- Are you a ribeye lover like me? Well today, I'm gonna take
a full bone-in rib roast and show you how to break
it out into multiple cuts. (upbeat country music) So this may seem a little
complicated at first to break this down, but I'll walk you through
an easy way to do it and separate out all these different cuts that can really please
a variety of people. For more techniques and
cooking instructionals, remember to subscribe below. Let's start with some equipment. First, you'll need a large
sturdy cutting board. I like to use two different knives. I have a larger knife, which makes it easier to cut steaks. And then I have a boning knife, which is nice for boning
out in this case ribs, or any intricate cuts you'll need. So first step, we'll remove the rib bones. For this, I like to start from the top and use just the tip of my knife to separate those bones from the meat. So I just make a small incision. And while gently pressing
towards the bones, I just kinda follow those ribs, while peeling the meat away from it. Just trying to separate, you wanna feel the tip
your knife hit that bone so you know you're not cutting
too far into the muscle. So this is a bone-in rib roast, commonly called a prime rib. So now that I've kinda
worked these back ribs away you can see the separation there. I'll just get a little further down, then cut these completely off. So now, we have em fairly separated. What I'll do is I'll go in through these little button bones here, and kinda carve around them. To get as much meat to stay
on the rib roast as possible. All right, so there we
have some back ribs. So these back ribs are great for smoking but they could also take
direct heat over the grill. So next thing we'll be looking to do, is separate the spinalis. So a lot of people call
this the ribeye cap. And this is one of my favorite parts. You can see the spinalis
right through here. There is another smaller muscle in here called the complexus, which will also take out, but the focus on this first cut will be removing this
spinalis and peeling it out. So, what I like to do to start is again, there's a little bit of a separation. A lot of times you'll see
the separation in the fat. And I'll just kinda
stick my finger in there and start to peel. That I find where that
natural separation is, and then pull this fat to expose a little more
of that spinalis muscle. So, right there. You can see the whole spinalis. Makes it a little easier to cut, once you find that fat and pull that back. And then, if you have to
trim a little excess fat, so you get a better view, it's always a smart thing to do. So, there we go. And you can just start peeling. I really like to use my hands a lot because I think that it
helps prevent over-cutting and cutting into the muscle that you're trying to preserve. This point, you're really
separating out the spinalis. Almost there. Seeing a lot of it, was just me pulling with my hands. So now, got the spinalis here. Got this little muscle the complexus, you don't wanna cut into that too much. So, separate that. Spread your knife right
along that rib filet, okay. So now we've separated the spinalis from the rib filet and that little complexus muscle. So, this is commonly
referred to as the ribeye cap or the spinalis. This is a great tender
delicious piece of meat, but a lot of times people are turned off because maybe there's little
bit of fat in between, a little bit silver skin here. So, what we'll do is we'll
trim this up nice and tight, and you'll have a totally
different eating experience than you're used to. So get that, and just kinda come and, put a little tension on that and just pull, to get all that silver skin off. And what I like to do is, the read through there a little bit with your knife ever so slightly tilted up to help put a little tension on that. All right, through that silver skin. So this is a little extra
meat off the side here. Pull that off. And a lot of this stuff could be, leaned out, cut up or stir-fry. Cause this is still good meat. So now you got this
nice piece of spinalis. Turn it over, do a little trim on this side. This will have resemble
kind of like a flank steak, but it has such a nice
tender marble texture. So now I've got this
pretty nice and cleaned up. I don't wanna take too much away because there's a lot of good meat there, so I cleaned off a lot of the silver skin anything that would be unpleasurable, but realistically you've got just this beautiful piece of spinalis. The marbling is fantastic, super tender. The green runs all in this direction so it's really easy to work with. You could take it and roll it up like a roulade stuff
it something like that. You could set cut it,
skewer it for sautés, or just grill it whole, but what I'll do is I'll take it, and I'll cut it in half. First of all, look at that marbling, is beautiful. And then, you can take these get yourself two different meals here because this is something you wanna savor. It's really the prize
piece of this ribeye. So we'll set that aside and keep trimming this guy down. So here, is this kernel of fat, which typically for people
who don't like ribeyes or say they don't like ribeyes, this is what they don't like. It's just this one piece of fat that kinda runs right between the spinalis and the rib filet. So by removing this and removing the spinalis, you'll be able to please everybody who thinks they don't like ribeyes cause they actually do. So here, is this little complexus muscle. So take my knife. Get in there get that
fat out a little bit. Some more. Just peel that right out. Cut the fat. Cut that little bit of
connective, right there. Well, I can trim this up. Just like a tiny beef tenderloin. So now, if you're looking for recipes under something to do with this, don't bother you're not gonna find em. This is rarely seen anywhere. This is something that
I would just suggest, just throw some salt and pepper on there grill it up and heat it immediately because you're not gonna
know what to do with it later you'll forget about it, you'll freeze it whatever. Just eat it as soon as you get it. Set that aside and start working on the rib filet. So here was the chuck end. And this, is down to the strip end. So, it will get quite a bit wider as you move down that rib filet. What I like to start with, is the tail. So this is that tail piece just kinda separating that, find that line. Again, I'm just pushing with my fingers finding the line, the natural separations. Okay, now I'll go in with my knife. I do not wanna over-cut this piece. So here, there's some
good meat in that tail that you can just take right out and again would make a great stir-fry or even kebab meat if
you trim it down nicely. So, I do not wanna waste that because this is a nice cut here. So now, we're getting down to that rib filet as we like to call it or the eye of the ribeye. So, this one you can
kinda trim to your liking. For people who don't want a
little bit of fat that's fine you can trim some of this off, or you can leave it on. Kinda like a strip steak where it has a layer of fat
kinda along that backside. It really doesn't bother me at all. If it does bother people,
you can trim it off. So, this point though, personally, I'll just
start cutting steaks. And then, if I see a little
bit of fat that I don't want, that's where I'll trim it. So, for all these ribeye filets, this is a great steak throw in your grill cook medium-rare. So I know I'm gonna make
a lotta enemies out there, but spinalis is really
good cooked to medium. You may not believe me, you may think that everything has to be rare-medium-rare, but this muscle can handle
a little extra heat, and it becomes a little bit more tender when you cook it to medium, and it's still gonna be delicious. So you don't have to worry about that. So here you can see there we're starting to get
closer to the strip side. Muscles starting to
get a little bit wider, and less round. You can kinda see right in there that all this is starting to look like a New York strip on-sound. So if you want, beautiful
guaranteed marbling. Look for the Certified Angus Beef logo. All right, so there we
have the rib filets. The great thing about this is for the people who are non-ribeye lovers, I think you can convert them by giving them a rib filet. It's all the eating experience you want out of one of those steaks, but it has so much more robust flavor. So breaking down a ribeye, you get all these great cuts. You have the rib filet. The back ribs, the
spinalis, the complexus, and you get some great beef trim that you can use for whatever you like. You don't have to be a meat
nerd to break down a ribeye, but if you are, comment below. Thanks for watching and I hope you learned something new. We'll see you again next
time in the Test Kitchen. (upbeat country music)
