The Art of Manliness - October 31, 2017


#352: A Famous Butcher Dishes on All Things Meat


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

160.28339

Word Count

6,410

Sentence Count

9

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

While meat makes up a big portion of America s diet, few people know very much about how meat is sourced and butchered for consumption. Today on the show, I talk to world-renowned third generation butcher Pat Lafreda about all things meat. We begin a conversation talking about his family business in New York City and how he became one of the premier meat packers in America, and then he walks us through how the steak you're grilling got there and all the factors that determine the price of meat.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast while meat makes
00:00:19.060 up a big portion of americans diet few people know very much about how meat is sourced and
00:00:23.460 butchered for consumption today on the show i talked to world-renowned third-generation butcher
00:00:27.020 pat lafreda about all things meat we began a conversation talking about his family business
00:00:30.980 in new york city and how he became one of the premier meat packers in america and then pat
00:00:34.800 walks us through how the steak you're grilling got there and all the factors determine the price
00:00:38.680 of meat so we get very macro with butchering we then shift from the macro to the micro of meat by
00:00:43.200 discussing the tools pat recommends every backyard chef should own how to tell if meat is bad and
00:00:48.320 what dry aging does to beef and whether you can do it on your own at your house he then shares what
00:00:53.060 his favorite cuts of beef lamb and pork are how to cook them and why he thinks you should be leery
00:00:57.260 when a restaurant boasts about their delicious sirloin steaks really fascinating show a lot
00:01:01.820 of interesting tidbits after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash butcher
00:01:05.960 pat lafreda welcome to the show thank you for having me so you are a world famous butcher you just
00:01:14.620 came out with a new book called meat and i love it my kids love the books they love looking at the
00:01:20.020 cutouts of the different animals of the cow the cross section yeah you don't see that often you
00:01:25.540 really don't usually when you google a cut of meat you're usually directed to a photograph that looks
00:01:34.880 like a cartoon of an animal to a general area so i really thought it was important to segment each cut
00:01:43.940 exactly where it lies in the animal yeah my kids love it because now whenever we eat a hamburger or steak
00:01:49.320 they know what part of the cow it comes from it's great it's been fun well before we get to the book
00:01:54.540 and talking about meat in general let's talk about your history background because it's really
00:01:58.460 interesting you're the owner of a of a famous meat fulfillment company you're not a butcher for
00:02:03.800 like the average consumer you actually give meat you're providing meat for all the big restaurants
00:02:07.500 steakhouses in new york city how did that happen how did you get started with that well i'm i represent
00:02:12.020 the third generation i'm also pat lafreda the third so my dad took over from his father and
00:02:20.780 my dad didn't have a choice he was to be in the meat business and that's just the way that generation
00:02:27.980 was my grandfather's generation wanted their son to carry on their business my dad he wanted the
00:02:36.420 opposite he sent me to private school off to college and wanted me to go off and do something
00:02:42.080 bigger and better the problem was that in order to teach me work ethic he would take me to work since
00:02:49.760 i'm 10 years old and i loved the business i loved being the helper on the truck and getting to go down
00:02:58.460 and speak to the chefs and just knowing what happens in the kitchen it it's amazing if you can imagine
00:03:05.620 the perspective of of a child going into a kitchen and all the wild things that happen in a kitchen
00:03:12.220 for a kitchen to work when i graduated with a finance degree from college i got a job on wall
00:03:19.280 street almost immediately and i got my series 7 in 63 which made me a licensed broker and i could not
00:03:27.380 stand doing that for a living um i begged my dad to come into the family business he told me no
00:03:33.540 no reason for you to come here uh it's not why i sent you off to get educated uh it was a little
00:03:41.000 bit of a family bout my my aunt had come to my defense and she had run the business with my dad
00:03:47.620 and was retiring and she was a very tough lady that she rest in peace her name was lisa lafrida
00:03:55.940 and she convinced my dad to let me join the company and we were very small we only had two
00:04:04.020 vans that made deliveries my father essentially was the head butcher and had an assistant and they had
00:04:12.720 44 customers i would go to work at 3 a.m i would work with my dad cutting meat like i knew and was
00:04:23.900 trained to do and slowly grew the business by by running up to a shower changing into a suit after
00:04:34.280 the meat was cut and the driver left to make his deliveries and i would walk into restaurants and
