Whole Mutton. The Breakdown.

This last week, before class, I was able to get a couple mutton broken down and figured I'd take some pictures - I'm going to do the same next week for Beef, which I'm very excited about!

These guys weigh in right around 100 lbs, they've been aged about two weeks so all the fat has become very dense and the animal has become very easy to work with.

The animal is a bit too big to split whole on the size of saw the school has, so I decided to split the animal in half another way - between the 12th and 13th rib on both sides - going between the ribs ensures you wont run into any bone until the spine. Pro-tip - use a knife that gives you a bit of leverage - either a 10 inch or a 12 inch breaker would be perfect. 

After the meat is cut away, take a hand saw and cut through what little bone is solid.

A look inside the Rib and Shoulder section. 

To split the Mutton, line up the spine, backside-down, with the saw blade aiming at nothing but bone, your margin of error on this step is VERY slight. 

The next step is cutting off the Naval, Brisket and Foreshank - Draw a line from the top of the Brisket to the bottom of the Loin-side of the ribs. 

Cut straight through - the Shank will barely be hanging on and the Riblets can be split further or sold whole. 

Now for the Shoulder - You can usually get two Arm Chops (1" thick) by cutting perpendicular to the ribs. Then turn it around and cut with the rib until the muscle groupings begin to taper off - usually four chops will come out nicely, bringing the total to 6. 

You can identify the Arm Chops in the top left by the round bone surrounded by lean meat - The Shoulder Chops will resemble the 7 Bone Chuck Roasts your grandma used to cook for you. 

The rib section is really quite simple - that is if you're not going to french them, which we'll cover another time. Take off the chine bone far enough to be able to cut though the ribs with a knife...

You'll usually find these sold as two-rib chops. 

Now for the back half. Pull the Flanks out of the way and cut through as much of the Top Rounds as you can until you hit the center of the hip bone (aitch). Again, you're trying to cut this thing exactly in half - make sure you can see what you're working with!

As you can see, I cut into the meat-side of the loin on the quarter to the left, not a huge deal but not perfect. 

At the end of the aitch bone, cut through the loin, all through the meat and through the flank, separating the Loin from the Sirloin

If you've seen a Leg of Lamb sold as "semi-boneless' but still has bone (femur, shank) in it and wondered why, here it is - The aitch bone is a very oddly shape and makes carving this side of the leg would be very hard to carve - though the femur and the shank are easy to carve around.

The Sirloin is the section to the bottom-left of the femur bone - this is the area of the leg where the femur connects with the pelvis. 

Now for the loin - clear away the flank and square up your primal - cut at each vertebrae through as much of the meat as you can until only bone remains. 

And buzz through the bone on the band saw. The reason I do it this way is because the meat itself is very tender and the saw will only chew it up - attention to detail, I guess.

Stay tuned - should have a beef post around this time next week. 

Carcass Breakdown at Texas State University. Week One.

Now that it's been about a year since my last post, I've decided that now's a pretty good time to get this thing back up. In the time since my last post I've left the Lamar store to open the Arbor Trails store. It's been awesome seeing the systems that I helped design at work in the beginnings of a new store. 

Aside from opening the store, I've also just started working for Texas State University to help teach the students about carcass fabrication - from beginning to end! I just wrapped up my first of eight weeks and I couldn't be more excited!

The man in front of the camera is Dr. Reed Richardson, this is his second year instructing this particular class, though it's been going on for a long time. By the way, I had no idea classes like this even existed!

Myself and the students are going to be breaking down all the meat from quarters and sides into primals, on down the line to cutting the meat for sale. We've got six sides of beef...

Four sides of Pork, plus some extra hams and loins...

And four whole lambs. 

Tune in next week for more! 

Top Sirloin. The Breakdown.

 In celebration of Memorial Day, and my income tax return, I thought it'd be great to document the breakdown of a Top Butt. This was by far the hardest cut of meat for me to master and I've done the cutting tests / yield-to-margin tests to prove that done correctly, this is the most profitable (and enjoyable - to me) way of breaking this primal down. A great deal of variety can be found in this primal, and it literally took me years to decipher the intricacies. 

