to do with that big piece withbone later and gives me access to a lot of other elements, so To start removing this, you can see that I'm using the edge of the table. I'm going to hang this off the edge of the table so it's tight on the bone and the Chuck will counteract the

entire

shoulder so I can get started. removing this little cap at the top and then we have all of our Chuck and his neck together, now there will be another plate of short ribs.

I'm going to remove these are the first five ribs and they are actually meteorites, so queramírez is going to cut the top rib and start peeling this, remove it. I can cut the sternum. It's going to be great for the broth, so this will be our chakra plate. Now it will be a meteorite. I have a better one. meat to bone ratio, so now that I have removed the rib plate I have access to the breast. I can peel the brisket here. I'm going to remove a little bit of this fat around the neck so I can see the seams. of the breast, so here I'm going to find a seam almost like in the armpit, the bristles are going to wrap right here on the shoulder lump on the triceps and you're going to find that little seam in the armpit and I just saw this guy and now I can walk away and it's very satisfying.

It seemed to just remove the expecto muscle so the energetic one comes off and then we have our full brisket, so we're left with the arm steaks, our Chuck arm steaks. I have the whole arm here. What I'm going to do is dislocate the shoulder blade while keeping the triceps intact. This is not going to give me a more manageable piece to work with. I'm going to take my arm off, so we stay. with the triceps muscle, you know the clod and then the scapula, we're also going to have some different fillets in there so you can see.

I'm pointing out the teres major here, so this is a nice little fillet of about a pound and a quarter that they found was a pretty tender fillet, so I'm basically removing some of the fatty connective tissue so I can see a little better. Now I'm starting with the tip and then I start moving away and then once I see that silver skin, it's going to be pretty easy because I'm basically just separating two muscles, so I've got it here. Now I'm pulling the bottom of the shoulder blade, which is a muscle on the bottom of the shoulder blade, so this is another cut that has a great texture, pretty tender, good flavor, this is a great

every

day steak, great for chicken fried steak, which we'll see what the griddle is as well, now we're looking at our shoulder clod, so this is really going to come together.

I put it on the griddle, so I have to be careful when cutting this so that we have the lump of shoulder on the side. I take it off a little side muscle that can also be turned into a roast, but we've revealed that here is our clod heart, which is what we use for roast steaks or ranch, so I'm removing this layer on top of the griddle to To be able to see a little better, there's a ridge that runs the length of the scapula, so once I've identified it rich, I'm going to mark the skin on the bone to get very tight so I can try to take this guy out in one go. piece, so I think this is considered the second most tender muscle on the steer.

It's interesting because it actually has a long tendon running through it, so you have to separate it when you clean it here. I'm removing the false tendon or chuck tender, this sits on the scapula but it's not that hard to remove just because there are fewer ridges for it to sit on. I just take that guy out and we usually trim it, but it can be tied up like a roast or if you want a lean stew, here's the breakdown of the dish and now I'm going to cut them even further into cuts. I see that in your butcher shop when cutting meat there are always different ways of presenting it, rarely are you going to do something so bad that you will never be able to use the meat again, whether you cut it in half, present it in two pieces, whether cut it in half or cut it in half.

We have messed it up in such a matter that we can't really package or sell it properly, we can use it as our decoration. You know it's going to be delicious for ground beef for our burgers, prepared foods, that's what I tell people all the time. I want you to be able to cut with confidence, so now we're taking a look at the Chuck, so here we have a bone-in Chuck, so I'm going to debone it by first removing some meat from the vertebrae and I'm going to take it all out in one piece , so here we have our neck roast, separating it from my shoulder, just squaring it off so we can have a nice roast or stew and then I'm going to start carving my Chuck steak.

Take this hard tendon out, turn it over, there's going to be some sort of cap that I'm going to remove and then we can start breaking down our Chuck, so from here I'm going to sew on the eye of the Denver Chuck. I'm going to confront this a little bit because just because that part was exposed that's where it split and here we have some very flavorful rib eyes, a Nastase contender right here from the shoulder, so I removed the rib eyes so it can be a good roast as well as a truck, I roast it and now we're going to cut these beautiful, beautiful Denver steaks, we see the very well marbled ones and these are great steaks and this is like my perfect butcher cut right now, here are the final cuts from the Chuck, I'll go back to the chuck rib plate and cut it out using the band saw.

Then I'll jump on the band saw and cut some osso bucco off the stem. The band saw is a great tool in a butcher shop, something that can allows you to make precise cuts and saves you a lot of time and effort when cutting bone, cutting these osso bucco to about an inch and a quarter. This is a really nice size for a pot, it exposes the pith you want, all that pith. dripping all over our meat as we cook it, so I'm going to scrape it off every time I use the band saw, because every time you cut bone, some dust and debris comes off, and when it sits on the meat it can change the color, it can oxidize the meat much faster, so you don't want that to be there.

I want to remove it for my service, immediately after I'm going to cut the rib plate off the chuck. The band saw will allow me to make nice thin cuts in the rib plate that would be very difficult to make by hand. This will be a great cut for roasting and now I'm going to cut the short rib plate off the rib so here I'm cutting the short ribs English cut. I can make 2 inch or 4 inch blocks these will be great for a breeze and here are the final cuts from the band saw and finally these are all the cuts you get from one side of beef