00:04:41.000 actually get new accounts and skid and we grew the business really organically grassroots in that
00:04:50.140 regard yeah and what's crazy uh during the 80s and like early 90s this is when the meat packing
00:04:55.880 industry in new york city was you know saw a downturn what do you think helped the you know pat
00:05:02.780 lafrida meat purveyors thrive not only survive but thrive during that time to become this you know
00:05:08.480 big juggernaut that you are today well i'll tell you i joined my dad in 94 and when his dad passed
00:05:17.380 away in 89 i could see my dad did not have interest in growing the business anymore like
00:05:24.060 that was and i think that's part of the reason he didn't want me to join the business that was
00:05:30.720 for their generation and the generation before my dad's but if you had a meat company in the meat
00:05:38.540 packing district there are almost none of those companies that owned their own building so they were
00:05:46.720 all renting and some of these leases were 20 or 30 year leases but there came a time when the meat
00:05:54.860 market became a discovered secret treasure and the real estate values went so high that if you didn't
00:06:04.320 own your own building when your lease was up you were done because you couldn't go from 40 a square foot
00:06:11.040 to a thousand dollars a square foot you just could not there's not that kind of return and and net profit
00:06:18.280 in this industry so my dad always wanted to buy his own property and control his own destiny so the fact
00:06:28.760 of his genius of finding a location down in that area and purchasing it when those rents did
00:06:36.020 go up very quickly to unaffordable numbers here i wasn't in a company protected by the ownership of the
00:06:47.160 building so that was a massive massive key component to us surviving that period art galleries
00:06:59.280 and restaurants where meat where raw meat used to be hanging is something that no one envisioned
00:07:06.400 that was in our industry uh but my dad did yeah wow so you mentioned earlier you know your day when you
00:07:13.520 were you know working with your dad would start at like three o'clock in the morning how late were you
00:07:18.320 would you sometimes work to oh we would we would often be done around 5 p.m wow and i mean i
00:07:25.280 imagine that the work is pretty physical very physical and you have to be able to work in a
00:07:31.420 refrigerator so for anyone that's never felt that before you know 35 degrees 36 degrees you know for
00:07:41.520 the entire your entire work day it it does take something like experience to get acclimated to
00:07:50.020 i find the largest turnover rate with new employees is within the first two days if they can
00:07:58.220 last the first two days they understand that okay once i get moving and working i'm gonna warm up
00:08:06.400 before you know it you're gonna strip a layer or two off before the end of the day but that fear
00:08:12.640 that and it's not talked about very often but there is a fear in someone that gets put into a work
00:08:19.720 environment that's refrigerated and you have to get over to that fear and realize okay this is this
00:08:24.900 is normal this is okay so how does butchering work obviously meat comes from cows let's talk about
00:08:29.660 cows in a good example like do they let's talk about steer steer yeah steer well let's talk about the
00:08:35.000 difference that because this is the biggest i think misconception that the general public has is
00:08:44.480 everyone thinks that beef is cow where where cow is is a a female milking cow is in the dairy industry so
00:08:54.780 cow meat does exist but we we have opted out of that with usda so our company doesn't handle any cow meat
00:09:04.860 and the the difference is in the age so anything that's over 30 months of age we don't touch
00:09:12.340 and there's a reason for that the 30 months of age or more can potentially have bsc which is mad cow
00:09:21.020 disease it's never been detected in anything less than 30 months of age and that's where we get steer
00:09:27.420 so the steer that we use are on average 22 to 24 months of age so that's that's the difference when a cow
00:09:37.560 is in its eighth year of giving milk that's usually about about when they'll send it to
00:09:45.740 be harvested because that meat has a place in the marketplace as well it's just going to be the lowest
00:09:53.880 form of meat because it's older it's tougher it doesn't taste as good as steer do at 24 months of age
00:10:03.440 so we're talking about steer how does the steer come to you and like what do you do with it after
00:10:07.940 that point when when i first started we were still using hanging meat on rails and kind of like the
00:10:15.220 movie rocky where rocky was punching the meat and it was hanging from a hook that has changed in my
00:10:21.760 generation so that is a good change because meat that can fall and hurt someone just to take that
00:10:30.940 danger out of out of the scenario and it was a great thing but the beef industry has changed in
00:10:38.480 such a way where it actually follows the the most capitalist example possible and in a good way
