Transcription
[Music] My name is Jason Yang and I'm a butcher at Fler Craft Butchery. Today I'm going to break down half a steer into all the cuts you would see in your local butcher shop.
All right, so we're starting off with the round, which is the rear leg on the steer. So you're going to get a lot of nice big roasts out of here. Right now, I'm actually removing the oyster steak, which is a little steak that sits on top of the hip bone, which is a very tender, juicy, tasty little cut, which is actually a nice butcher cut that we usually take home. So you're rarely going to see it outside of a craft butcher shop.
So from here, I'm removing the hip bone. There's some strong tendons that you have to sever that hold the femur in place. So you want to make sure that you sever those tendons as you remove this so that you can get the shank off easier. You can start getting access to the other muscles and start unbundling them. The hip bone is great for stock, so we'll cut that up later.
Right now, I'm actually going to take the shank off, and I'm using the leverage of the table so I get through these tough tendons. I, if you hear about an athlete tearing their ACL or MCL or PCL or LCL, I'm tearing it through all of it right now. So removing the shank, which is going to be a tough bundle of muscles, but it's great for braising. So if you cook it properly and braised beef from the shank can make some of the most unctuous, delicious meals.
So now we can start unbundling the four muscles that we're looking at. We're looking at our top round, we have our knuckle, we have, we have our eye round and the bottom round. And you're going to see that this is interesting because it's all seams. We can actually seam the muscles apart. Right now, I'm kind of pulling the cap, which is the muscle that sits on top of the top round. So I'm just peeling that away, starting to open this up, and you're going to see some nice seams open. It's really satisfying to do this. I'm literally just flicking my knife with the first quarter inch, and now as I pull away, you're going to see the top round just slowly peels away. My eye round is revealed. You see some of that fat and fascia, and it comes right off on these seams.
So now we're left with our femur bone, which is going to be what we're going to attack next so we can get access to the other muscles. The femur bone is going to be our longest marrow bone in the steer. So this is great for bone marrow, a great winter meal. So we have our nice marrow bone here. This is great. We can cut the knuckles off, those will make excellent stock, and then the marrow bone itself, we can cut into rounds or canoe it, so cut it right down the middle so it comes open and you can roast it off. It's a really tasty dish.
Now I'm separating our last few muscles. We have our knuckle here, our sirloin tip, which sits right next to our bottom round. So my knuckle, let's put that aside for now, and we're left with the goose neck. So this is going to be a combination of three muscles: our eye round, the bottom round is sort of like the outside of our leg, and then the heel, which is the tough muscle behind the knee. So here we're just removing the eye round, putting that aside, that can make a nice roast later. And then we have the heel, which can be used for braising. There's a nice cut of steak out of there called the Mero, with a pretty tight grain structure, but if you cook it to like a medium rare and slice it thin, it can be pretty nice.
So now we have our bottom round, which is going to be a little bit more tender, but the whole shape is really nice for roast beef. So when you're cleaning these parts, and we're cleaning some round parts right now, I'm cleaning the top round. I'm really cleaning this off so we're getting to what we're going to be selling as steaks. Sometimes there's fascia, sometimes there's connective tissue, sometimes there can be some blood or spotting. So I'll shave that off just to make it more presentable, but also to cut it in such a manner that's going to allow it to either cook properly or give you the best.
So from here, I've cleaned up the top round, which we'll take a look at later. And now we're going to look at the eye round. So right here, you can see the shape. I'm going to leave all the fat on 'cause it's going to be really nice when I do the roast beef, but we're going to take off some of the fascia. Sometimes you're going to have some fat that's not going to be good, but then fascia will be like the sheaths that cover the muscles. And then here, we're taking a look at the knuckle or the sirloin tips. Just taking out the kneecap here. There's two supporting muscles that we pull out that we don't generally use, but those could be cut into little steaks as well. But what I'm really revealing is the sirloin tip itself, which is made up of the sirloin tip side and the sirloin tip center. A lot of these round cuts are leaner, so you can see there's some fat cover on the bottom round, but these are going to 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 these down even further into the cuts you'd see at the butcher shop. Here we have our sirloin tip, so I'm just going to cut some nice sirloin tip steaks here. This is also called the knuckle. This is a nice flavor steak, a little bit more texture, a little bit chewier, but definitely a very tasty steak. We also have our eye round, which I think makes an excellent little small roast beef. Muscles aren't shaped the way we necessarily want them to be, but when you tie them up into a uniform shape, they're going to cook more evenly. The bottom round is also a great roast beef as well, so I'm going to tie that up as well for a much bigger roast beef. You can see that it's going to be nice, big, solid roast beef, give us great slices. For the top round, we mentioned tartar earlier, it's great for tartar, also excellent for jerky, can be done as a roast, but we cut it for our top round. London broil steaks. Here are the final cuts from the round. Later, I'll come back to the shank and cut it down using the band saw.
