Beef Retail Fabrication

this is your standard beef carcass this animal came into the slaughterhouse weighing at almost 1,300 pounds he's 1295 pounds which it caused him to throw an eight hundred and thirty pound carcass weight typically about sixty to sixty two percent of the live weight will go into the cooler and so what we have missing is obviously the hide the viscera the head and the legs this carcass has been aging about 21 days this this carcass is undergoing dry aging where we let this pain in the cooler for around 14 to 21 days to optimize tenderness in the industry typically this carcass would be fabricated within 24 to 48 hours cut into wholesale cuts primals and sub primals put in a vacuum bag put in a box and shipped to the local grocery stores and it takes approximately 20 to 25 days for that whole process to happen and so that those carcasses are those cuts undergo wet aging they age inside the vacuum package there's benefits and there's drawbacks to both methods this carcass here being dry aged we're going to have to cut this dehydrated sections off of the carcass if it's wet aged to have more of a purge loss of squeezing out of the water inside the muscle a few things about this carcass this region up here is the round this bulb right off the round is the sirloin this section right here is the loin the rib and down here we have the chuck with the shoulder clod that adds the flare to the stew the chuck in order to fabricate this carcass we have to break it in half and so cattle have 13 ribs so we're going to rib between the 12th and 13th rib and the easiest way to do that is count down one two three four five six seven and a quarter vertebrae and we're going to make our cut right there you can see now we have separated the four quarter from the hind quarter of called ribbing between the 12th and 13th ribs what we have here is the exposure of the rib eye muscle this will go to make the rib eye as we fabricate this carcass this is the point where a USDA quality grader will actually assign a quality in yield grade to this carcass he will observe the amount of marbling in the rib eye and the sign of quality gray from the marbling in combination with the maturity of the animal and this carcass right here is roughly around a small 40 small 50 so he's in the low choice quality grade range as you can see here we have the four quarter on the block a few things to talk about on this four quarter one of the things you'll notice right off the bat is this thick yellow tendon this is a the tendon that holds the head up it actually spreads itself throughout therefore in the entire four quarter this tendon will be removed as we start to fabricate this carcass down into primals and sub primals inside this carcass you notice we have there should be 12 ribs inside here attached here is the diaphragm this is economically a very high value cut nowadays this is the muscle that will be cut out and used for fajitas years ago this this muscle B can be purchased for around ninety nine cents a pound and put in the ground beef nowadays due to the popularity of Mexican restaurants and Mexican food this actual diaphragm has increased in value and it's very difficult to get at the retail level now most restaurants will will purchase this for making real fajitas in order to count separate the chuck from the rib we're going to separate the rib from between the fifth and sixth ribs this will have a ribeye and a square cut Chuck you can see we've we've started our cats to separate the rib from the square cut chuck and what we'll end up doing is we cut through here we'll actually come in and cut through the very tail end of the shoulder blade and an animal as young as this one is it'll be just a big piece of cartilage and be easy to cut through you can see this is the cut surface of the rib eye muscle this will go to make the wholesale cut the rib eye this will go to make the Chuck you can see down in here barely notice the tail end of the scapula our scapula bone which is cartilage at this point as you can see we have the rib attached we have the plate so we'll have to separate the rib from the plate the first thing we want to do is remove this diaphragm it just sits on the ribs and it's just a simple cut it's not a very big muscle as we can see we can peel the paper or the connective tissue off of the cut on both sides of it now and these when these carcasses are dry-aged like this there's there's a lot of dehydrated surface that we're going to have to cut off of this before we can cut this into retail cash so you see this diet dehydrate surface has to come off of here a little bit of the fat off now this is a cut where you can roll it up like so cut it in half and you have what is called a pinwheel and you can get fairly creative with this you can put cheese in the middle as you roll it up you can put stuffing or whatever you like to put in there to roll it up to make it look more attractive for your customers the USDA puts out institutional meat purchasing specification or Imps which basically are cutting instructions of how we are to fabricate this carcass and according to imps we have to remove the plate from the ribeye at approximately three inches from the tip of the ribeye muscle to a point that's approximately 4 inches from the ribeye muscle which is this muscle right here on the blade in this has to be a straight cut after separation you see we have what's called the plate and the bone-in rib eye and for for the plate typically what will happen with this with this cut is we can come in here with a bandsaw and separate we come here a bandsaw and make two to three inch cuts with cuts along here cut between the ribs and display those as bone-in short ribs however those aren't very popular nowadays and what will typically happen with this plate is it will be boned out and put in the ground