00:10:47.300 and what i mean by that is in my dad's generation if he wanted to sell two whole strip loins
00:10:54.120 that would yield about let's say 24 steaks he would also have to sell the rest of the animal and
00:11:03.380 where where do you sell the whole inside round bottom round beef eye round the chuck the neck like
00:11:12.400 you have to sell all of those parts and have no waste because it'd be a sin to have waste to begin
00:11:18.880 with but you wouldn't you wouldn't be profitable at all farmers actually have to even take into
00:11:24.880 consideration what the hide would be worth and what is worth in the leather industry at that time
00:11:31.220 so how it's changed is that meat at the processing facilities in the country is broken down into the
00:11:40.720 different cuts and equations get formed so if there's a huge demand for ribeye a price will be set for it
00:11:51.600 at a high price and that would lower the price of everything every other cut in the animal and it would go by
00:11:59.000 demand each week it changes obviously but that's the way pricing structure works so i only need to bring
00:12:08.180 in the cuts of meat that i need and that's vastly different from a generation before me where my
00:12:14.880 dad would never be able to grow the business in fine dining like we have he would have to we would
00:12:22.620 have had to get rid of the rest of the animal so for example inside rounds make great roast beefs
00:12:30.400 it's the muscle that we are all sitting on right now so roasting that that should really go to
00:12:40.360 someone who's processing roast beefs whereas i need more of the middle meats the strip loins the the
00:12:47.800 ribeyes where we get cowboy steaks and tomahawks i need more of that meat and the only reason i'm able
00:12:56.440 to get it is because the person who wants the inside rounds is able to get it get that delivered
00:13:01.980 to them only and they would have no use for the steaks that i would have use for so it's become a very
00:13:08.140 sustainable and and more importantly more efficient system than my dad's generation and does this
00:13:15.140 same apply to pork or lamb the same sort of thing where they you only get the cuts you you just need
00:13:20.240 yes it does apply to to lamb pork veal just like it does in beef but you'll find that most people
00:13:29.420 eat beef or poultry and then less lamb pork and so on so you'll get more efficiency in the beef
00:13:41.200 industry than you would the pork industry when it comes to being able to buy individual cuts how is what
00:13:48.220 you do different from say you know what the neighborhood the corner butcher does right um you
00:13:53.880 guys don't serve like specific individual consumers you're guys more focused on restaurants well yeah
00:13:59.520 our our entire history was based on selling restaurants now an amazing supermarket chain shop right
00:14:09.380 did approach us last year and and they were big fans of our product in restaurants and wanted to see
00:14:17.400 how it would work on their retail shelf because what a retailer would normally carry is different
00:14:24.060 from what we do so dry aged prime steaks is not something you'd normally find and they were shocked
00:14:32.500 they actually were had three times the demand for our product than what their most optimistic
00:14:40.480 forecaster saw in in in what our success would be in in the general public so specializing in the top 10
00:14:50.700 percent of what's produced in our country has really given us an edge in that so having beef procurement
00:14:59.320 people on the ground speaking to the growers who are the farmers about exactly how we want and what we want
00:15:08.860 our beef to be as far as raising protocols and finishing protocols that's taking it almost to the point of being vertical
00:15:17.560 we wouldn't want to be vertical in our situation because if there's bad weather in one part of the country
00:15:25.120 and very little beef came from that part we would be out of business so having the ability to spread
00:15:32.920 across the corn belt and to work with different farmers in multiple states really and and then
00:15:41.620 be getting the top 10 percent of product that comes from those growers is really the key to our success
00:15:48.580 and you know that did not take overnight to happen it took many years of what's very important
00:15:56.100 and i think it's probably true in any industry is uh we made sure we paid our bills before we ate
00:16:03.760 so my father could not sleep if he thought he owed someone money and if you're willing to pay someone
00:16:13.100 and that's a huge problem in our industry i'm i have an entire floor
00:16:18.620 of personnel and all they do is try to keep our restaurant customers current and it's not easy for the restaurants to do so
00:16:29.360 but we work with them a lot but we're as a restaurant may get 30 days of credit from me
00:16:36.640 i have to pay the growers within seven days
00:16:40.180 and that's seven days from when once it leaves the facility in which it was harvested
00:16:47.400 i don't get it for about four days after that it's on the road in a refrigerated truck
00:16:53.960 so three days after i get the product the product's paid for
