When a butt is a shoulder
June 22nd, 2008, by Francesca
Chuck, rib, loin, round…
Shoulder, rack, loin, leg…
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor…
Prime, choice, select, standard, utility…
Prime, choice, good, standard, utility…
Prime, choice, good, utility, cull…
Meat terminology alone makes me want to turn vegetarian.
Why is a cow's shoulder called chuck, a veal's shoulder a shoulder and a pig's shoulder a Boston butt? But the butt is called ham or leg, of course. And Monsieur le porc has another shoulder apparently, called picnic shoulder.
Meat grades are even worse: the same term means different things when applied to different animals. To make things more interesting still, veal is graded for quality but not yield, and pork grading is combined for yield and quality. Do you see why I am going crazy studying for finals?
And what to say about cooking temperatures for various degrees of doneness? The Gisslen says one thing; one set of school handouts another, and another handout gives yet different temperatures. I should just take the day off.
At least my notebook is finished and this term I have a top notch notebook, if I can say so myself.
Roasted lamb chops
This time I have photos and notes for all the recipes and various fabrication techniques. Talking about shoulders… pat, pat.
Fabricating a flat fish
My first gnocchi
Well, this was a good break but I do have to get back to study. In addition to all the material from this term, I have to go over all the stuff from Intro 1.
Stay cool out there, wherever you are. Our old house is melting and we are keeping our fingers crossed that the neighborhood's A/C units don't cause a black-out.
5 Responses to “When a butt is a shoulder”
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
June 22nd, 2008 at 04:21 PM
Speaking of meat temperatures and “doneness”...
I just read about a couple crazy Russian mathematicians who decided to build a supercomputer in their living room using parts from Radio Shack and Home Depot. (Why? To calculate the billionth digit of π, of course...) So, like all supercomputers, this one becomes a danger to itself if it gets too hot, so they wedged a bunch of meat thermometers into the apparatus to monitor the temperature as it hums.
My favorite quote: pointing to a particular thermometer, the engineer says “We need to shut the whole thing down if this one gets above ‘pork’.”
Ding! Pi’s done. :D
June 22nd, 2008 at 05:02 PM Good Luck on your exams next week.
June 22nd, 2008 at 07:27 PM Best of luck with exams! Love "fabricating a flat fish" !!! I learned most of the odd meat terminology from my great-grandmother and that generation when I was young and regarded as their sous chef. When we moved to Chicago the local butcher spoke only Spanish to me until I learned the names of the cuts in Spanish, then he started speaking in English! Off to remove the bone from a leg of lamb (NZ).
June 23rd, 2008 at 02:18 AM now I know why I REALLY don' like to handle meat -- I would have to add more things to my brain which is overloaded as it is. Seriously, that is a LOT to take in. How many days/hours do they give you to learn all this stuff anyway??? It's like learning a foreign language. You are going to start to have dreams and your poor husband will find you in the kitchen waving your GOOD knife around in the kitchen .... pass me more vegetables! I like to eat meat though, just not A LOT. The best thing I ever heard was years ago driving across the US and we stopped somewhere in northern Texas. In restaurant, within earshot: Woman: honey, you know, I'm not so hungry tonight. Man: well, that's okay. Woman: I'll just have the 13 oz steak. I'm not making this up! I'm lucky if I can eat a filet mignon sized piece! Anyway, we're learning with you. And I do have a couple of girldfriends who are serious cooks who could probably rattle off all those names ... sigh.
June 23rd, 2008 at 02:22 AM PS notebooks look great. I'm into great looking things these days as I gather and sort for the packing .... I have 5 binders of print outs for knitting patterns, can you believe? And still finding more in piles in different places. I'm deathly afraid of another "MagKnits" problem I guess (site folding). My cooking note book doesn't look so great though -- a lot of those pages are still stuffed in a drawer. Sigh.