**The Art of Cutting and Preparing Cuts of Beef**

When it comes to cutting and preparing cuts of beef, there are many different techniques and methods that can make all the difference in the final product. In this article, we'll take a closer look at some of the most common cuts of beef and how they're cut and prepared.

**The Breast Plate and Sternum**

The breast plate is a tough piece of meat that connects the ribs to the sternum. To remove it, you need to follow the curve of the ribcage and carefully dissect the muscles. This can be a tricky process, but with practice and patience, you'll get the hang of it. The sternum is a narrow, flat piece of bone that runs along the center of the chest. When cutting this area, you need to make sure not to cut into any other muscles below.

**Connecting the Dots**

Once you've removed the breast plate, you can start connecting the dots between different parts of the steer. This involves identifying the seams and joints where the different cuts meet, and carefully following them to create a seamless piece of meat. It's like solving a puzzle, except instead of pieces of paper, you're working with raw meat.

**The Chuck Plate**

Next up is the chuck plate, which is one of the most recognizable cuts of beef. The chuck is a large muscle that comes from the shoulder area, and it's known for its rich flavor and tender texture. When cutting this area, you need to make sure not to cut into any other muscles below.

**Removing the Brisket**

The brisket is a very large muscle that can be intimidating to work with. It's a great alternative to the filet mignon, and it's often used in stir-fries and braises. When removing the brisket, you need to be careful not to cut into any other muscles below.

**Identifying the Silver Skin**

The silver skin is a thin layer of connective tissue that runs along the surface of the meat. It can make the beef look tough and unappetizing, but it's actually just a sign of the meat's natural flavor profile. When working with this area, you need to be careful not to cut into the silver skin, as it can cause the meat to become tough.

**The Teres Major**

Next up is the teres major, which is often referred to as the "petite filet" or the "faux filet". This muscle is located in the upper chest area and is known for its tender texture and rich flavor. When cutting this area, you need to be careful not to cut into any other muscles below.

**Pan-Seared vs Braised**

The teres major can be cooked in a variety of ways, but pan-searing is often the most popular method. This involves quickly searing the meat on all sides and then finishing it off with a low-heat finish. Alternatively, you can braise the meat to create a rich, flavorful sauce.

**Palomino: The "Las Vegas Strip"**

The palomino is a lean cut of beef that's often referred to as the "las vegas strip". It's located on the bottom blade of the shoulder and is known for its tender texture and mild flavor. When cutting this area, you need to be careful not to cut into any other muscles below.

**The Bottom Blade**

The bottom blade is a large piece of meat that runs along the lower edge of the shoulder blade. It's often overlooked in favor of more popular cuts like the filet mignon or the ribeye. However, this cut can be just as tender and flavorful as its more famous counterparts.

**Palomino: The Bicep of the Steer**

The palomino is also known as the "bicep" of the steer, due to its location on the upper arm area. It's a lean cut of beef that's often used in stir-fries and other Asian-style dishes. When cutting this area, you need to be careful not to cut into any other muscles below.

**Tendon: A Delicate Matter**

When working with the palomino, you'll often encounter tendon - a delicate piece of tissue that runs along the surface of the meat. Tendon can be tough and chewy if not cooked properly, but it's actually just a sign of the meat's natural flavor profile. When braising or stewing the palomino, you need to make sure the tendon is cooked low and slow to bring out its best flavors.

**Platinio: The Mussel Cut**

The platinio is a unique cut of beef that comes from the mussel area - a small piece of meat located near the neck. It's often served cold in Chinese cuisine, where it's paired with other meats and vegetables. When cutting this area, you need to be careful not to cut into any other muscles below.

**The Platinio: A Tender Cut**

Despite its unusual location, the platinio is actually a tender cut of beef - rich in flavor and texture. It's often used in stir-fries and braises, where it adds a unique twist to the dish. When cooking this area, you need to make sure not to overcook it, as it can become tough and chewy.

