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

[Music] my name is Jason yang and I'm a butcher at flashers 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 roads out of here right now I'm actually removing the oyster steak which is a little steak that sits on top of the H bone which is a very tender juicy tasty little cut which is actually a nice butcher's 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 H bone there's some strong tendons there you have to sever that hold the femur in place 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 H bone is great for stock so we'll cut that up later right now I'm actually gonna take the shank off and I'm using the leverage of the table so I get through these tough tendons and if you hear about an athlete tearing their ACL or MCL or PCL or LCL I'm tearing through it all over right now so removing the shank which is gonna be a tough bundle of muscles but it's great for braising 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 on bundling the four muscles that we're looking at we're looking at our top round we have our knuckle we have our I round in the bottom round and you're to see that this is interesting because it's all seams we could actually seam the muscles apart right now I'm kind of pulling the cap which is a muscle that sits on top of the top round so I'm just peeling that away starting to open this up and you're gonna 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 gonna see the top round just slowly peels away my eye rounds revealed you see some of that fat in fashion 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 bones going to be our longest marrow bone in the steer so this is great for bone marrow and great winter meal so we have a nice marrow bone here this is great we can cut the knuckles off those will make excellent stock and then the marrow bone itself being cut into rounds or canoe it so cut it right down the middle so it comes open and can roast it off it's a really tasty addition 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 there's my knuckle let's put that aside for now and we're left with the gooseneck so this is going to be a combination of three muscles or I around 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 is removing the I 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 estate get out of there called the Merlot with a pretty tight grain structure but if you cook it to like a medium-rare and slice it then 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 a steaks sometimes there's fashio 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 texture 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 I round so right here you can see the shape I'm going to leave all the fat on because this can be really nice when I do the roast beef but we're going to take off some of the fashio sometimes you're going to have some fat that's not going to be good but then fashion will be like the sheets to 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 can 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 the 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 was going to cut some nice sirloin tip steaks here this is also called the knuckle this is a nice flavorful steak a little bit more texture a little bit chewier but definitely a very tasty steak we also have our I 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 gonna cook more evenly the bottom rounds 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 sound roast beef give us great slices for the top round we mentioned talked earlier it's great for tartare also excellent for jerky can be done as a roast but we cut it for our top round liner broiled steaks here are the final cuts from the round later I'll come back to the shank and cut it down using the bandsaw next I'm going to break down the loin so we're taking a look at the loin which consists of basic 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 this is a nice lean piece of meat takes a marinade really well still 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 blow away and essentially I'm cleaning them you're going to see there's not much I'm going 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 it right in the case that we need to do so next I'm just going to cut off a little bit of the drop here just to make a little bit easier for me to see my sirloin flat and I remove some of the fat too so the so on flap is a great cut called the bavette in France means bib and it's gonna 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 great marbling and easy just to throw right on 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 on these organs here and this is great to render down to make tallow you can use it for candles skin care 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 Barb's 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 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 tendons the psoas major this is a Sohus minor it's the CH Annette 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 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 sole one so I want to take a look at the sole on resection with my favorite cuts I'm gonna 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 gonna take out the ball tip here so that's going to go to trim it's a little bit of the sirloin tip that's left behind and I wanna take off the tri-tip which is 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 on the grill Texas they smoked 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 ran ahead and cut some your strip steaks I'm going to go through the feather bones then finish with my saw I think that here is really an obsession with tenderness and oftentimes people will be like I want tenderloin specifically or what's your most tender cut and I think it's okay to chew and have interesting textures there is nothing as tender as tenderloin I've definitely cook steaks that I thought 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 in the animal here are the final cuts from the loin this is what you've seen the case of 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 everyone I mean if anyone has ever seen the Flintstones they're gonna think of this giant you know rack of ribs there's a couple of nice cuts I'm gonna harvest out of here or taking a look skirts right now so we have our outside skirt and we have