beef now a word of caution for those that are breaking a carcass down there's a lot of facts in this in this plate and so if you're if you're boning this out for ground beef you need to be very careful because your fat percentage can creep up on you fairly quickly with the amount of fat that's in this plate so you may have to lean these plates up in order to produce an 80/20 ground beef or 70/30 ground beef what we have now is the whole bone-in rib eye you have the ribs coming off of the of the backbone here a ribeye should have seven ribs one two three four five six seven full ribs and now in order for this to be vacuum bagged and sent out to grocery stores we have to remove what's called this chine bone here which will do on the bandsaw you see with the aid of the bandsaw we removed the chime bone and we're left with your typical what's termed a 1:07 oven prepared grip as a retailer you could buy this bone in however nowadays the the trend is towards more boneless cut so we'll need to come in here and remove these rib bones these ribs are just basically laying on top of the muscle and so the easiest way to do this is use the tip of your knife against the muscle or against the bone and follow the bone to remove the entire rib through the cut we've removed the back ribs and we have a boneless rib eye and the back ribs these will typically be sold as beef baby back ribs we typically think of baby back ribs associated with pork however we can't have those in beef as well or we can we can remove the red meat off the bones and use these for ground beef we have a a very rough cut bone boneless ribeye which we'll have to remove this outer part of the ribeye and you can see here in the large end of the rib eye this is the area that we're going to remove all this above the ribeye the majority of meat cutting is mainly following the correct seam that's what I'm doing here is trying to find this seam on the inside of the muscle the lip is this region right here and we're only allowed to have two inches of lip on here so we're going to have to take some of this off and we just do that by taking a straight cut removing the long part of the lip what we have is a boneless rib eye we're left with a rough cut square cut Chuck now this region right here is the sternum or the breast part of the animal we will remove this at the peak of this bone by straight cut this cut wood here will become the brisket the shank will remove as well and inside here we have the chuck roll that sits in this region right here as well as on the outer part this bulge to the shoulder is the shoulder clod what is amazing about this is this entire front leg of the animal is healthy in place by muscle meaning you go from the front leg all the way up to the shoulder blade and this this whole region is not attached to the rest of the skeleton of the carcass so this is all held in place by muscle this is the same for all of our major livestock species cattle goats sheep and hogs are all the front legs are all held in place by muscle we'll begin by removing the brisket off of the Chuck and as mentioned before we will come off the peak of the sternum making a straight cut through the remainder of the ribs you can see we've made our cut through the check to separate the brisket basically cutting down to where we hit this natural seam that separates the the four shank from the brisket and we're going to remove the brisket by cutting along this natural seam here we have the brisket what we have left on here is the the part of the sternum and the ribs that are taxed to the stern this has to be removed cut has been made to remove the the breast plate and now we're left with a boneless brisket all this dehydrated portion will have to be trimmed away before this is ready for sale as well as this big fat pad that sits on top of the muscle will have to be removed now we have a brisket that is ready for packaging and sales this is a muscle of locomotion typically we we classify muscles of locomotion as being extremely tough in order to make them tender we've got to cook them with a moist heat crock-pot long slow low-temperature cooking now this is not something I would normally say is conducive to throwing on the grill however this is a very popular barbecuing cut and a way that they cook this to make this tender is they cook it at such a low temperature for a long period of time it allows the collagen the connective tissue that's inside the muscle to melt away without getting the muscle fibers a chance to hard enough to make them tough and so typically individuals that are in barbecue competitions will cook this cut 18 plus hours and no more than 200 to 225 degrees another thing to notice about this cut this sternum fat excuse me another thing to notice about this cut this brisket fat on here is very white it's very hard and white in color this is indicative of a grain fed animal typically grass fed animals will have a very soft yellow fat so you can you can get a rough idea of the diet of the animal by looking at the the fat color of the carcass the brisket can also can be sold fresh or it can be sold with a pickling around it to make corned beef and you will see it sometimes in the store usually cut in half and this flat part down here is referred to as the flat portion corned beef or corn brisket and this point the part that comes to a point is known as the point half of the brisket and so you will see this either as a flat half or a point half in grocery stores most the time when you see these in grocery stores they will be in the corned beef variety having the the pickling brine inside the package to make this into corn beef what we have left is of a rough cut Chuck is we have the shank portion left on here the brisket has been removed now we're going to come in here right at this joint where the brisket over the four shake turns