Learning the Cuts...Part 2

Part DEUCE!

We went over veal, which are very young calves that could range from just a few days old to around 35 weeks old. Know anyone that's against eating veal? Next time you can tell them that the average broiler chicken is taken to slaughter at about 6 weeks. Lawyered.

Veal....I think the top round, bottom round and knuckle?

Look we fabricated a bat!

First one to guess what this is gets a prize!

Here's an untrimmed Tenderloin PSMO.

Costco sells these things for about $50 a pop. We can get roughly 8 to 9 4-oz portions that would sell for at least $20 bucks in the restaurant. Oddly enough, this is the cut that makes the least amount of money in the restaurant. In any case, steak night anyone?

My buddy Sabatino on the left posing, thanks for the photos!
Chef E. on the right wondering what the hell Sab is doing.
And oh yes....that's the carcass of a headless, skinless
lamb hanging out on the demo table.

Chef E: (Chuckles) "Mary had a little lamb...I slit the b----'s throat."
Yep...butcher's have a unique sense of humor.

Reaching in to pull out some unusable trim.

Look we found a jelly bean!

Just kidding...it was an adrenal gland.

Yes...that is a hacksaw.
How else are we supposed to cut through  the spine?
 >=]

Preparing the lamb rack for Frenching.

Frenched Rack of Lamb. Fancypants!

Frenched Lamb...knuckle?

On day 4 of 7, Chef E. pulled me aside and told me he wanted to talk to me after class. I was thinking oh crap, I must've been doing something wrong or maybe I was going too slow or something. I was rather anxious for the rest of the day. On top of that, day 4 was pork day and it also happened to be our practical skill assessment day on meat fabrication so I was already nervous. Lucky I did pretty well and got high marks for the day. w00t! Still, the talk after class was weighing heavily on my mind. After our little break, cleaned up the room, and got ready to head out for the day, I stayed behind to see what the deal was. Chef E. motioned me over to his desk/podium and said, "I rarely do this with pre-extern students but there's an event in a few weeks, catering for 250 people. If you want to, I'd like you to come work it with me. I don't know what it is you got, but you got it. You're shining in this class and I want to see what you can do." HOLY FRICK ON A STICK! I was blown away. I immediately said yes and left class with a big ol' smile on my face. It was awesome. 

So this happened a little over a month ago and I've been working with Chef E. and the team every weekend and a few times during the week for prep. We've worked car shows, weddings, birthdays, graduation parties, etc, serving Texas style BBQ, in-house made hot dogs (Jalepeno Cheddar Hot dogs....freaking religious experience), burgers, and sausages. The food is simple and delicious. The other recruited students that have been working with ETC (Elia's Texas Connection) are really chill. All in all, its a pretty sweet gig. I did however get a nice new burn scar on my arm from the smoking rig though but that's another story. 

Learning the Cuts...Part 1

 Okay first of all, sorry for the lack of posts! The last several weeks have been filled with full days of class, work, homework, and whatever few hours of sleep I can get a night. Its crazy! Alright, now back to it!

"You'll never know how much I care about the industry until you learn how much I care about you."

That's what the chef that taught me how to fabricate meat said to us on our first day of class. Master Butcher Chef E. started cutting meat when he was 14 years old and has been doing it for almost 4 decades. Needless to say, the man knows his stuff. He also was a Master Sausage Maker (teehee! ... jk) He knows 100 year old recipes passed down to him directly from an old school German sausage maker. Crazy right?

Beef Poster...yep...

Anyways, this classes objectives were to teach us how to identify and fabricate the different cuts of meat from all the major land based proteins...beef, pork, lamb, poultry, veal (yes..veal)...and just for fun, sausage making. Every day we went into class at 5:30AM. B T Dub, the "classroom" was actually a refrigerated butcher room kept at a brisk 45º-50º degrees when the fan is off. With that chilling fan on, the room gets down to about 40º. One guy from our class was right was stationed right in the path of the chilling fan and was basically chilled blue for 6 or 7 hours every morning for a week. First day of class, a few friends and I went in early to help set up. 20 minutes in, the chef walks in with a face that could only say "Don't F--- with me or else." That pretty much set the mood for the rest of the week. Without realizing what we were doing, the entire class lined up at attention. I'm assuming Chef E. was amused by this but didn't show it as he went with it by going down the line inspecting our uniforms while scribbling notes on a clipboard..again with that scowl on his face. Part of our pre-day 1 homework was to tie a bunch of butcher's knots for tying roasts. Some people either forgot or came in with knots that didn't meet chef's standards. Well he damn well made sure they knew.

"This is whale shit. This belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Get this garbage out of here."

Needless to say, we were all scared shitless.

So on our first two days, we went over beef fabrication. We cut up beef round, shank, loins into tenderloins (filet mignon anyone?), sirloins, striped loins, and everything in between. Photo Bomb!

Whole beef round being demo'd by chef...

Boning out the round

Boned...

That little hook on the bone on the left was a PAIN to get around.

All the sub-primal pieces of the Beef Round.

I think these were beef cubes ready for vacu-sealing.

Fabricated pieces from the beef loin.

Look how puuurty that looks! All tied up and ready for roasting....mmm...

tsk tsk tsk...

Okay so tip of the day here! Some grocery stores or shops will sell the bright red piece of meat on the left as skirt steak which is very flavorful and delicious and a bit expensive cause there are only two pieces in each cow right by the diaphragm . However! the bright red piece is actually a cut called the sirloin tip and is butterfly'd.

This is how we took ID quizzes. Here's a piece of meat...WHAT IS IT?!

Portioning out pieces of sirloin steak.

All packaged up and ready to be chilled.

I'll put up part two with some cool pictures of lamb fabrication and other meat room craziness. I need to catch up with these posts! I've got stuff on seafood id and fab, skills 1 class which goes over stocks, soups, grand sauces and the first week of skills 2 which is so far, fresh pasta (chef let us make a sauce that costed $150...and we ate it for lunch!), rices (cheese risotto...drool), all sorts of egg cookery techniques, and just this past Friday, poached salmon with a beurre blanc sauce. So yea! Much more to come!