Breaking Down a Veal Hindquarter

[tekobo]

A local farmer about an hour's drive from us here in the South of England rears really tasty rose veal.  He gets it butchered and sells it at a premium at farmers markets.  I wanted to butcher it myself to get the cuts I like but, somehow, got the timing wrong and now have a whole hindquarter of veal in my house to cut up just two days before Christmas!  I drove to the farm to pick it up yesterday afternoon and here is all 60kg of animal spread out on my kitchen counter last night.

I could barely lift the leg and ended up cutting off the shin before stuffing the rest of the leg in our big commercial fridge downstairs. I got up early today to scrub, salt and wipe down my butcher's block.  It's not been used for this purpose for years.  The Husband arrived back from Sweden last night and was not impressed at the prospect of having to deal with a huge carcass over Christmas.  I think I will do this slowly over two days and enjoy it.  

When I read about the Americans on the forum talking about the price of meat I am amazed at how cheaply you can buy it.  I think that I do well by buying animals whole, or in the case of steers by the quarter, but I suspect you would think this expensive.  The 60kg (including all the bones) cost £600 which feels super cheap at £10/kg.  Anyway, off to start my adventure...

 

[MacKenzie]

Smooth sailing, hope it all goes super well. Watch those fingers. 👍 👍

[David Chang]

@tekobo thats a great deal on the veal. there's a youtube channel called the bearded butchers. i would have to study them to take on this job. i'd cheat and borrow a bandsaw. but nobody is going to lend me a woodshop bandsaw to cut meat...

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by David Chang

[tekobo]

So far so good.  Got my tools laid out.

I started with the prime cut - the sirloin on the bone.  Simple job there to saw it in half so it would fit comfortably in the dry ager.  The little trim at the bottom of the pic was for me to fry and taste the meat.  It was delicious.

Next came the rump.  It was still on the bone and I was tempted to keep it to roast on the bone.  It would have made an impressive centrepiece for our New Year's Eve party but I decided it would be a show offy waste when we could eat it over a few meals as steaks.  So I embarked on the job of getting the bone out.  It's one thing to watch folk online but it is quite another to get your knife in there and try to figure out where the bone ends.  

At times I felt like I was literally butchering the cut, and not in a good way!

Whole rump on the right ready to go in the dry ager.  I was disappointed that it did not look as impressive as the ones I normally buy but remembered that this is from a veal calf and not a full grown cow.  The Husband will use the bone to make stock and that eye piece at the front will make a nice, tender roast. 

And now for my favourite bit.  The flank/skirt.  We don't tend to get these pieces in the UK - they get minced into things like Cornish pasties.  I love them and approached this one like an old friend.  It did help that I had re-watched this video before I started: 

 

Mine looked like this to start with

I had fun seaming out the muscles and managed to get out, from left to right, the matambre, two bits of bavette/vacio and the flank.  Up top were the miscellaneous bits of skirt left over that I will use for something like fajitas.  Working my way round the muscles and silverskin was useful practice for the job of seaming out the leg tomorrow.  

My last job for today was the hardest.  I had to cut through the shin for osso bucco.  It was hard work and I eventually called for reinforcements in the shape of a new blade and a husband who is better at sawing than me.  I was grumpy and would have loved that bandsaw that you talked about @David Chang!  

I will age the sirloin and rump for a week or so and will enlist The Husband's help to break them down to steaks and Italian cotoletta.

 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by tekobo

[MacKenzie]

 WOW, what a great job, well done.  👍 👍

Edited December 23, 2022 by MacKenzie

[Tyrus]

Ahh, seems like you have your work cut out for you Tekebo, please excuse the pun. I'm surprised, veal in the states is generally more expensive....do you prefer the calf cuts over the mature beef? Be careful now, sharp knives and all, intricate pathways, pulling and awkward angles make for slow and careful trusting hands. By the way, I'm sure you know Jalen Hurts buys his beef already prepared..if the coach ever heard he was cutting up a back 1/4 there'd be hell to pay. How bout those Eagles, ain't they sumpthin!

[jonj]

Excellent progress and report! No bandsaw perhaps, but all the appropriate tools (including chain mail glove). Very nice work!

[David Chang]

@tekobo you guys did a great job. i love osso buco. my arm is getting tired looking at those hand sawn cuts. 

[Paul]

9 hours ago, tekobo said:

I was grumpy and would have loved that bandsaw that you talked about @David Chang!  

 

Might sound a little weird, but how about a reciprocating saw (sawz-all) with a metal blade? Cheaper than a bandsaw and portable. 

[tekobo]

Merry Christmas all!

Awake and restless but know now is not a good time to be playing with knives so I thought I would post instead.

First things first: this meat tastes fantastic!  The last time we bought veal from this farmer was in 2016 and we had forgotten just how good it is.  He hung it for me for 4 weeks before I picked it up and the flavour is great without any additional aging. 

Would I do this butchery thing again?  I don't know.  It's a lot of work but I have enjoyed the exploration.  @Paul, we are still figuring out the "value" of having a tool for sawing bones.  I had a brainwave - instead of buying something we will only use once in a while, why not ask a local meat shop to do the sawing for me?  That didn't work.  They only cut their own meat and, in any case, they only do halal.  Not surprising and 'twas only a delaying tactic en route to buying something.  