back towards the brisket and we're going to remove the four shank in this region we've removed the four shank from the from the square-cut chuck some of you might be wondering why I didn't follow the cut that was originally made by the brisket the reason being is I want to make sure that I leave enough muscle on this clod that's sitting underneath here the shank is a also a muscle of locomotion there's a lot of connective tissue through this cut typically what will happen with this cut is it will be cut into slices usually an inch thick or so and used as a base for beef stock now typically crosscut shanks are not a very popular item anymore and so a lot of individuals will remove the the muscle from the bone and use this for ground beef what we have left is an old-fashioned square cut Chuck well we would start cutting on this end and call these arm roasts spin it around and start cutting from this in and call these blade bone roast or seven bone roasts and then we would be left with the corner back here that we be fabricated into ground beef however the advent of box beef has allowed us to make two distinct cuts from this the shoulder clod which the butcher square cut Chuck is setting on as well as the chuck roll which is right underneath the backbone and the ribs the first thing we're going to do is remove the shoulder clod and we're going to do that by making a cut right along this bone on the cranial side of this bone to a point of the okay in order to begin cutting this shoulder clod out we're going to go on the other side of the arm bone and probably the easiest way to do is to expose the bone and remove this joint inside here now there are several ways we can do this I prefer to remove the remainder of this humerus bone at the joint we can remove that and now we can see the joint we get a better flow of how the shoulder blade works and a very good way of estimating where the medial Ridge of the shoulder blade is is to put your knife in there and you can feel right there we are at the top of the medial Ridge on the other side you see how the knife will go deeper we want to be on this side of the medial Ridge as we remove the shoulder clod the shoulder clod is it's a very difficult muscle to remove you come in here and you have to kind of scoop your knife and do a lot of pulling in order to separate the muscle off of the bone once you get to the side of the scapula you kind of go straight down and you'll find a natural seam and the rest of appeal's away so you can see we have our square cut check with the boneless shoulder clod removed the shoulder clod is the Bulge of the shoulder on the outer part of the animal underneath you have what we call the subcutaneous fat which is the layer fat that lays directly underneath the hide this for the longest time this was rode off as a very tough cut as it was a muscle of locomotion however the muscle profiling study which was funded by the beef checkoff dollars where the individuals went in here and they dissected each and every muscle off of the carcass ran a series of tests on those muscles one of those tests that they run is what we call a Warner Braxley shear force test which is a measure of tenderness and we notice that this muscle right in here as well as this muscle lays on top where very tender muscles and so we have removed these muscles and marketed them in ways that that enhances their tenderness and so this muscle right here typically will be removed in the old days cut into steaks and called a top blade steak or a leaf steak however if we come right in here in a natural seam we can remove this muscle we clean the back part up now the challenge of this muscle is right in the middle there is a vein of connective tissue you can see this vein of connective tissue here this poses some tenderness problems and so in order to enhance and take advantage of the tenderness of the muscles below above and below this vein of connective tissue we've come in here and we've cut the muscle away from the top of this vein then we come in here and remove the vein of connective tissue itself from the bottom part of this muscle so now we have the top part of the muscle and the bottom part of the muscle do that again since you probably caught that spit that one everywhere okay now we have the top part of that muscle and the bottom part of that muscle and you can kind of tell from the shape it's taken on a different appearance to it the shake kind of looks like the bottom part of an iron and so therefore the the beef industry has named these cuts the Flatiron steak and so typically what you'll see is these guys cut in half or cut to certain portion sizes vacuum package you sold this Flatiron steaks very tender cut it's gaining in popularity you can find it in several grocery stores now as well as you can find it in several restaurants after the Flatiron steak has been removed there's a very important muscle that sits on top of here it's called the the actual name of the muscle is called the teres major and it just sets in there at a natural seam which we're going to remove now this is a fairly tender cut of beef and so we have removed not only the Flatiron steak but we also removed this muscle as well and market its tenderness and so this is kind of an odd shaped muscle but we can't come in here with our knife and face this up and cut it like we would a filet mignon and call these either petite shoulder tenders are petite tender medallions the remainder of the clod what we'll do is we can remove some of these accessory muscles here basically we're just following some natural seams and we'll use this portion as ground beef and what we have now which a lot of retailers are familiar with this is commonly referred to as the the clawed heart of the shoulder clod heart which we can cut this up into steaks or we can cut it up into roasts the remaining