our inside skirt so right now I was pulling off some of the membranes which can be a lot of membranes to cover bones or they cover muscles these are tough membranes that is 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 minimally taste very similar to a hanger steak a little bit more tender this is what you're gonna see for carne asada 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 using like a basic handsaw and it's great because you can do a lot of this was just a hand saw a boning knife and a table it's really elegant using the leverage the side of the table gravity pumping as well so we have our plate here a 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 bacon for example it's a pretty tough cut so it can be braised down ropa vieja is a very popular dish so 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 an outside skirt I wanna get rid of some of the tough fashio but I want to leave some of the fat on too because I think some of the fat on there is nice doesn't have to be completely barren of fat and then for the rib I'm going to actually hand shine the rim here I'm basically lining up my saw so I can get through the spine net and I'm cutting through so I can eventually cut through the steaks by hand in this case I'm going to take the chine and the feather bones all up at once so there's going to be 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 down now that the chines gone the feather bones are gone we're gonna hand Tufts and I swear mice these are the final cuts from the rib later I'll come back to the short rib plate and cut it down using the bandsaw next I'm going to break down the Chuck alright 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 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 neck all in one piece I like to do 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 to 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 these are actually be meteor so ramírez going to cut across the top rib and start to peel this away take that off I can sawed off the breastbone it's going to be great for stock so this is going to be our chakra plate now this is going to be meteor 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 bristles going to wrap right here on the shoulder clod on the triceps and it's going to find that little armpit seam and just seen this guy off and now I can pull away and it's very satisfying seemed just to roll expecto muscle off so the brisk 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 isn't giving 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 we're just 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 a little bit better now I'm just starting 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 muscles 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 what the flat iron as well now we're looking at our shoulder clod so this is going to actually seam on to the flat iron so I have to be careful when I cut this so we have our shoulder clod set aside I pull it off a little side muscle that can be made into a roast as well but we've revealed here's our clod heart which is what we use for either a roast or rancho 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 rich 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 ridges it'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 that your butcher shop with cutting meat there's always different ways to present it you're rarely going to do something so badly 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 matter 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 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 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 steak 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 out our Chuck so from here I'm gonna seam the chuck eye off the Denver I'm going to face this a little bit because just because that was part was exposed that's where it was split and here we have some chuck rib eyes a lot of flavor a contender Nastase right here from the shoulder so I pulled off the chuck eyes so that can be nice roast as well a truck i roast and now we're gonna cut these beautiful beautiful Denver steaks we see the nicely marbled and these are excellent steaks and this is like my perfect like butcher's 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 bandsaw next I'm going to hop over to the bandsaw and cut some osso bucco from the shank the bandsaw is a great tool in a butcher shop something that can allow you to make precise cuts as well as save you a lot of time and effort in cutting through bone cutting down these osso bucco to about an inch and a quarter this is really nice size for a pot it exposes the marrow you 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 bandsaw it's 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 for my service immediately next I'm going to cut down the chuck rib plate from the chuck the bandsaw 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 breeze and here are the final cuts from the bandsaw and finally these are all the cuts you get from a side of beef you

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 12,296,910

Rating: 4.8654575 out of 5

Keywords: roast beef, beef, butcher, cow, meat, ribs, roast, steak, butchery, cattle, bovine, sirloin steak, flank steak, tenderloin steak, new york strip steak, london broil steak, skirt steak, ribeye steak, filet mignon, brisket, short ribs, shank, osso buco, ranch steak, denver steak, rib eye steak, ribeye, chuck steak, chuck roast, flat iron steak, butchering a cow, butchering, food, bon appetit

Id: WrOzwoMKzH4

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SameSea2012]

You know he likes being a butcher by the fact that every cut is his favorite cut.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/evilgwyn]

"The best chicken nuggets you'll ever have"

[u/SelectaRx]

OMG is the cow going to be okay?

[u/monacleman]

This was awesome! Who knew it was so much work, I haven't tried half of these cuts. Thinking about buying a cow at auction and having a butcher prep it for the year.

[u/Captain-Poop]

As a butcher it's nice seeing all these positive comments about the job. It's way harder than people expect

[u/Monkeyfeng]

I want that table..

[u/FreedomChurro]

Can someone explain the point of wearing a glove on only one hand?

[u/my_p0rn_acct]

I really want to try oyster steak now