Processing time

Today we started the process of cutting up the family steer that was butchered last week. Now we are not nor claim to be professional meat cutters producing each and every cut of meat that you might find in the store but we are able to process efficiently. We basically create two types of cuts, meat to be ground and steaks. On the back legs we like to pull most of our steaks as there are lots of great cuts to chose from. If the animal has been hanging(cooling) for at least a week the muscle fibers will start to contract and the membrane separating the muscle groups will harden. Its easy to find this membrane and just start pulling the two muscle groups apart, cutting when needed to help the separation. When cutting the steaks you want to have a single muscle group with no membrane in between your cut. When you have the muscle group separated make your cuts perpendicular to the way the muscle grains are aligned to ensure that when you go to cook, the meat will soak in and retain your marinade. We are a little picky on our meat and we don't just throw anything into the grinder. We like to have our burger as lean as possible with nearly no tendons or membrane in the meat. There is nothing worse than eating burger and have to pull out chunks of tendon or gristle. We will use our knives like a fillet knife and cut the membrane from the meat and then cut the meat into cubes not larger than 2 inches. We have a large meat grinder #32 that will handle about anything and if you got your arm caught in it would probably pull you all the way through it only stopping when it got to your boots. The front legs we normally don't take any steaks as the cuts are just not big enough so we grind most of it. The ribs we de-bone and keep for boneless ribs later on. The back has lots of good cuts and we will make a few steaks off the loins and grind the rest. The whole process is time consuming and at times boreing but its great to be able to see where your meat came from and how it was prepared. We waist nothing, any scraps that dont meet the test for burger are saved and kept for the dogs later on and all the bones are excelent chew toys to keep the muts happy.