**Conclusion**

Cutting and preparing cuts of beef is an art that requires patience, practice, and attention to detail. By understanding the different techniques and methods involved in cutting and preparing these cuts, you'll be able to create delicious, tender pieces of meat that are sure to impress even the most discerning palates.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enoh boy here we go sorry about the sound effects hi my name is lena diaz and i've been a whole animal butcher for 12 years today i'm going to show you secret cuts of beef that you almost never see in a supermarket all right i need to sit down at a whole animal butcher shop you will find cuts that are not just your new york strip your rib eye your beef tenderloin we try to utilize the entire steer these cuts that i'm going to show you today have great texture they're full of flavor and in many cases they are less expensive than your higher end cuts when a steer arrives at butcher shop it doesn't come in one whole piece it oftentimes comes in many separate pieces we're going to be looking at cuts in the loin sirloin area and the chuck area these are referred to as primal cuts since this section doesn't get much exercise these cuts are more tender than other muscles that you may find in other parts of the steam the first thing i'm going to show you today is the sirloin flap also known as the vivette i found many years ago that sirloin flap meat wasn't something that was selling i did change the name to the vet and found quite a bit of success moving it with a more sophisticated french name sorry you don't need much to break down a whole animal you do need a good boning knife and oftentimes a handsaw so the first thing i'm going to do is i'm just going to cut a little bit this sad to release the flank and just give me some more room there's a lot of fat on this part of the steer as we're cutting what we're trying to do is like cut between the seams the seams often tell you where to cut so here you'll have the flank steak below the flank it's just all fat there's a large amount of suet here just above the sterling flap there's another muscle that rests above it that we have to like separate that's very sinewy under here is where we have the bavette which i'm gonna clean right now all right so i am no longer like boning things out for presentation or for like cleaning stuff up i prefer using a long knife so you have longer strokes i refer to this knife as a scimitar so i'm just removing all of this like silver skin which is really tough it's not edible it's not something you would want silver skin is something that you find in between all of the mussels it's kind of like the natural seams the texture of the vet is very similar to a skirt steak i love this steak i like it i feel like it's has more flavor it's meatier here we have the bevet it's very long it's thin it has a very accordion type texture to it this weighs more than a skirt steak it is often cheaper than your skirt steak but i find that it has more flavor this is a great cut for grilling or pan searing it does take really well to marinade i often tell people that if this doesn't obviously fit in their pan or when they're grilling it to maybe cut it in half or into three pieces and then you can cut it against the grain and it's also known as sterling tips when it's cut that way this is one of my favorite cuts you may not see this at the supermarket but you will definitely see this at your local butcher shop we have the loin and we have the sirloin i'm going to saw in between the loin and the sirloin area and then underneath the sterling i'm going to show you some of my favorite cuts so the sirloin section is if you can imagine it's just like your lower back right before it meets the round it's almost this love section that you've got right here so the first cut i'm going to show you out of the sirloin is the picanha which is the most popular steak you'll find in brazil but you will very rarely find it in an american supermarket so before we can expose the picanha we need to remove some of the more common cuts all right so here we have the bone attach the stroller in this part here's a the tri-tip it's a tri-tip right because it's like a triangle one two three sides great cut for smoking or really this is the pecan up here i'm removing the fat to like kind of see where my seams are this fat basically is what's separating my pecania from my sirloin filet and my top sirloin the pecan is very similar to the new york strip in the sense that it has a really nice fat cap that you see right here i'm going to trim a little bit of the fat off the top oftentimes most customers just really don't want to buy that much fat so here we have the pecan i think this is a great kind of mean aesthetically and everything the fat cap and the texture i just think it's a great alternative to new york strips without paying the new york strip price so it's like a tighter grain than like a skirt steak or a bavette so if you were to take the steak home and you don't have the possibility of grilling it i would say sear it fat side down i often don't go too high because if that's going to burn what i'm trying to do is render the fat therefore you don't have to use any high temp oils you can just cook it in its own fat if you've ever been to a brazilian all you can eat barbecue grill restaurant often times you will find the pecan that's been skewered it's kind of like this half moon shaped steak with a really beautiful fat cap i'm going to cut this into steaks for you i generally like to do a thick steak at least an inch and a half it looks very similar to a new york strip and maybe a little bit thinner you can generally get four really decent sized pecans from that muscle it has really beautiful marbling it's got a really beautiful fat cap if i had to put my sterling cuts in order of favorite pecan culotte is my favorite sirloin cut here we have the remainder of the sirloin sometimes you're going to see the sirloin steak in the supermarket but the sterling's taken the supermarket comprises of three different muscles which have very different textures but now we're going to separate the top sterling from the sterling filet sterling filet is very comparable to beef tenderloin it is much cheaper it has much more flavor than beef tenderloin this is just a really comparable cut there's a little bit of like silver skin that's not edible i am just going to come under here and i'm going to release all of this fat and expose the muscle which also will let me see where the muscles separate right there's like a line coming out here right now this is where the sirloin fillet is going to separate itself from the top sirloin here we have the sirloin fillet it doesn't have a lot of intramuscular fat it generally can feed at