part of the square cut Chuck that's left over has two important muscles in here that we we can mark it on the other side of this medial Ridge of the shoulder blade is a long round muscle that we can pull out which we'll call the Chuck tender or the Scotch tender or the Chuck mock tender and you'll see why it's called the mock tender as we pull it out so you can see the chuck tender we followed this fat seemed to get down to it made a cut on the other side of the medial Ridge and follow that around and we can remove this chuck tender see this is kind of a long pencil shaped muscle now the reason why it's called the mock tender is I could come in here and I can cut this like I would a filet mignon and it has a very similar look as the flaming yawn now the challenge of this is that this is a muscle of locomotion this muscle is very tough whereas those muscles on the other side of the medial Ridge the the Flatiron steak and the shoulder tender medallions are very tender cuts this on the other hand is a muscle that gets used quite often and so that you can see how it gets its name as the beef Chuck mock tenderloin after the chuck tender has been removed we can now easily remove this shoulder blade and as I mentioned before this shoulder blade from this joint goes to the front foot the rest of this the shoulder blade is not attached to the rest of the skeleton you can see on this side the remaining part of the gelatin here's your rib bones right in here you can see meat between the rib and the shoulder blade therefore we can go in here we can remove this shoulder blade and not have to cut through any bone at all basically with the shoulder blade removal we just came right underneath the blade bone and removed it as such we can take the remaining meat off of here and put in the ground beef what we have left is a rough cut Chuck roll the Chuck roll sets in this region right here however we have the remaining part of the ribs and backbone which we'll need to need to be removed the rib bones and the neck bones are removed by basically following the bone and removing the remaining bone in part we can't come in here and dig the meat out of here and put in the ground beef which is ideal it is a lot of labor involved in this what we have remaining now is typically what would used to be called a two piece chuck this would be vacuum packaged and sold with the whole shoulder clod referred to as a two-piece check however go for that in order to make a chuck roll will come in here a few inches off of what was the rib eye follow that cut all the way back remove this use this for ground beef after cleaning the the - what was the two-piece check after cleaning it up or left with the chuck roll now an interesting thing about the chuck roll the ribeye the ribeye said in this region in reference to the to the chuck roll so we made a cut between the fifth and sixth ribs so we still have a portion of the rib eye muscle in this region right here and so what a lot of retailers will do to take advantage of the tenderness of the remaining part of the ribeye they will come in about three or four inches cut this portion off and so you're left with let's get this around here you're left with a piece that looks very similar to the ribeye and so we can't come in here and roll this remaining part of the ribeye muscle out so what you have is something looks very similar to a ribeye and so what we can do now is we can cut this into steaks once these are cutting mistakes they're often referred to as Chuck i-stakes now you also see these referred to as a poor man's rib up as this will retail for around thirteen to fourteen dollars a pound I can purchase these Chuck eye steaks or sometimes referred to as poor man rib eyes for roughly around three or four dollars a pound and they are just as flavorful and tender as the higher price cuts now another name you'll often see these referred to as as Delmonico's and so Chuck I poor man ribeye or Delmonico is another way that these steaks can be marketed the remaining portion of this Chuck roll typically will be cut into steaks or roasts however recently the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has decided to really go and market this Chuck I muscled in here and so what they are doing is removing this muscle at its natural seam maybe so the removing the Chuck eye muscle at the natural seam and so we're left with the Chuck eye muscle and the remaining portion of the Chuck role now the challenge we have with this this roast is as we cut the steaks further towards the the head of the animal they don't look as appealing however we can wrap this whole piece in butcher twine or we can put it in jet net and market that as a what is often now referred to as an American roast which would be an ideal alternative to prime rib the other portion that is left can be marketed in a couple ways we can season this and roast it and sell it as a Carver roast in our delis or we can make individual slices and sell them as boneless short ribs or they're often referred to now as the Denver cut here we have the hind corner we have the rear leg referred to as the round this region here is the sirloin and what we have left is the short loin or the we could leave the loin attached and have a full loin now we also have in here we also have right here the flank which right up here in this region which you'll see shortly is where the the retail cut the flank comes from will begin fabricating this carcass by removing the flank and this is made by a cut that comes along the side of the top part of the round it's always a good idea to remove this connective tissue on the outside to get a better look at the muscle you now see after removing this connective tissue you get a better look for the outline of this teardrop shaped muscle and to finish removing it we will clean the remaining part of the fat