00:16:58.580 and i still have to sell it and then collect the money for it
00:17:04.580 and regardless if i've collected or not i have to pay my taxes as if i did collect the money
00:17:11.820 which is very very difficult and we've had our times when you know we have to
00:17:19.600 you know go back and use our own personal money it's been quite some time since that's happened but
00:17:26.520 if if you're not careful
00:17:29.100 you have to pay your taxes it's something that we also take very seriously so
00:17:35.960 if two if your restaurants get too far out on you and and there's too much in receivables
00:17:42.240 then you won't be able to pay your your meat bill in seven days
00:17:46.880 then the farmer doesn't want to hear from you that's it if you get blacklisted in that industry
00:17:53.680 you're done and it's something that we worked very hard and
00:17:58.600 always thought about is that we need to make sure we pay for our product and make sure our farmers get
00:18:07.140 paid before we eat it's very simply said in my family yeah well imagine it's a tough business too
00:18:15.020 because weather can affect price i remember a few years ago when there was some drought in texas
00:18:21.120 in oklahoma the price for leather and for beef went up dramatically because all the cows were dying
00:18:27.100 yes and they were like i mean i mean steers i said cows again in those years there was an amazing
00:18:34.940 amount of corn production so that's what's kept beef affordable is that finishing them off on corn
00:18:44.920 that's inexpensive even in even through those droughts corn production was great i think you
00:18:51.540 could see it more in poultry poultry right now cost a little bit less than when i started with my dad in
00:18:57.700 1994 full-time which i think is remarkable and i think it's what's kept food pricing and the inflation of
00:19:05.740 food pricing where it is we all see the difference in what our grocery bill is right i think the one thing
00:19:13.140 that has that has kept it even affordable is the availability of corn in our country plays a huge
00:19:20.660 role in in the industry and in pricing so let's talk a bit about your book and some of the tips you
00:19:26.760 providing so i love about it you you look at each type of meat you've got beef pork lamb you have veal
00:19:33.320 and not only do you talk about the different cuts which i find extremely useful but you also provide some
00:19:38.700 recipes let's sort of talk big picture here i know a lot of guys listen to the podcast they like
00:19:43.980 to cook outdoors grill and particularly they're probably grilling meat of some sort what tools do
00:19:50.900 you recommend that people have on hand for all their meat preparation and meat cooking needs i would say
00:19:57.560 as a butcher the biggest people love to show me their knife set it's it's kind of comical as a guest
00:20:07.980 over anyone's house like hey pat look at these knives i bought from this maker and i'm as i look
00:20:14.420 through them none of them are are meat knives so i to have a knife which we call a boning knife
00:20:22.660 that debones let's say a leg of lamb or a rib of beef to a longer scimitar knife to cut slices off of a
00:20:33.100 whole strip uh or to cut some beef into maybe stew it's important it's they're very different from
00:20:41.540 a chef's knife uh or a paring knife or something that's made for produce so that's that's the first
00:20:49.220 key tool you need the biggest issue i see in in in grilling is when you have a grill that is not
00:21:00.460 able to get to the temperature in which you want and that's a big debate what's better natural gas
00:21:08.020 or charcoal of course charcoal tastes better but if you have the hours that i do which translates into
00:21:17.260 very little amount of time that you have to barbecue i need gas i gotta cook with gas i gotta get that
00:21:24.960 that grill up as as high as i can as fast as i can i don't have time to play with charcoal you know
00:21:33.220 every time i grill if i did i wouldn't be able to grill anywhere near as much as i do so i think having
00:21:39.120 a grill that's able to reach the temperature that you want in a time frame that you that you want
00:21:44.840 recently i found the grill i i almost didn't even look at it it's the size of a toaster and kind of
00:21:52.560 looks like a toaster without the door it's made in germany it's uh made by otto wild and it's
00:22:01.040 restaurants would call it a salamander or a um a cheese melter where the heat's only coming from
00:22:08.100 above and it has this great tray underneath that you put a little water in first so that you never
00:22:15.760 get a flare up there's no fire ever so if you are cooking a great quality cut of meat it mostly has
00:22:25.100 a lot of intramuscular fat so that's the marbling you see it's going to lose some of that fat in the
00:22:31.600 cooking process and leave behind a great tasting steak but to be able to do it in a manner where you
00:22:38.200 don't have you know this huge flaring up when you're trying to get a sear on on on meat is very
00:22:46.500 important otherwise what you get is the steam effect you get that gray steak that's gray throughout