Next, I'm going to break down the loin. So we're taking a look at the loin, which consists of basically two sections here. We have our drop, and then we have our short loin. So here I'm going to take off the flank first. So this is nice lean piece of meat, takes a marinade really well, throw right on the grill. I'm just peeling this away. All these things just sit on top of membranes. These are actually really easy to take out because I'm peeling away and essentially I'm cleaning them. You're going to see there's not much I have to do to this afterwards because it just comes right out and we have our flank and it's all set to go. Then we can throw right in the case if we needed to.
So next, I'm just going to cut off a little bit of the drop here just to make it a little bit easier for me to see my sirloin flap and I'm remove some of the fat too. So the sirloin flap is a great cut called the bib 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, often times has great marbling, and easy just to throw right in the grill. And so I'm just going to peel that out, cut off a little bit of the trim there, and we're left with our short loin now.
So now I'm going to pull out the rest of the suet. This is the internal fat that coats the kidney, protects some of these organs here, and this is great to render down to make tallow. You can use it for candles, skincare products. We have a variety of people that buy them from us, but I think it's a great frying fat. Now we're going to pull the tenderloin. So the tenderloin is going to have a big head with two arrow barbs and it's going to run through and then it's going to taper all the way down to a thin tail. So here you're going to see me working both sides of it because it's so big that you're not going to be able to take off one side and then peel out the rest. So with this deboning process, I'm going to actually work one side first, work the other, and then meet somewhere in the middle. And then I'm pulling off a side muscle here, the psoas minor. So the psoas major, this is a psoas minor, it's the chainette in French cooking. A little bit of tendons in there, but it's one of my favorite cuts.
So now we have a strip loin. And so now I'm going to separate the loin section, which is where we're going to get our New York strip steaks or shell steaks because of the bone structure that goes around it. And we're going to have our sirloin bone in, and then we'll have our loin. Now I'm just pushing down, using leverage, using the gravity, having a nice fulcrum point so I can dislocate the loin from the sirloin.
So now we're going to take a look at the sirloin, which is actually one of my favorite cuts. I'm going to start deboning this. So this is an interesting bone because it's concave, so it really curves in, so you have to keep your knife ever turning towards the bone. So now I'm going to take out the ball tip here. So that's going to go to trim, that's a little bit of the sirloin tip that's left behind. And now we're going to take off the tri-tip, which is a really nice cut, very, you know, popularized in California. You'll hear it as the Newport steak. This is about a pound, pound and a half. It's excellent for grilling, throw around in the grill. Texas they smoke them. And then now we have our top sirloin.
So here's the breakdown of the loin. Now I'm going to cut these down even further into butcher shop ready cuts. So here we're going to hand cut some New York strip steaks. I'm going to go through the feather bones and then finish with my saw. I think that here there's really an obsession with tenderness, and often times people will be like, I want tenderloin specifically, or what's your most tender cut? And I think it's okay to choose and have interesting textures. There is nothing as tender as tenderloin. I've definitely cooked steaks that I felt were as tender as tenderloin, but I think that these days I'm really looking for more complex flavors, good textures, and you can find that anywhere on the animal. Here are the final cuts from the loin. This is what you'd see in the case at the butcher shop.