up we actually just come in underneath it that easier see now so basically coming in underneath the muscle we can remove the flank steak the remaining portion that's left has a lot of fat with a little bit of lean left in here we can take the lean out and use that for ground beef and throw the fat into rendering then we have the flank steak cleaned up and ready for retail sales you'll often refer to see this referred to as a Swiss steak or the London broil however Swiss steak and London broil our recipes and not necessarily a particular cut so you often see it displayed in retail flat like this or we can score it by making light cuts across the surface enrolling it so we highlight the scores we're going to separate the round from the full loin by coming about two fingers with off the top of this H bone and hitting the last two vertebrae on the left of this spinal column now if we do this correctly we've removed the full loin from the round now ideally we could have come back and cut the head of the femur back in this region right here and you've got the top of the ball joint of the femur often referred to as the butchers dollar we didn't do a very good job when we missed the top of the femur the story behind the butchers dollar in the in the old days Meat Cutters are paid on the number of carcasses they broke down in a day versus away they're paid now is by an hourly wage and so the butchers dollar the legend goes that a meat cutter would collect those femur heads put them in his pocket at the end of the day he would go to get paid he would pull out those femur heads and show them to the accountant to show how many carcasses he broke down that day judging by the way we cut this we wouldn't get paid for this one here we have the steamship round you'll often see this setting at the end of a long buffet line at a Sunday dinner and what typically would happen is this this whole piece will be cooked for 24 to 28 hours to make it tender a very low temperature this is a muscle of locomotion so we have to be very careful of how we cook this piece of meat and so you can see this at the end of the buffet line very majestic looking piece setting there as a patron in the restaurant would come in and they would want something that was medium-rare the server at the end of the buffet line that was serving the Steamship round could cut a piece down here at the bottom that didn't get cooked as much as that would got cooked more fully at the top part of the round so patron who wanted something that was well done to get a piece of meat up here those patrons that wanted something more of a medium-rare category or a rare could get a piece of meat down at the bottom now to begin fabricating this round we need to come in here and we need to remove this H bone now this bone right here is one half of the pelvic girdle remember there's another half to this carcass and he sets in there and kind of a C shape and so we'll just take our knife and we'll come in around him and remove the H bone right we've removed the H bone you can see the head of the femur you can see the joint as well now a word of caution this is a very difficult bone to remove there's been a lot of meat cutters that have cut themselves as badly as you typically you're cutting towards your body if you don't have any steel male protecting your chest in your belly there's been a lot of meat cutters that have been cut badly by removing this bone so please be very careful as you remove this bone and what we have in the face of the ramp okay this region right here is the knuckle or the tip now some of you that are watching this I have a little bit of experience in fabricating carcasses are probably wondering why I didn't remove the knuckle while that the hindquarter was hanging I prefer to remove the the tip when it's on the table as if the carcass is hanging you have a greater chance of cutting yourself and so in order to remove that clean here you see the ball of the femur we're going to remove the knuckle by coming on the other side of that making a straight cut all the way back bearing them on we want to be really close to that femur bone now we move this knuckle we followed the femur bone now a thing you got to remember typically what will happen is people just make a straight cut all the way the block top and forget that the actual knuckle kind of curls underneath the femur bone if you're cutting a carcass up for profit you need to leave as much of that knuckle on there as you can and so ideally you come in back underneath this bone find this natural seam and peel the knuckle out from there this is what would often be referred to as a rough cut cap on knuckle it has this portion on here which is called the cap obviously and so we could sell it like this now typically what we have to do is we have to remove this bone which is the kneecap it's a fairly easy bone to remove so knee cap is removed now we can come in here follow this natural seam and remove the cap so by following the natural scene we can remove the cap we have a cap off tips take our cap off tip clean this up which will often see vacuum bag and bought at wholesale we have left on here the shank which we'll have to remove and basically we're going to see this you see this natural joint in here this is where we're going to remove the shank shank has been removed this is kind of a tricky joint to go through and see it has a lot of peaks and valleys you have to be kind of patient pushing down on the back of the shank to expose that that joint will help you get your knife through there a lot easier the remaining portion that we have left is a bone-in round now you can purchase these for retail like this or we can have the femur bone removed and purchase a boneless round now the thing to remember with this cut there is the top round the bottom round which the piece is setting on and