00:22:54.400 because you you tried to get some color on it but by the time that happened the heat was able to
00:23:00.560 transfer through the steak all the way through and and to cook it all the way through the you know the
00:23:08.740 least desirable for a butcher to eat a cut of meat like that gotcha so good knives some meat knives
00:23:14.640 and then a grill that can get you the the right heat right are the two the big essential things
00:23:20.680 all right let's talk about some of the the things you hear about meat you talk about this why should
00:23:25.200 people avoid frozen meat like what happens to meat whenever you freeze it and then thaw it and
00:23:30.460 then cook it well if you know where the source of meat is there's nothing wrong with freezing meat
00:23:37.200 i don't like frozen meat because traceability it it it all depends if you're to buy frozen meat
00:23:47.020 why would anyone want to buy frozen meat when meat is readily available in america seven days a week
00:23:53.980 and the reason that i don't like frozen meat in that regard is because when you freeze meat and then
00:24:01.980 defrost it you'll notice so much more purge so much more of the natural juices are escaping and they're in
00:24:08.800 that package when you defrost it so frozen meat it's very questionable as to traceability as to where it's from
00:24:16.320 and then it does lose some quality if if it didn't my life would be a lot easier because everything we
00:24:24.140 make we would make it ahead of time and freeze it and ship it but it's just not the way it is the
00:24:30.740 fresher the meat is cut to include dry aged meat so now we're talking about aged meat that's been aging
00:24:37.060 for 45 days if that's portioned and then eaten within a few days that's the best steak you're
00:24:46.760 ever going to eat if you were to take that meat and freeze it and defrost it and then cook it you
00:24:52.480 you lose a lot of the good great qualities of of what was preserved that's just natural in the
00:25:00.000 freezing process let's talk about aged meat like what what are you doing there like what does aging
00:25:05.700 beef do and why does it taste so much better than just cooking it you know when it's fresh it's
00:25:13.000 dry aging beef is really controlled decomposition of the meat we are making sure the meat does not
00:25:21.180 get rotten as it would normally in 60 days or 120 days is the max that we go by making sure the
00:25:29.440 variables in the room are correct that's wind circulation that's temperature and that is the
00:25:36.520 humidity keeping the humidity down in the room what we're doing is letting the collagen that holds the
00:25:44.000 muscle fiber together really break down and what it's leaving behind is something that's got a lot
00:25:51.140 more flavor than as it than when it was fresh it's kind of like uh trying to pick up a water balloon
00:25:59.080 with with two fingers you can do it with a dry aged steak a fresh steak would be more like the water
00:26:06.800 balloon where it's it's drooping down so very much like uh you would broccoli rob is a good example in
00:26:14.600 produce where we're trying to get the moisture out so we kind of put it in a saute pan with some olive oil
00:26:22.860 and cook it for a while what we're doing in the dry aging process is is making a lot of that water
00:26:30.300 come out of the muscle group and there's plenty that we have to shave off when we're ready to portion
00:26:39.560 that product so anything on the exterior is removed but what's left behind is an enhanced
00:26:47.940 bee flavor that is so much tender so much more tender i should say and so much more flavorful than
00:26:54.680 when it was fresh gotcha and is this something that people could do at home or does it require a lot of
00:26:59.520 fine tuning and using you know special equipment to get the right right conditions to it ages properly
00:27:06.000 yeah that's a great question it's it's almost impossible to do at home unless you had a
00:27:12.140 refrigerator that was dedicated to that and one in which you could read the internal temperature of the
00:27:20.620 refrigerator and the humidity the humidity has got to be controlled and we have several systems that
00:27:29.680 take the moisture out of the air so it's very difficult to do at home it's
00:27:34.580 nearly nearly impossible to get it right unless you have a very small amount in a refrigerator
00:27:42.620 and you were able to read those those um the environment and i'll i'll tell you the the what
00:27:50.600 you would normally get if you tried to do it at home in a refrigerator because a refrigerator is a
00:27:55.920 natural dehumidifier any refrigerator has water that it expels and that water it's expelling is from
00:28:03.680 inside the moisture that's inside the air that gets on the coils and gets drained out or in some
00:28:12.340 refrigerators it is evaporated off the top it's still not enough to keep up with the amount of
00:28:19.640 water that's in the muscle of of a whole loin let's say so it's it's not worth your time you can make
00:28:28.580 prosciutto is at home the that that's something that's controllable but dry aged meat more times
00:28:34.860 than not it would rot on on anyone trying to do it and speaking of rot like how do you know when
