Click for the Beef Cutting Chart from the beefretail.org to see the cuts!
The Beef Chuck
The chuck is the shoulder and considered the “tougher” part of the steer. Most charts and beef cut posters used to show that the cuts from here are for braising and stewing. Back then we cut basically three cuts out of it, the long bone pot roast, the round bone roast and the English cut and also some stew meat, hamburger meat and we sold the neck bones to the customers who wanted to make a good pot of beef soup.
Then we started to take all the bones out and ended up with a three piece boneless chuck. The chuck eye we cut into roasts and some chuck eye steaks. The beef clod, formerly the English cut, was cut into roasts and steaks and we also ended up with what we used to call the Scotch Tender, I do recall that the spelling for this was “Scotch” and this was cut up for cube steaks.
Many of our customers bought round steaks for different braising dishes, like Swiss steak, but we always preferred the cuts from the chuck what they now sell as “shoulder steak ” or also the “Ranch steak” for this dish or a Bavarian dish, which we actually enjoyed yesterday, called “Senffleisch” or mustard meat. (the recipe for this will be at Inge’s Kitchen in the near future)
Going back to one of my previous posts, any of these cuts, especially if you go with leaner grades like USDA Select can be made more tender with the “Jaccarder“.
Our personal opinion, I include my whole family here, is that the cuts from the front of the animal have more flavor. As a nice pink roast beef sliced thin is mouth watering good, but throw a chuck roast in the pot, add some onions and carrots, cover it with water and cook it for quite awhile, add a few potatoes and you have an exceptional meal. (You should actually season and brown the meat first to improve the taste and the gravy)
In the same token a ribeye steak is tastier than a New York Strip and braising a boneless shoulder steak beats a sirloin tip steak any time in tastiness, but this is only my opinion.
To see the different cuts open the poster from the Beef Checkoff or to open it in a different window copy the location below into a new browser window.
Click to access BeefMadeEasyCutChart.pdf