       The Top Sirloin is a primal that comes from the top of the steer's butt, which is why you'll also see this referred to as the 'Top Butt'. Very Scientific. Anyhow - This primal houses a few secrets including the Brazilian cut, the Picana, (Culotte, Rump Cap, many names), Top Sirloin Steaks and a nice Chateaubriand - type roast that makes excellent portion-sized steaks. 

Starting with the bottom-left of the primal, where the muscle has been cut with the grain, is the beginning of the Culotte. This muscle extends from the Bottom Round, wrapping its way down and around the femur but is most tender towards top butt.  In the center of the primal you can see the beginning of the Petite Sirloin Roast, and hidden behind a veil of heavy tissue and silver - Literally where the steer's leg meets the hip - lays the Top Sirloin. 

The first step of trimming down the Top Butt is getting rid of the heavy bone tissue - don't add this to your trimmings, discard this stuff. 

Removing the 'hard break' is just like removing silver skin, though it's much more dense, the principal the same. 

Work the tip of your knife under the tissue and push forward at a slight angle. Finish the stroke by flipping the knife towards you, pulling the tissue taught and cutting it away. 

This is nice, tender meat - when you're trimming the roast down, try not to gouge the meat. Remove only the inedible tissues. 

This triangular muscle grouping on top of the roast isn't terrible, but it makes better trimmings than steak... remove as much of this as you'd like. 

For the untrained eye, this picture makes it difficult to see, but there's a band of 'bubble gum that form in the Thoracic Vertebrae (At the neck and Chuck), runs through the Rib Primal, Shortloin and ends in the Top Butt. This little bit is the last of it, so I usually trim enough meat from the top of it to open a space for my knife to get underneath it to clear it away. 

Expose the meat, but again - do not gouge.

You can follow the fat down and around the Sirloin until you reach the Culotte, at which point just clear the fat away from the top. 

Now to separate the Picana from the heart of the Sirloin. Once the fat is cleared away, the seam is very easy to find and separating these two muscle is a fairly effortless task. However,  it's also very easy to go too far and remove more fat than you need to from the Top Sirloin. When you're pealing the Sirloin away, locate the outline of the Culotte and cut it away as soon as it ends, leaving the fat on to rest of the Sirloin. 

Because of this cut's triangular shape, it's mistakenly referred to as the Tri-Tip, however, that is all together different than the Culotte. 

To clean the Picana / Culotte, begin by removing the silver skin. 

After removing the silver skin, clear away any undesired fat and shape the muscle up but cleaning the edges. 

Once cleaned, you can do whatever you want - roast the muscle whole, cut for kabobs, or cut steaks. Whatever you choose to do, the cooking method will be the same - Hot and fast. 

The line on the right side of the muscle that runs parallel to your current line of sight outlines the Petite Sirloin. You can either seam this muscle out, or cut straight down - either way, this line is your marker. 

This time, I cut straight down to separate the muscle in two. 

Trim away and silver and clean the muscle to your preference. 

Tie the roast for steaks... 

... and cut your steaks - this roast yielded 6 evenly sized steaks. 

For the Top Sirloin, clear away any gristle and silver. 

Once you've trimmed away the gristle, make your face cut about two inches from the hip-end of the Sirloin. 

The picture is a little rough, but this gives you and idea of what it should look like. 

After facing, cut your Top Sirloin Steaks. This roast yielded 5 Top Sirloins. Nice!

And there you have it. The whole Top Butt cost me about $75 - untrimmed it weighed around 9.25#, and here's the bounty. There's about 1.5# worth of Culotte / Picana , 2.25# worth of Petite Sirloin steaks and 4.25# worth of Top Sirloin.
Invest in some some heavy duty butcher paper and this will last 6 months or more in the freezer. If I bought all of this at retail, the price would have been significantly more, plus processing meat is incredibly fun for me, especially at home.

Thanks for sticking around through my dormancy - next post will likely be a tutorial for bringing old knives back from the dead, reconditioning them and a quick lesson on knife sharpening.

Reece.