Next, I'm going to break down the rib. All right, so we're taking a look at the rib. So this is going to be familiar to everyone. I mean, if if anyone's ever seen The Flintstones, they're going to think of this giant, you know, rack of ribs. There's a couple of nice cuts I'm going to harvest out of here. We're taking a look at the skirts right now. So we have our outside skirt and we have our inside skirt. So right now, I'm just pulling off some of the membranes. There's going to be a lot of membranes that cover bones or that cover muscles. These are tough membranes that it's going to pull off, and once I pull them off, I can start getting access to my skirts here. Here I'm removing the outside skirt. It's going to be the darker, richer one. It has a more of a minerally taste, very similar to hanger steak, a little bit more tender. This is what you're going to see charred off in Brazilian barbecue. With the inside skirt, we could leave it whole, we can cut into portions, but in general, cut it across 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 take off the navel. There's some cartilage that holds all this in place that go along the rib bones. So here we're just using like a basic handsaw, and it's great because you can do a lot of this with just a handsaw, a boning knife, and a table. It's really elegant using the leverage, the side of the table, the gravity helping as well. So we have our plate here, our short rib plate, and then now we have our rib.
So here's the breakdown of the rib. Now I'm going to clean these up and break them down further into the cuts you'd see at the butcher shop. The navel, which you could smoke for beef baconing, for example, that's a pretty tough cut, so it can be braised down. Rope Vieja is a very popular dish. So just removing some of the cartilage here, and then we'll have our navel. Right now, I'm just cleaning some of the membranes off of the skirt steaks, you know, inside skirt and outside skirt. I want to get rid of some of the tough fascia, but I want to leave some of the fat on too because I think some of the fat on there is nice. It doesn't have to be completely bare of fat. And then for the rib, I'm going to actually hand saw the rib here. I'm basically lining up my saw so I can get through the spine there, and I'm cutting through so I can eventually cut through the steaks by hand. And in this case, I'm going to take the chine and the feather bones all off at once. So there's going to be some lifter meat that's going to sit on the outside of the steer. So this is going to be tough, so I'm going to pull this off, and then I'm going to hand cut steaks now. Now that the chine's gone and the feather bones are gone, we're going to hand cut some nice rib eyes.
Here are the final cuts from the rib. Later, I'll come back to the short rib plate and cut it down using the band saw.
Next, I'm going to break down the chuck. All right, so this is to me the most interesting cut, just because there's so much you can pull out of here, so many flavors, so many textures. I'm taking off a little bit of the sweetbreads here that left behind by the slaughterhouse. Really tasty, the best chicken nuggets you'll ever had. I'm essentially going to saw off the upper shoulder and neck all in one piece. I like doing it this way so I can decide what I want to do with that big bone-in piece later, and it gives me access to a lot of the other items. So just start peeling this away. You can see I'm using the edge of the table. I'm going to hang this off the edge of the table so I get tight on the bone, and the chuck's going to counterbalance the entire shoulder so I can start pulling away this little cap that sits on top, and then we have our entire chuck and neck together, bone in.
Now there's going to be another short rib plate. I'm going to remove these are the first five ribs, and uh, these are actually going to be meatier. From here, I'm just going to cut across the top rib and start to peel this away. I take that off, I can saw off the breast bone. It's going to be great for stock. So this is going to be our chuck rib plate, and this is going to be meatier. I have a better ratio of meat to bone. So now that I've taken off the short rib plate, I have access to the brisket. I can peel the brisket away. Here I'm going to remove some of this fat around the neck just so I can see the seams of the brisket. So here I'm going to find a seam, almost kind of like at the armpit. The brisket is going to wrap right here on the shoulder clot on the triceps, and I'm just going to find that little armpit seam and just seam this guy off. And now I can pull away, and it's a very satisfying seam just to roll sporal muscle off. So the brisket is coming right off, and then we have our complete brisket.
All right, so we're left with arm steaks, our chuck arm steaks. I have the entire arm here. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to dislocate the shoulder blade, keeping the triceps intact. This is going to give me a more manageable piece to work with. I'm going to take off the arm, so then we're left with the triceps muscle, you know, the clod, and then the scapula, which is going to also have some different steaks there. So you can see I'm pointing to the teres major here. So this is a nice little steak, about a pound, pound and a quarter, that they found was quite a little tender steak. So I'm basically just removing some of the fat, connective tissue, just so I can see it a little bit better. Now I'm just starting at the tip, and then I'm starting to pull away, and then once I see that silver skin, it's going to be quite easy because I'm basically just peeling two muscles apart. So I have it off here now.
