- This is the shoulder of a cow. (light jazz playing) What most people don't understand is how many steaks actually
come from a shoulder. - So today Brent's got his apron on and we're gonna show you
where every steak comes from on the beef shoulder. (light jazz music) It turns out that most of
the most tender muscles on the animal actually come from one of the most
hard-working parts of the animal. This has more complexity
than any other muscle group on any animal, and it's the thing we don't
let our butchers touch for months. So how are we gonna do this, B? - We are going to break
this down the Meat Hook way. First cut is to just
take the foreshank off. So the foreshank as we know it is mostly used for braising. You get some really,
really good soup bones out of it as well. While this is great for many
things, it is not a steak. Do not grill this. So we're gonna put it to the side. - Chuck it. - Next cut, we're just
gonna take the bottom half of the ribs off. These are a continuation of the short ribs but aren't quite as meaty
or fatty as the short ribs, so we're just gonna take them
off and use them as trim. - Do you ever think about
when you're doing this it might skip and you'll
saw into your thumb? I think about that all the time. - Just sawing through the bone, we're not sawing through any meat. - As you can see, Brent's
just following the line that's naturally there. The knife barely even needs to touch it. This is just a natural seam, and this is something as you learn butchering
more, and more, and more, you find all these
natural seams showing you where the muscles go. - So again, not a steak,
going to the side. Next up, we're going to
take the entire spine out. This is probably one of
the hardest cuts to learn just because it is so tricky and everything underneath
it is sellable steak. - This is one of the most important parts of butchering a shoulder, because right underneath
all of these neck bones are some of the best steaks, some of the most tender
steaks we're gonna find on the animal. This is one of the reasons why it takes so long for people to get
the skills built up enough so that they can be
breaking down a shoulder. We don't always get the
animal with the spine intact. There's a law about if the
animal is over 30 months you have to have the spine removed for fear of mad cow disease. With pastured animals that
is 99.9% not gonna happen. But the good thing about
having the spine intact is it protects all of those steaks. It's also exceedingly
different for a processor to take out the spine without cutting into the
steaks even a little bit. So this way, we get
the fully-intact steak. - That was just the cut
to take off feather bones in the first part of the neck. You saw how hard it was for me to do that with a 5-inch knife. If this animal was over
30 and the processor has to take the neck out with a huge saw, that's gonna be way harder and obviously not get
the same amount of yield on the steak itself. Now that the feather bones are off, we're gonna take the rest of the neck out. (light jazz music) That's a beef neck. Definitely not a steak. - All right, let's move on. Let's get into some steaks. So the first sub-primal
we're gonna deal with, is going to be the chuck roll. Right now Brent is peeling off what we call the Delmonico, which is a configuration
of four different muscles. You'll see it sometimes as the chuck eye steak,
chuck eye roll, chuck roast, I would say it's in
Brent's top three steaks. - A-number one. - Number one? - Number one. - The eye of the rib eye
in the surrounding muscles, which are all very, very tender as they're moving up into the shoulder. I think it's a very, very valuable cut that is kind of underrated. - This is the whole chuck flat. We're going to turn this section
into our Delmonico steak. So just to cut the Delmonico section, we're gonna split this
more or less in half. This is our chuck, or chuck roast. We're setting that aside because it's a beautiful
roast, great stew, not necessarily a steak. The Delmonico is my favorite steak because it is literally the middle ground between a rib eye and a chuck roast. So, super flavorful, but not the most tender which is something that I
really love out of steaks. I don't love really lean,
super tender muscles. I like them to be a
little bit more toothsome. Gonna take a nice inch
and a half off there, and there we have our Delmonico steak. - It doesn't look like a rib eye exactly. You have muscle separation here, you can see between each layer, and you can see there
are different muscles all kind of grouped together. What this gives you is
a little bit of more fat in between each muscle. So you're gonna have not a
nice real big fat cap here, but you are gonna have a
lot of intermuscular fat and a lot of really, really thin fats connecting all of these tissues together so you get a really nice texture. Our next cut is going to be
the Denver and the Sierra that's resting on top. - Sits right underneath the Delmonico, also just gonna peel this back. - The Denver, or sometimes
called the underblade steak, is really, really good at medium rare. Unlike most steaks I find