over along this side this region right here is the eye of ram which will actually go ahead and separate those muscles for you we removed a femur bone and then we've come in here and found the natural seam and remove the top round top round from what is often referred to as the goose neck thanks to this top round this top round can be cleaned up removing the dehydrated portions of that and go to a grocery store as is and be cut into top round steak sand table ound roast the goose neck contains two portions this area right here is the eye the eye of the round as well as the bottom round we also have part of the heel left on here as well in order to separate the eye from the bottom round we will remove the the heel there is a natural seam to remove the heel remove the heel which the heel contains a lot of connective tissue a lot heavy connective tissue in that the best thing for this is to go into ground beef we have followed the seam now this is a very tight seam and so you kind of have to eyeball removing the eye of round from the bottom wrap the eye of round can be trimmed up removing the heavy fat and dehydrated tissue this can be vacuum packaged and sold at retail and then typically a a retail meat cutter will come in here square the front off and cut I of round steaks so you have I browned steaks as well as leaving the rest hole for a I have round roast what we have left is a very rough cut bottom rim we need to clean this up removing a lot of the heavy fat a lot of the excess muscle that's on here and this can typically be done by following many of the natural seams so we have a whole bottom round or what's often referred to as a round flat now the name of this muscle is actually called the biceps femoris the biceps meaning it has two two heads to the muscle for Morris means it runs right along the side of the femur bone now as you can see in this region right here where this heavy seam is this is the other head of the muscle now what we can do in retail we can cut the end of this muscle to make a nice roast once it's trimmed up now typically what would happen once that roast was cut off of their a retail meat cutter would come in here and just make regular straight steak cuts perpendicular to the flow of the muscle however as you notice you can see the grain is running at an angle we know that this is going to be a tough cut of meat and we know if we cut across the grain we can make this cut a little bit more tender so what we can do now is come in here right with this this other muscle head is remove it at that seam put this off to the side cut the seam out of there because that is heavy connective tissue in it it will be very tough now as you can see the muscle fibers are running at an angle so in order to give ourselves a chance to make this a tender as we can we're going to cut across the muffled muscle fibers by cutting across the muscle fiber green we give our steaks a little bit different look as well as we give a greater chance of making the steak a little bit more tender than it normally would be by typically cutting it straight at a diagonal according to the way the muscle fibers grow the remaining portion of this this muscle can be left whole as a row so we can actually cut that in steaks as well as you can see the the muscle grain flows perpendicular and so we just cut straight across the the grain this typically this half is typically more tough than the other half the remaining portion we have is the full one we have the sirloin portion and the short loin portion now you see this heavy fat on here this fat is a very dry fat it's a it's actually the first layer fat laid down in the animal's body it surrounds the organs to protect them the big bulb of a fat that was down here contained the kidney therefore this was often referred to as the kidney fat now this may not mean much but typically you'll see this if it is marketed as suet this is your suit right here it's a very dry crumbly fat and we will remove it and blow it off to the side so now a common question is asked why do we leave that large amount of kidney fat on there the main reason why we leave that large kidney fat Chuck on there is this muscle that sits right underneath this this muscle goes from the from the head of the excuse me we start all over again okay a common question that is asked is why do we leave that big amount of kidney fat on the carcass the main reason we leave that kidney fat on there is to protect this muscle that lies directly underneath it from dehydration this muscle starts here at the pelvic bone and goes all the way down to where the 13th rib is this a very expensive muscle this is the muscle where we would get our filet mignons the tender the beef tenderloin now there's several options we have here we have our sirloin our loin and our tenderloin now if I was going to make all these boneless I remove this tenderloin remove the sirloin and have a boneless loin our boneless top one that I could cut into New York strips our Kansas City strips depending on the region of the country you are from and still have the remaining portion of this tenderloin is I sell as a full tenderloin to to my customers however if I want to leave this as a short loin which we are going to do we will we will miss the opportunity having a full tenderloin will be left for what is called the but tender down here now in order to remove the sirloin from the loin we are going to cut right here in the middle of the very last lumbar vertebra okay by cutting in the middle of the last of last lumbar vertebra we remove the sirloin we have a bone-in sirloin and we're left with a short loin this is where we're going to get our porterhouse steaks and our t-bone steaks as we cut the the short loin into steaks we're left with two types of steaks we're left with the porterhouse and the t-bone steak now often these these