least four to five people it probably weighs somewhere around two-ish pounds generally it makes a beautiful roast just like a filet mignon or a beef tenderloin the sirloin fillet is one of my favorite cuts too as you know i love sirloins here we have the top steroloid this is a great alternative to ribeye it has a little bit more intramuscular fat than the sirloin fillet does if somebody wanted a ribeye but it's just something that they can't afford i'll slice them off a piece of the top sirloin makes beautiful steaks but it also makes a beautiful roast just as a strolling filet full of flavor and tender as well i'm just going to put this all together so you see what this looks like the picania rests on top of the sirloin fillet and the top sirloin in the supermarkets you would have found a very like boxy rectangular cut which would have been a composition of all three cuts some of my favorite cuts come out of the loin vivette top sirloin sirloin filet your pecanha cheesesteaks have a lot of flavor they are tender and they are not as expensive as your new york strip ribeyes or beef tenderloin the next problem we'll be working on is the chuck it's a bit heavy so i'm gonna have someone give me a hand and put this on the table so the chuck is also known as the shoulder area so because of all its exercise these cuts are a little bit more worked there's a little bit more connective tissue but they are full of flavor a lot of your traditional stewing cuts come out of the chuck but the chuck has some amazing secret cuts that you might not have heard of and i'd like to show them to you the next cut i'm going to show you is a terrace major some stores will refer to as the petite filet the faux filet shoulder tender it goes by a lot of names before i get there i've got to do a lot the first thing i'm going to do is remove the pore shank i'm coming behind the elbow i have to put my body weight into it to help me take this foreshank off and now i am going to flip the sear around this is the chuck plate this is where you see the neck down here you have the brisket here we have your sternum so what i'm going to do is i'm going to remove some of this chain meat that we have here what i'm going to do right now is saw along my neck bone here and i'm just going to saw until i hear that the chuck ribs just cracked okay all right i need to sit down okay and i'm just gonna gingerly cut through here to the next seam making sure i don't cut any other muscles below and now i'm gonna come around the sternum the breast plate and like connect the dots so now i'm going to pull back the chuck plate so here we have phone in chuck rib i'm going to remove the brisket the brisket is a very very large muscle so here we have the brisket the underside of the brisket and i'm just releasing these neck bones come on come on all right so this is an egg bones it's like really cold in this cutting room right now so all the fats like super hard and it's much easier to cut through stuff when it's a little bit warmer do you guys get paid more for working in a cool fridge no no that's not that's not how that works i'm just again seaming it all out the terrace major is one of the more tender cuts in this steer it's a very small muscle it's a cut that is a great alternative to the filet mignon we're trying to remove as much as the silver skin as possible so here we have the terrace major this is the cut that people come back for all the time since it's referred to as like the petite filet or the faux fuller some people may think that this is like a smaller version of a filet mignon it is not catering companies tend to use the faux fulet to reduce cost on banquets or events this muscle is great pan seared or grilled i would do high temp quick like a hard fast sear and it's really a muscle that you can cook past medium or medium well and it won't become tough as some other cuts do and this is half the price of your traditional filet mignon beef tenderloin so the next kind i'm going to do is the palomia it's referred to in las vegas as the las vegas strip it's a bottom blade of the shoulder a really easy great weekday steak really lean so i'm just rolling back this very very large chuck roll just trying to like break things at the seam all right so now this is known as the clod under here is what's known as the chuck tender there is nothing tender about it which is the funniest part i often feel like they named it that just so that they could move it because there really isn't anything tender about the chuck tender right below here this is your rotary cuff and the polymer basically starts where the rotary cuff starts and then works itself all the way down to the end of the shoulder blade so now i'm just pulling this off this is the bottom part of the shoulder blade and here we have the palomia this is like a great lean steak really easy to cook it's not something that you see very often and it's really easy to sear up it's really quick it doesn't have a texture like your skirt steak it doesn't have that accordion texture it doesn't have those loose fibers this is a really high temp quick hard fast sear we can do some really great stir fries with this this on the price scale is going to be somewhere near like mid to high teens cheaper than the faux filet it's just a great easy steak that i only see at small butcher shops so the next cut i'm going to show you is the platinio which happens to be the bicep of the steer it's referred to as the platinio it looks like a plantain i was telling somebody i grew up attending a lot of cantonese style banquets in my life and the first plate served to you at a cantonese wedding banquet is cold meats and on this dish you can find these round pieces of beef that are sliced really thin and it comes out of this mussel right here i'm just going to clean this all off but as you can see it has a huge piece of tendon here if cooked properly tendon can be really delicate be really tender what i also love about this cut is that you can braise it whole if i were to cook this hole and then slice it it plates up very well it needs a little bit more love it needs to be cooked slow and slow you can serve at room temperature can then be sliced really thin and be enjoyed as a deli meat almost it's probably one of the cheaper cuts in a butcher case just because it's a cheaper cut in the case doesn't mean that it's not tasty that it can't be tender i can't get enough of how much i really enjoy this there are a lot of tender cuts in your chuck ask your butcher and i'm sure they'll hook you up there are so many unfamiliar cuts out there i really advise you to get out there and try something new go to your butcher shop and ask them to make a recommendation ask them to recommend something that you may not be familiar with and just try something different\n"