with grassfed animals that the better texture's at rare, this one tends to loosen in
toothsomeness at medium rare. - So right here is just a big
ole' ugly piece of flat meat. Once we trim this down, we're going to get a
Denver steak out of it. - All we need to do to start
is take off the Sierra, we can get a better picture of the Denver. The Sierra looks a lot like a flank steak, which you'll see here in a second. Is it a flank steak? Oh no, no. It is not. Brent, what's your
experience with the Sierra? - Don't even give it the time of day. - All right. Sounds like the Sierra and
I have something in common. So now to get to the Denver. - The thing about seam butchery is that a lot of muscles
will be be directly next to the other one. One of them will be great, and one of them will be not so great. So is the Sierra and the Denver. We really love the Denver,
Sierra not so much. - This is our Denver. You just want to take a
good look at which way is the graining going. As you can see, there's some natural lines going that way which means we want to
be cutting that way. - You can actually see
that the muscle fibers are even larger on this steak which is different than
the smaller muscle fibers say, on a filet. Larger the muscle fiber, the more you actually want to cook it. Next up, we're just
gonna attack the brisket. - You can see there's this natural seam what you would pretty much
call the arm pit of the animal, and that's what Brent's following across is trying to just get that
seam all the way over. That is what a brisket looks like before it's cleaned up. - Do not grill this. It requires long, slow cooking
in order to make it tender. Next up we're just gonna
do the shoulder clod. - Oh baby we're getting
into the good ones now. Ooh. Right here is the teres major, sometimes called the petite tender, or the shoulder tender. And you can even see, you can pretty much dig your
finger underneath that steak. The sinew's so thin. And then you have the clod heart. The clod heart is like the weather. It's really, really hard to predict, you never know what's going to happen until you actually get there. So this one we always
have to visually look at to see exactly how tender
is the steak gonna be. - We are going to trim
out the petite tender and cut some... What do you want to call 'em? - Ranch steaks. - Ranch steaks. - Ranch steaks. - Ranch. - As I mentioned earlier, you can pretty much just reach in there and you can find your line. You don't even need a
knife to pull it apart. And I'm not using any
pressure here really at all. There's your shoulder tender,
teres major, petite tender, whatever you wanna call it. - This is a small muscle, but it's super easy to cook and a lot of our customers'
favorite steak overall. If you like a hangar steak, there's only one of those per animal. There's only two of these
per animal, so super limited. But if you like the texture
and it's a great value, go to your local butcher, pick this thing up. - Now that we have the teres major, we're just gonna trim this
up of the excess muscle that's all gonna go into stew or grind, and then we have our clod heart. It really depends on the animal on if this is going to be tender or not. When you're a high-volume processor, killing animals and
killing the environment, you probably aren't too worried about little things like old clod heart. But since we're a
whole-animal butcher shop we need to find the value in everything, so we always try it out. - So this is our Ranch steak. We love it cause we can actually get
a couple consistent steaks out of the whole muscle. It really does matter
animal-to-animal as far as tenderness, but this looks great. Similar to the Denver that
it has a little bit larger of a muscle structure, but find it's usually about
on par as far as tenderness. - Good weekday steak. Easy salt, pepper, put it in a pan. You're done. - That's it. All right. Almost at the end. - This is the one. The flat iron. The second most tender steak on the animal after the filet. It's great at rare, it's great at medium rare, it's great at medium. - [Brent] Our actual shoulder blade, flat iron steaks. You really can't mess this steak up. Great value, super
tender, and great flavor. - From the butcher's perspective it's also one of the
hardest steaks to get clean. Because it is considered so valuable and our customers love it so much, we always want to get it perfect. But it also has a very
thick piece of sinew kinda like the clod heart, running right through the middle, which makes it a little bit tricky to cut. This is another reason
why we save the shoulders to be the last thing that
people learn to butcher. You can tell just by looking
at it now, looks great. There's no fat. I don't care. You shouldn't care. This doesn't need fat to be tasting good. A lot of these steaks you're seeing today don't have a lot of fat. Doesn't matter. They have a lot of flavor because that muscles
are being used so much. They don't need that fat as a crutch. - So this flat iron we sell whole. We recommend cooking whole
and then slicing after. Great steak for salad. Ooh. - Ooh. - Keep it healthy.
- Ooh, salad. - Really easy to just cook. Two minutes each side. Hot grill, nice crust. Keep it rare on the inside. Slice it, done. It's fantastic. - This is what is called the mock tender, or the Scotch tender. Do not let the name "tender"
being in the title fool you. It is not tender. I like to say, "Make it a
minute-steak, or make a mistake." Come on, what a line! Our last steak. This is the real underdog. - By "underdog" he means the
worst steak on the animal. I don't know why the hell
we're actually even doing this. It doesn't make any sense. It's not a good steak. You should throw it in grind. Ben's got a hair up his ass and he wants to grill it. - So we know Brent's thoughts. That is what we're gonna cook. - Mm. - I'm not saying it's
gonna definitely be good. I'm just saying I haven't
had this in four years and we're breaking a shoulder. I just want to try something new. I'm open to new experiences, I wish you were open to new experiences. - Save my hard-earned money to go to the local butcher
shop and buy a Scotch steak. - You've never earned your money. - True. - Here we are at the end of
our beef shoulder journey. Starting first we have our ranch steak from the shoulder clod. Delicious. Next up. - Flat iron. Lean, tender, easy to cook. - Delmonico. Like the rib eye, as those muscles are
going into the shoulder. Really, really good flavor. - Shoulder tender, or teres major. Also lean, tender, easy to cook. - Sierra. It looks like a flank. Don't believe it. - It's not. - It's not. Needs to be cut really thin. Really good for fajitas
or good for stir fry. - Mock tender. It sucks. - Hold that judgment. We haven't cooked it yet. Last up, Denver. It's good at medium rare or medium, not at rare. It's also called the under blade or kind of a boneless short rib. But it's good. - Beef shoulder. Come on, let's cook some steaks, B. So what steak do you want to cook? - I think I want to do the Denver. - Great choice. - What steak do you want to cook? - I still want to go with my A-number one first round draft pick, Delmonico steak. - Totally good. And just because it's not
a day that we work together if I don't torture you, I wanna do a little
mock tender minute steak just to make you try it. - Yay. - That's the enthusiasm I
like to hear from my partner. So we're gonna take these steaks, we're gonna kick to the backyard. We're gonna grill 'em up, we're gonna eat some steak. (happy jazz) We'll start with your favorite, Delmonico. - Yeah, let's eat a steak. - Let's eat a steak. Ooh, he's cutting the Denver! - [Brent] Oh yeah. - He's cutting the minute steak! - Mm. Start with the favorite? - [Ben] Start with the favorite, let's go. (both savoring food excitedly) I don't think it gets
any better than that. - Let's see. - That's pretty good. - Great flavor. Very buttery. - Buttery. Actually even a little bit
sweeter than the Delmonico. Last but not least, let's do this. - My number one. Come on, man. It's not bad. - It tastes like liver. - So. Yeah, okay. The mock tender's not great. But it's more tender
than I expected it to be. - Tough sell. I was expecting it to
be a zero out of a 10, and I'd say it's a 1 1/2. That's kind. - That's way too harsh. It's at least a four. It turns out, steak from the
shoulder are still great. Now hopefully you know a
little more about the steaks you're gonna get at home, and the complexity of the
muscles that you're dealing with. - Not every steak has to be
a rib eye, New York strip, or a filet. There's a huge range of steaks out there. Get to know the texture. Get to know the flavor. You can get radically different
things from the shoulder. - Go to your local butcher, tell them Ben and Brent say "Hi." - Hey.
- Hi. Hi. (background crew laughing) (happy jazz playing)