two are confused however they are very different cuts now what makes a porterhouse a porterhouse versus a t-bone a t-bone is two things number one the porterhouse is going to have a much larger tenderloin versus the t-bone steak as well as if you notice this muscle right here this is actually the tail into the sirloin muscle often refer to as the jump muscle this needs to be present on the porterhouse to be called the porterhouse steak otherwise you have a t-bone what is unique about the porterhouse and the t-bone is you're essentially getting two steaks in one if we were to remove the bone and remove this portion right here we would have a top loin steak our New York strip steak or Kansas City strip steak like I said depending on the region you are from as well as a tenderloin steak or a filet mignon so if you order a t-bone or a porterhouse mainly the porterhouse you will get two steaks in one cut we have now is the bone-in sirloin now we can cut this into steaks and we get things called round bone flat bone pin bone and wedge bone sirloin steaks however the trend has gone away from bone to a boneless taken so what we have remaining in here this muscle right here is the tenderloin muscle which we can pull this out so we're going to move the tenderloin muscle and we have as we clean it up we have what's called a but tender now to a retailer he will pay a little bit more money for this but tender as it is basically steak ready it's going to be the same thickness from one end to the other whereas a full tenderloin not only is it longer but the full tenderloin will actually decrease in size and become flatter as it gets more towards the the head of the M now what we have left is the sirloin with the with the hip bone in in the excuse what we have left is the sirloin with the hip bone still attached what we need to move the hip bone to get to the top sirloin which is this region right here so removing the hipbone just take this guy off now this is also a somewhat difficult bone to remove so make sure you're you're extremely careful as you do that and so we're left with the top sirloin and the bottom sirloin there is a natural seam between the two cuts that will utilize to separate the top from the bottom sirloin so here we have the top sirloin which we can cut into sirloin steaks or we have the bottom sirloin now typically this is actually the head of that tip or knuckle muscle that we removed earlier and so you'll actually see people remove this at the natural seam and sell that as a ball tips take the remaining portion we have left under here is a very popular cut in California and has gained a little bit of popularity throughout the Midwest and the southeast it is often referred to as the tri-tip steak so at the sirloin we have the top sirloin with the bottom sirloin the little little head of the muscle that's left on there from the knuckle they can cut that off and call that a ball tip and then the remaining portion that's left underneath the bottom sirloin is the tri-tip not to be confused with this portion of the top sirloin which is actually the continuance of the bottom round muscle but this is actually the true tri-tip steak which you've witnessed is a basic fabrication of a whole side of beef there are very many ways of doing this this is just the method that I'm the most comfortable with a lot of individuals like to fabricate from the rail others like myself like to do it from the block top now as a consumer some things to think about when buying beef marbling which is the the amount of fat the Flex of fat inside the muscle is good the more marbling we have the more flavorful the more juicy this piece of meat is going to be and so you see here terms like USDA prime and USDA choice which are our top two cuts of beef which have the most amount of marbling prime having more marbling than choice typically what you'll see in a lot of grocery stores now is USDA select which is a grade below choice also the Matt vast majority of our carcasses are beef that's fabricated in this country is fabricated somewhere around 16 18 months of age those animals at that age will grow up to be roughly 1,200 to 1,300 pounds the reason we harvest those animals at that age younger animals will typically be more tender than older animals marbling has very little if nothing to do with tenderness nest doesn't necessarily mean that something that is heavily marbled is going to be more tender now from that animal that was almost 1,300 pounds when it came in the door and had an eight hundred and thirty pound carcass weight we roughly got close to 350 to 400 pounds of boneless beef out of those cuts you can typically view a carcass our whole animal and estimate roughly 30 to 35 percent of that live weight is going to go home to your freezer once it gets to the car once it gets to the carcass state that the bones inside that carcass were left roughly be around 20% of the carcass weight as well as the fact that we have to trim them off will desperately decrease the amount of retail cuts that we take home and so if you have any questions bill please feel free to contact me my name is Greg Wynn fro I'm a PhD and the extension meat specialist at the University of Kentucky my number is eight five nine to five seven seven five five zero thank you you

Channel: UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment

Views: 1,389,542

Rating: 4.7419744 out of 5

Keywords: rentfrow, university of kentucky, beef, retail cuts, steak, flatiron steak, chuck eye, american roast, denver cut, meat, omaha steaks, beef cuts, beef prices, best steak, meat cuts, beef cuts chart

Id: -PBGvoEFE74

Length: 61min 1sec (3661 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 13 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/whereworm]

Great post! Including the most interesting part of anything, the explanation.