I did seam out the leg yesterday.  The guy in the video I watched said it took him 25 minutes.  It took me just over an hour, in between doing a few other jobs.  I now have  a bunch of interesting muscles to clean off and decide how I want to use them.  The irony of all of this is that, after all that careful work to separate out individual muscles, some of this will just end up in my mincer.  The good news is that all that cutting gave me time to work out a plan for new year's eve.  Polpette (meatballs) made of a mix of veal and pork mince are a lovely snack served in bars and are just plain delicious.  I will make them and bunch of other cicchetti (Venetian equivalent of Spanish tapas) so people can graze on the day.

Here is to happiness! And to the Eagles getting to the Big Dance.  

From this:

To this: 

If you want to see a better and more expert approach look no further than:

 

 

[tekobo]

I managed to evade the temptations of the KK shopping channel, for once!  I put @Paul's suggestion of a sawzall to my husband and he wasn't sure about being able to clean it properly between uses.  I then did extensive research into bandsaws.  I came up with a blank every time. Not many online reviews and the ones I did find were frankly awful - mostly regarding the suppliers and after sales service.  @MacKenzie kindly(?) found me a video with a guy using a Scotts meat bandsaw.  It has some awesome technology that stops the saw when your hands get too close to the saw while wearing a pair of special blue gloves.  It was also huge and likely to have a price tag to match!

Finally, I came upon a company that had been trading for over 30 years who had what looked like a standard meat bandsaw for a sensible price (about £600).  They were off for the Christmas period so I had to wait for a response to my email.  That was a good thing.  I had a cooling off period, decided I do not need a meat bandsaw cluttering up my life and set to with a normal saw this morning.  I was not looking forward to it but got all of these cut and sawn in just over 20 minutes.  Hurrah!  

And the rump steaks came out well too.  All done!

 

[tony b]

  And, without special tools!

[MacKenzie]

.... and you got it done in less time than it would take to clean up and store a bandsaw, plus using your muscles. 

[tekobo]

Yes, thanks @tony b and @MacKenzie.  2023 has started off well.  I have banned myself from ordering anything at all online for the whole month of January in an effort to break the "add to cart" habit that I have developed.  So far so good.  

[Syzygies]

On 1/5/2023 at 5:42 AM, tekobo said:

I was not looking forward to it but got all of these cut and sawn in just over 20 minutes.  Hurrah!

It has taken me most of my life to truly appreciate this, but there isn't a saw tool category sold without a "better" version ignored by people who think all saws are the same, and there isn't a saw tool sold that doesn't benefit from a very careful choice of aftermarket blade.

While my wife insists for environmental reasons that we ride out the OEM tires on new cars, a careful aftermarket choice is always an upgrade, whether one wants performance, a quiet ride, or simply making it less likely to die in the rain. One should similarly think of the blade that comes with any saw as like the "starter" toner cartridge in a new printer. Conventional advice is tuned for average needs, for people working in haste on a budget. I generally replace track saw blades and such with a blade that makes the smoothest cut I can tolerate teasing out, working slower than a production shop.

My favorite example is a jigsaw. I owned a cheap hand-me-down that convinced me the category was crap, jigsaws are just small reciprocating saws with a reference plane, good only for demolition. Then I bought a decent Dewalt jigsaw, and started playing with blades. Often one does want a stiff, wide blade, but for scrolling, this blade can do finished curved work that would make Michelangelo happy:

BU2DCS-2 Dual Cut - Wood Cutting Jig Saw Blade

As for cutting frozen meat with a hacksaw, the best mainstream hacksaws have excellent tension control, and can be strung with the force of a piano string. I keep one of the best blades I could find just for cooking.

The quality range I've experiences with hacksaws is every bit as wide as the quality range I've experienced with jigsaws. Anyone, be sure you're experiencing top-of-the-market quality for your chosen tool, before investing time, space, and money on a more complex tool you might not need.

[tekobo]

On 1/6/2023 at 9:13 PM, Syzygies said:

The quality range I've experiences with hacksaws is every bit as wide as the quality range I've experienced with jigsaws. Anyone, be sure you're experiencing top-of-the-market quality for your chosen tool, before investing time, space, and money on a more complex tool you might not need.

Good advice @Syzygies.  While the big steaks I cut look impressive I would really love to have been able to cut that lump of T-bone into thin slices of about 0.75cm thickness at most.  I discovered the joy of super thin chops when I stood behind a South African at my local butcher's counter and saw them slicing lamb or goat chops on the bandsaw for him, all thin and lovely.  I copied him and found them to be delicious.  Quick cooking succulent meat with lots of surface area to take the rub.

Do you have a recommended blade and saw combination for cutting meat that thin?  I could freeze the meat beforehand if that would make it easier. 

[Syzygies]

7 hours ago, tekobo said:

Do you have a recommended blade and saw combination for cutting meat that thin?  I could freeze the meat beforehand if that would make it easier. 

There are multiple brands of this style:

Klein Tools 12 in. Hack Saw with Aluminum Handle

The point is that one can adjust the tension, and achieve higher tension than with more basic models.

There are similarly many brands of "good" blades. I'd go as fine-toothed as I dared, keeping in mind the theory that coarser blades clear more easily. I'm just not convinced that's enough of a factor.

Freezing works, but makes for much more work. If you can figure a way to squish the meat against a vertical plane, you might make quick work of raw meat?

What we both really want is a Berkel (bone the meat first!)

Berkel 300M-STD 12" Prosciutto Meat Slicer

We just don't have that kind of stupid money. Some restaurants buy these partly because they do work really well, partly because they can set the ambience for the entire restaurant.