00:28:40.180 meat is bad because there's been instances where i have meat it's been in my fridge for a few days and
00:28:44.720 like it's kind of turning gray and i'm like is this still edible and i throw it out then sometimes
00:28:49.420 i think well maybe i shouldn't have thrown that out it was actually good so is there any telltale
00:28:53.700 signs that you've got some rotten meat and you shouldn't consume it oh yeah i i laugh i i laughed
00:28:58.980 at what you were describing i know exactly what you mean so the best way to see if meat is still good
00:29:05.480 because the the turning gray is not a problem that's oxidation it's going to happen oxidate if
00:29:13.460 you were to make fresh ground beef right now and form it into a patty and put it in your fridge
00:29:18.580 the next day if you were to break it open in the in the middle it would be turning a darker brown
00:29:24.640 and you would wonder wait is this still good and it would eventually turn to a grayish color
00:29:29.340 all of that is fine that that has to do with with the oxygen and oxidation the best way to tell if
00:29:37.500 meat is good or not is by it not being a brightish green color which is obvious right but
00:29:46.600 but but beyond that smelling the meat if the meat smells good most likely it is good
00:29:55.640 so i myself as a butcher have taken steaks home and put them in in the fridge then you're like oh
00:30:02.560 i forgot i had those steaks in the fridge five days later well all you have to do is open the package
00:30:08.780 and smell the meat if the meat still smells good it's good and um no one really explains it
00:30:16.540 like that but that is the best way to tell so as a butcher you're professional here what do you
00:30:21.940 think is the most underrated cut of beef the most underrated probably flat irons especially for the
00:30:29.040 price so flat irons are from the front shoulder um they're from the clod and more specifically from
00:30:38.240 the top blade steak is is exactly where it is and it blindfolded it tastes the same as a new york strip
00:30:47.480 steak it's about 25 of the cost of a new york strip but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference
00:30:55.020 between the two the striation and the muscle is is the same the marbleization is the same and the flavor
00:31:01.420 is the same and when you find things you know cuts of meat like that that you know to have a new york
00:31:08.560 strip steak experience at 25 the cost it's a great economy cut well what's crazy about these economy
00:31:15.640 cuts though sometimes they get really popular and then like they're more expensive so that happened
00:31:20.520 with flank steak i feel like a few years ago for a little while it happened with hanger steak and then
00:31:25.320 hanger steak came back so hanger steak is the butcher steak because it's the only muscle in
00:31:31.280 the entire animal that you need to remove before you split the animal so on the assembly line
00:31:38.220 as the animal is eviscerated and the hide is removed it's then split you have to pump the brakes for a
00:31:48.120 second and remove by opening up the actual cavity it could because the hanger steak is on the inside
00:31:56.060 and it hangs from where the kidneys are so you need to remove it first before you split the animal or
00:32:03.460 you'll damage it and it's not symmetrical like every other muscle in the animal or in any mammal the
00:32:10.620 hanger steak is about two-thirds as big on one side and the other third on the opposite side that
00:32:18.640 was a steak that was not be not easily marketable by a butcher like because they never thought of taking
00:32:27.980 that taking it out first so when you got it it was after the animal was split and it didn't really look
00:32:34.260 much you couldn't make many portions enough to sell to one restaurant to put on a menu
00:32:39.500 but it had a lot of flavor and butchers would then take it home or throw it into the ground beef mix
00:32:47.600 one or the other but when it was discovered how much flavor it had and the breakers would start to
00:32:56.740 remove it before and they were able to get enough of them to sell to someone like myself who could then
00:33:03.900 portion them into usable steaks they became very popular and doubled in price for a while
00:33:12.880 they've since come down a little bit but that's an example of an economy cut that got more expensive
00:33:19.040 than than than uh i would say something comparable to it right so a flat iron steak most underrated
00:33:26.300 what do you think is the most overrated cut of beef the most overrated cut i guess i think
00:33:32.160 is anything that that's referred to as sirloin nobody knows what the heck sir sirloin is but
00:33:41.340 you know you'll put a tv on and there's that commercial for surf and turf and it's some sort of seafood
00:33:49.760 and a sirloin steak oh boy oh boy but no one knows what the heck sirloin is a sirloin steak does not
00:33:57.820 have much flavor at all it it's it's part of the love handle of of of a steer it comes from the top
00:34:06.780 butt the peeled knuckle or the flap meat one of those three muscle groups anything cut out of one
