Alternative ways of cutting meat

[Shalmanese]

I recently got a whole lamb for my birthday. The lamb was broken down into primals (legs, shoulders, racks, saddle) which i then further broke down into individual cuts. Doing so has gotten me interested in alternative ways of breaking down a carcass.

From what I gather, the standard American cuts are optimized for ease of industrialized processing and designed so that a carcass can be broken down in just an hour or so via an assembly line process and using power tools. Often this means that you're buying a slab of meat that contains multiple different muscles, each with different cooking properties.

For example, I've always thought the T-bone steak was a dumb cut. You have the tenderloin which cooks differently from the strip loin, leading to different levels of doneness, the bone in the middle is full of gristle, leading to tough meat on what would otherwise be a tender cut and the bone insulates the inner meat from cooking, often leading to a zone of raw meat just near the bone. On the plus side, with an industrial bandsaw, you can reduce a whole strip loin down to a bunch of T-bone steaks in just a few minutes.

I've tried looking for information about how other countries cut meat and it seems like the standard cuts in a lot of different countries seem to respect the natural boundaries of the meat more. Unfortunately, this information seems hard to come by.

Given that my lamb was raised well and comparatively expensive per lb, I felt it was worthwhile to spend a little extra care in butchering it in order to get the most out of the meat.

In cutting my lamb, I tried to follow a few simple principles:

1. Leave meat on the bone when the bone can add flavor and increase tenderness.
   
2. Take meat off the bone when the bone hinders tenderness (like the T-bone example)
   
3. Whenever possible, cut at the boundaries between muscles, not through them. This is called "seam boning"
   
4. Whenever possible, remove as much silverskin as possible. Silverskin is connective tissue which doesn't soften when cooking and remains as tough gristle. Silverskin can often be the difference between a a cut suitable for grilling and cuts that need slow cooking. (Blade steak used to be a cheap braising cut until American processors figured out they could cut out the silverskin and instead sell it as a flatiron steak)
   
5. Whenever possible, cut steaks with the grain, not across the grain. I never understood why American steaks are almost always cut across the grain when possible. If you buy a 1" ribeye, every bite you eat is going to have 1" long fibres, making it tougher than it needs to be. However, for something like flank steak, as long as you take care to cut it in the right direction, you're left with ~1/4" fibres, making it tender enough for quick cooking. In addition, cutting with the grain allows things like easily excising that knob of fat you find in all ribeyes.
   
6. Minimize trim. At the end, from a 40lb lamb, I had maybe a 1/2 lb of trim (mainly gristle) and 2lbs of bones that went into stock.
   

Unfortunately, I had meat juices on my hands the entire time so I didn't have an opportunity to take photos but I can describe some of the more interesting cutting choices I made:

• Racks of lamb are often frenched and the resulting fingers of meat are trim and either discarded or ground. However, these fingers come from the lamb ribs which I consider to be possibly the best cut on the entire carcass. Instead, I frenched the bones before I seperated the ribs from the rack, leaving extra rib meat on the ribs.
  
• Lamb shoulder is often sold as shoulder blade chops which are often braised. Right in the middle of the shoulder is a large eye muscle which is significantly more tender than the rest of the shoulder. Extracting that gives an incredibly tender but also flavorful and heavily marbled grilling cut.
  
• The saddle is often sold as lamb loin chops which are the lamb equivalent of the aforementioned T-bone cut I hate. Instead, I boned out the saddle to make a stuffed saddle of lamb which is possible the most impressive and delicious whole roast. Tied properly, it's a perfectly cylindrical cut with an even layer of fat to crisp up on the outside and juicy, tender meat in the middle. A thin layer of absorbent stuffing will soak up any juices from the cooking meat, locking in all the lamb flavor. Here's
  cooking a saddle. I've never seen a saddle for retail in the US which means you pretty much have to go to the same lengths I've gone to if you ever want to experience this cut.
  
• One of the legs, I seam boned, removed all the silverskin and then cut thinly across the grain for Xinjiang Yang rou Chuanr kebabs. Properly made Chuanr is possible one of the most addictive foods I've ever tasted and I'm slowly tinkering with my recipe to get it to taste like my memories of the street sellers in China. I make my Chuanr the traditional way with alternatively chunks of meat and fat, minimizing trim.
  

The entire experience has been incredibly educational and it's given me a much better sense of the animal anatomy and how all the pieces fit together. A whole lamb is 40lbs which is a step up from a chicken but still within the realms of practicality when it comes to disassembly and consumption. From now on, I'm going to buy larger cuts of meat whenever possible and disassemble them in a personalized way, rather than relying on the standard American meat cuts.

I'd love to hear of other people's experiences and happy to answer any questions.

[Dakki]

I feel the same way about the T-bone and similar cuts.

One of the things that struck me when I started making my own chorizos and such is how different the various muscles in a pork front leg (this is what I've been using) look and feel. You'd imagine they would all have their own ways of cooking, but you only see them either cooked as a whole roast or ground up together.

From memory, Mastering the Art mentions the "French" way of cutting meat is to divide the primal into the individual muscles. This makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know enough about Continental-style butchery to contribute more than that, though.

[sparrowgrass]

Back when I was married to a deer hunter, I did all the butchering.

I did the individual muscle thing, removing all silverskin and tendons. It is interesting to feel the different muscles, and I learned that many 'tough' cuts actually have tender pieces that can be dissected out. This was before everything was available as a youtube video, so I didn't really have any guidance. I labeled the packages "roast", "stew" and "steak", so I knew how to cook them when I got ready. I learned on my own how to sort cuts into tender, not so tender, and grind this stuff into burger.

I liked doing it, but the year I butchered 4 deer, I spent some time in PT for carpal tunnel, and learned that an old name for that problem is butcher's syndrome. Good knives probably would have helped that problem!

[OliverB]

I had to butcher a milk fed lamb earlier this year, legs came off easy and I left them whole, I tried to do something fancy with the ribs, but gave up quickly, not having a bandsaw. Also they are very small on such a small animal, in the end I decided to go "rustic" and leave things a bit in chunks to cook on the grill. I have butcher knives and looked up cuts in books I have (some German ones too) but I had to eventually get the thing cold again, and had to wing it a bit. But I did cut inbetween the large muscles and removed silverskin where possible, left some pieces to deal with once I thaw them, as it was all getting too warm. Including me, it's not easy work!

[Shalmanese]

I had to butcher a milk fed lamb earlier this year, legs came off easy and I left them whole, I tried to do something fancy with the ribs, but gave up quickly, not having a bandsaw. Also they are very small on such a small animal, in the end I decided to go "rustic" and leave things a bit in chunks to cook on the grill. I have butcher knives and looked up cuts in books I have (some German ones too) but I had to eventually get the thing cold again, and had to wing it a bit. But I did cut inbetween the large muscles and removed silverskin where possible, left some pieces to deal with once I thaw them, as it was all getting too warm. Including me, it's not easy work!

I used a hacksaw I got from the hardware store for $6.99. The key is to buy a replacement blade with the coarsest teeth possible (2 for $3). It's not perfect but it does a serviceable job. Also, cut all the meat with a knife first and reserve the saw for just the bone.

[Baron d'Apcher]

Consider the "melon-style" lamb shoulder. Remove the shoulder from the carcass, cutting the shank and deboning the shoulder from beneath. Shape and truss so that it resembles a melon or pumpkin. Slow roast for 4-5 hours.

As for the saddle, keep the flank attached to the loin and separate the 3 flaps above the navel, removing the membrane and silver skin. Make a compound butter of your liking and spread along the bottom of the saddle, inser the tenderloin, wrap the flanks around and truss. It will make a barrel of sorts with the loin on top, flank at the bottom and tenderloin in the middle.

Cut the ribs on the rack shorter and stuff the breast plate with a forcemeat made from the trimmings, liver, heart and kidneys.

Or, for a more festive occasion, debone the whole animal and stuff with a forcemeat supplemented by greens. Wrap in caul fat and roast.

25lb goat.

[Baron d'Apcher]

Randall-Lineback Rose Veal Ribeye.

Dry-aged 4 weeks. The bones are Frenched and the Complexus, Spinalis and Longissimus Dorsi are separated to remove the sinew and any membranes. Given the lean nature of the animal, kidney fat is inserted in between and the whole sewn shut. Fatback bards the outside and is garnished with lemon and orange zest.

[slkinsey]

Wow. How does it look once cooked?

[budrichard]

A very good Post containing a lot of very good information.

I have always processed my own venison and for processing reasons(no power equipment), space in the freezer and now CWD reccamandations (do not cut bone) I have always and continue to bone out my venison while hanging whole. I agree wth every point you make especially about the saddle and practise this methodology when processing lamb also.

I much prefer a tenderloin seperate from a strip rather than the two cuts attached by a bone requiring different cooking for either but the meat industry has sold the Porterhouse as the 'top' cut for the restaurant industry and most follow suit.-Dick

Edited September 2, 2012 by budrichard (log)