I'm pulling the under blade, which is a muscle that's on the underside of the shoulder blade. So this is another cut that has great texture, pretty tender, good flavor. This is an excellent everyday steak, excellent for chicken fried steak, which we'll see with the flat iron as well. Now we're looking at our shoulder clod. So this is going to actually seam onto the flat iron. So I have to be careful when I cut this. So we have our shoulder clod set aside. I pulled off a little side muscle that can be made into a roast as well, but what we've revealed here is our clod heart, which is what we're going to use for either a roast or ranch steaks. So I'm just pulling off this layer on top of the flat iron here so I can see a little bit better. There's a ridge that runs along the scapula. So once I've identified that ridge, I'm going to score the bone skin, get really tight so I can try to pull this guy off all in one piece. So this one I think is regarded as the second most tender muscle in the steer. It's interesting because it actually has a long tendon that goes through it, so you have to separate that out when you clean it.
Here I'm removing the mock tender or the chuck tender. This sits on the scapula, but it's not as difficult to remove just because there's less of a ridge that's sitting on. So I just pull that guy out, and usually we put this to trim, but it could be tied as a roast, or if you wanted to have lean stew.
Here's the breakdown of the chuck. And now I'm going to cut these down further into cuts you'd see in the case at your butcher shop. With cutting meat, there's always different ways to present it. You're rarely going to do something so bad that you can never use the meat again. Whether you chop it up in half, present it as two pieces, whether you've messed it up in such a manner that we can't really case it or sell it properly, we can use it as our trim. You know, it's going to be delicious for our ground beef, for our burgers, prepared foods. So I tell people all the time, I want you to be able to cut confidently.
So now we're taking a look at the chuck. So we have a bone-in chuck here. So I'm going to debone this by first taking some of the meat away from the vertebrae, and I'm going to pull it off all in one piece. So here we have our neck roast. I'm separating that from my shoulder, just squaring that off so I could have a nice roast or a braise, and then I'm going to start breaking down my chuck. Let's take out this tough tendon, flip it over. There's going to be a little bit of a cap that I'm going to take off, and then we can start breaking down our chuck. So from here, I'm going to seam the chuck eye off of the Denver. I'm going to face this a little bit because just because that was part was exposed because that's where it was split. And here we have some chuck rib eyes, a lot of flavor, a good tenderness as well. So this is some of my favorite steaks right here from the shoulder. So I peeled off the chuck eye, so that can be a nice roast as well, chuck eye roast. And now we're going to cut these beautiful, beautiful Denver steaks. You can see they're nicely marbled, and these are excellent steaks, and this is like my perfect, like butcher cut right now.
Here are the final cuts from the chuck. I'll come back to the chuck rib plate and cut it down using the band saw.
Next, I'm going to hop over to the band saw and cut some osso buco from the shank. The band saw is a great tool in a butcher shop. It's something that can allow you to make precise cuts, as well as save you a lot of time and effort when you're cutting through bone. Cutting down these osso buco to about an inch and a quarter. This is really nice size for a pot. It exposes the marrow. We want all that marrow dripping out all over our beef as we braise it. So I'm going to be scraping every time I'm using the band saw because every time you're cutting bone, there's going to be some dust, some debris that comes off, and when it sits on the meat, it can change the color, it can oxidize the meat a lot faster. So you don't want that on there. I want to remove that from my surface immediately.
Next, I'm going to cut down the chuck rib plate from the chuck. The band saw is going to allow me to make nice thin cuts on the rib plate that would be very difficult to do by hand. This is going to be an excellent grilling cut. And now I'm going to cut down the short rib plate from the rib. So here I'm cutting the English cut short ribs. I can either do blocks of 2 inches or 4 inches. These will be excellent for a braise.
And here are the final cuts from the band saw. And finally, these are all the cuts you get from a side of beef.