00:34:14.520 of those three muscle groups is considered sirloin but retail butchers seem to throw that word around
00:34:20.660 a lot and that's why i think it's the most overrated because real sirloin steak is not much of a steak
00:34:27.320 at all gotcha okay i'll remember that next time i go out to eat don't confuse that with strip loin
00:34:32.560 okay so strip loin steak very different from sirloin steak strip loin is a new york strip from the back
00:34:40.240 what is sort of the characteristics of a new york strip that's the classic steak that that that's the
00:34:46.740 l part of the t-bone you know that's the steak on that side so that's from the back there's a
00:34:52.580 finite amount of them per animal and that's where i said earlier about 24 steaks for those two strip
00:35:02.080 loin pieces it's one of the more expensive cuts and it's gotten center cut strip loin has no they call
00:35:13.880 them vein steaks but it's really a nerve that runs through got no sinew or nerve that runs through
00:35:20.240 any part of the steak so that you you have this great steak experience so when you eat the best steak
00:35:26.780 of your life it'll most likely be a ribeye or a strip loin that's been aged and is prime and domestic
00:35:34.060 so maybe you can answer this question um my friend has asked me about this i have no clue about it
00:35:39.000 either you are a purveyor of meats to new york city steakhouses what's with new york city steakhouses
00:35:45.860 serving big thick strips of bacon with steak i don't really see it anywhere else i only it's only
00:35:52.920 in new york city what do you know what's going on there i you know some say it's it's the classic
00:35:58.100 cut i think i'm along the lines i'm on your side on that one i'm not really sure why that is i've
00:36:04.900 asked my elders about that very question and they said well why would i want to eat the bacon
00:36:11.900 before i eat my steak i'm not sure so i think you have some traditional new york city steakhouses that
00:36:20.300 have been doing that forever and a lot of clientele have gotten accustomed to that so it has become a
00:36:28.920 tradition and i've been to many steakhouses in which get my guests have ordered bacon to come
00:36:37.680 out before the steak as an appetizer and i i really i'm i'm it does to me it doesn't seem to fit
00:36:46.280 but it's not for me to decide it's just for me to provide so okay that's weird okay well it's unsolved
00:36:54.980 let's get that guy from unsolved mysteries on it if he's still alive so let's shift gears to pork
00:36:59.580 and we'll um in there what do you think what do you think is the most overlooked or cut of pork
00:37:04.740 from folks that you think it man if people really embraced it they would get a lot of enjoyment from
00:37:09.700 it i i think the pork butt so the pork butt is the pork shoulder in beef it would be the chuck
00:37:17.620 why it's called butt is because they used to be stored in big containers called butts and shipped
00:37:26.700 up to boston so the pork butt or shoulder is very tender so with a pork butt it's very inexpensive
00:37:36.220 so to slice one inch steaks from a pork butt is really just as good and tender as the center cut
00:37:46.580 pork loin or pork chops so i mean it's such a versatile cut where if you wanted to make pork stew
00:37:54.040 all the way to a pork steak i'd make it from the pork butt you'll have a number of muscle groups that
00:38:00.520 you're cutting through but they're all tender and i think that's the big takeaway from pork butt i like
00:38:06.020 that well hey pat where can people go to learn more about the new book well the book is on amazon
00:38:12.500 and if you wanted anyone wanted to know more about the book you go on to our website lafrida.com
00:38:20.300 and there's there's more information there about the book the book is really was really crafted and made
00:38:26.480 with a lot of careful time to to really show where each steak or each cut comes from
00:38:34.960 and it's different characteristics so in that regard some companies have bought it for their
00:38:41.060 entire staff that are in the meat business just to use as a guide and i find myself using it as a guide
00:38:47.960 when i'm trying to explain to a chef what where certain cuts come from and what's good about them
00:38:55.380 and not it's a great guide but again it's available on amazon and to learn more about it my website's a
00:39:02.800 great place to go and that's well pat lafrida thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:39:06.080 thank you my friend thank you for having me on my guest today was pat lafrida he's the owner of
00:39:09.860 pat lafrida meat purveyors he's also the author of the new book meat everything you need to know
00:39:14.760 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find out more efficient
00:39:18.040 about his work at lafrida.com also check out our show notes at aom.is butcher where you can find
00:39:24.240 links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:39:26.400 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:39:42.320 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the
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00:39:56.000 community support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly