Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

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We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

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This week on meeting three we're jumping into a world filled with fizz iridescence and deliciousness. We're talking about bubbles,

it came from the air gas truck. Yeah, no, I never thought about it before that. And I think it's emerged as a bulbous teashops a site of Asian American youth identity building.

We're called the invisible industry because these products you don't really see but through around us in every way every day.

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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from whenever to whenever I'm in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We got the Stasi the hammer Lopez joining us from Connecticut. How you doing assassin kid? And we got Matt in the booth in Rhode Island. How you doing Matt Nastasia the flogger Lopez? Oh yeah. So for those of you that don't know, before we come on, we have to like clap so that you know Matt can sync up our recording later. Anastasia has some sort of cricket bat that she's using to hit some sort of chained up enemy in her in her house right now. At least that's what it sounded like. Is that fairly accurate?

Yes. Probably the anti is the anti TP neighbor, isn't it?

Right? Yeah. Yeah, go back. Yeah, Anastasia, if you heard anything of it, like from like, the anyone about the TPS? When are you going to erect it? Yeah. When When are you planning I really love if

you could help me but I know that you traveling is not possible. So that's a no.

We got John was back in New York City. That's not a no, a no is no. Anyway, we got John in back in New York City. Do them all. Thanks. Yeah. You sound you're like yes. Yep. Yeah. New York is not a bad place to be like, like it New York is not like bad right now. It's not like a terrible place to be things are happening in New York kind of again, right?

It's beginning to open up a little bit again. Yeah, once I get my second shot next week, I'm

going to feel a lot better about going out and doing things. Yeah. Have you heard of the term? Vax hole? No. Yeah. So it was like the Urban Dictionary, which I know whatever Urban Dictionary, but it has its moments. It was the Word of the Week A while ago, and it's someone who brags about being fully vaccinated. You did when most of the people around them are not. I'm not saying that you're a vaxholm. I'm not calling you a VAX hole. You're saying it's an interesting word. At this point like 20% of the country is vaccinated already. You think you have something in there at least one shot. Anyway, I digress we have today. And for anyone on the chat room, get your questions ready. And John, can you monitor the Twitter in case anything comes in during the because I have a feeling that if people were paying attention, like these are the kinds of questions that they have that I can't readily answer because not an expert. But we have today with us, Heather Merrill Thomason, the founder and proprietor proprietor is that right proprietor owner, what runner? What do you do you go by all of those things? Yeah, of primal supply meets in, in the great city of Philadelphia. How're you doing?

Hi, I'm doing great.

Yeah. So like, if you have any, if you're in the chat room, and you have any questions on, you know, any meat or butchery related questions, send them on. And now in the meantime, let's let's get people, why don't you want to talk a little bit about primal supply meats, but just to get us started?

Oh, sure. Okay, primal supply meat. So we are a whole animal butchery based in Philadelphia. Basically, what I've been doing for five, five years or so, businesses about to be five is building up a local supply chain. So I work directly with local farmers in our region that I've built relationships with. And I source and buy everything is cool animals base at this point, the animals are being grown for primal. I work with some local slaughterhouses manage processing, and then bring it all into our poetry in Philadelphia, where we then, you know, cut, cut all of these primals and sub primals, as we receive the animals from our slaughterhouses into cuts for our three retail butcher shops. So we have like three kind of, you know, classic brick and mortar walk in chat with a butcher over the counter shops. We have a CSA style subscription program where people can sign up for weekly box of meat. And then we also work with some restaurants around the city. So So yeah, so I'm like this kind of middle middle woman, if you will, managing sourcing and then kind of building up a market for local meat and fairly

cool. Now, how did you get into this? So I feel like you know, like, the butcher is kind of like, evenly divided between people who's like whole family has been butchers. Like my stepfather is the first person in his family for like seven generations who wasn't a butcher. Well, you know, I mean, he broke the line. So it's like, there's butcher families and and there's people that come to butchery. And you come to butchery, right?

I do. I do. I think I'm just like, I'm an inherent problem solver. So I'm a career changer. I was a graphic designer, I studied and practiced graphic design for about a decade. And but I've forever been a lover of food cooker and eater of food. And I was never I don't have a professional culinary background before butchery. But yeah, I just, you know, got involved with local food. The friend at farmer's started to learn about how just kind of busted and broken the supply chain is for small producers and people looking to buy meat locally. So I did a crazy thing and decided I should learn the craft of butchery and jump off a career Clift and pursue new things to try to solve these problems. So yes, I did that.

You. I mean, you chose something that was real easy. Oh, it was crazy. Yeah. Yes. Like not not physically demanding, nor is it instantly economically rewarding. Yes, for sure. Yes. I mean, why? I used to hear stories about you know, my stepfather's Dad, it just like, I mean, punishing work being butchery is just punishing work, like carrying big sides of beef around and like, you know, cutting stuff up and moving stuff around constantly. I mean, were you expecting that when you got into it, or no, no,

definitely not. You know, I'm like a physical person. I, you know, I danced all through my childhood I, I've never been like, inactive or afraid of doing work. So I think I came into it my early 30s. And I was sort of like, bright eyed and ambitious. And I was out to solve all these problems. So it was like, let me get in there and do it. And I'm 41 now and I will admit that there's many other things where I'm just like, oh, yeah, 10 years ago, my back was up for that. And right now it is not.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. And then people want meat all the time. So it's not the kind of thing that you can Yeah, it's just I mean, the hours I remember you know, until the the day that my stepfather's dad retired the hours were just like, they were nuts. He was always he was always being a butcher no matter what and we got home he was way tired because he had been doing stuff all

day. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of the story of being a business owner you know, it's like it never sleeps and honestly in building primal because I was doing butchery you know, I learned butchery. I was running other butcher shops before I started this business. And I did try really hard to design this business to make it a little bit more, I guess, like smart and efficient labor wise, like I did carry, you know, quarters up Ufan sides of hogs on my shoulder at this last butcher shop that seem romantic and what you're supposed to do. And then I was just like, hell no, this is going to break backs, I pay workers comp all these things. So that's why I work with my slaughterhouse and they have a lot more, you know, they have like hoists, and all of these things that make it be possible to like work smarter, not harder. So we have them break our beef off the rails down into primals that are now like 30 pound pieces that you can carry around. And that that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I'm sure that there's people that work for me or think about working for me, they're like, Oh, I, you know, I want to like know how to cut it down off the rail. And it's like, that's not really the hard part. Like all the nuance and the interesting things come later. And just trust me, I'm saving your back.

Let's talk let's, let's talk about this like, because I feel like there was there was a kind of butcher shop that my, you know, my stepfather's family ran for years and years out of Boston, you know, I mean, that doesn't really exist anymore, because that's back when a butcher could do their own slaughter. Really, you know what I mean? Like, he would go pick out the lambs. He was a lamb specialist, right? He did everything, but he was a lamb specialist. So he would go, he would know the farmer like you do, he would pick out the lambs to slaughter them, you know, do the whole whole nine, you know, try to rip rip off the other suppliers and I want to talk about like the value added and what happens with I mean, like the crazy stories, I'll tell you one later, if we have time, if you're interested in crazy old, crazy old butcher stories, I'll try to pick one that we haven't said on the air before. And, and then kind of like the butchers that I grew up with where everything was coming pre cutting cases. And you know, it was just a whole bunch of, you know, the cuts that everybody wanted and you know what I mean? So like and then but what you're doing is a kind of a newish newer model like we want to talk about this kind of resurgence of this type of poetry and how it's different from what happened in the way past versus what happened in the recent past.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely so the resurgence of craft poetry happened that is a thing because there was a time where you know everything got industrialized and centralized next thing you know, you know the corner butcher shop kind of went by the wayside to the grocery store which started to have the in house butcher and before you know it they're just ordering cases of cuts from you know, these factory industrial you know, meat factories and just like you know, your customers want a lot of skirt steaks you just order boxes, a skirt steaks customers want tender ones you order the tender line so so yeah, all of that it got to a point where the people in grocery stores or at the even the remaining butcher shops were just kind of meat cutters, not butchers. I guess that's like kind of a loaded thing. But that's maybe the difference there where they would know how to get cuts in proportion them but they didn't have relationship to the farms, they didn't have relationship to whole animals, they wouldn't know what to do with the side of beef if they were looking at it. And you know, I think it's been I'm trying to think like time will timeline was maybe like 15 years now since the first you know, a couple of people tried to sort of bring back the craft and open whole animal butcher shops and definitely like Josh Apple stone, you know, formerly a Fleischer's now battle stone meat company, you know, is and should be credited as kind of the one of the leaders in that resurgence. But so I kind of came up seeing these problems in the, the, you know, small food system that like the the big, all the rules, and USDA regulations being applied to them wasn't working, it was breaking it. And the model that was new but was visible to me was this, you know, new disc, the New Age craft butcher shop, people who were trying to bring back the old way. And that's what I sought out to learn and do. But as I eventually worked my way up to running a butcher shop in that model, I was like, Oh, this, this doesn't really work. But there's a reason why people move towards box meat, because there's a lot of inefficiencies in labor and time and, and all these things. So, you know, I honestly did build primalist, sort of this funny problem solution, new hybrid model of the old and the new, you know, where, you know, unfortunately, we can't harvest our own animals. There's a lot more USDA restriction and regulation about that. So I have to partner with local slaughterhouses to do that.

But I just one of the reasons my my stepfather's dad retired by the really, he's like, he's like crap on this, like, in like, 1983. Sounds about right. Yeah. He was like, he's like To hell with this good

on him. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz the craft was gone, right. Like, everybody was just kind of looking for cheaper, easier ways to do things. And so yeah, so we, you know, technically, all of those principles and sort of the way that that works is what we do, but I've kind of like shifted the labor around in the supply chain to try to just make it like, effective and efficient for us. And yeah, and that's that's what we do now. So so our meat does come to like I have the slaughterhouse break it per my instructions into kind of the first cuts like when you take whole animals and you break it down into large format parts and pieces, first, their quarters and halves, but then they become primals. That's where primal supply came from. So I can have a slaughterhouse break my B into these big primal cuts. And then it does fit on boxes and it does fit on pallets. And it's easier for us to move into trucks and it's easy for us to move around in the facility. But when my butcher is bringing into the room and they want to cut it, they still have like a lot of options and space for like how they cut and portion and utilize those things. So you know, there's, there's a lot of creative merchandising, for lack of a better term that happens where, you know, after everybody buys the two flank steaks or four skirt steaks that we get off a single beef what's next, you know, and introducing them to new cuts, things that are obvious to us, but aren't as obvious to the, to the, you know, primary consumer, or even like starting to experiment with, I wonder if this could be any good. And there's a lot of things that aren't, you know, there's a reason why there's a lot of things that look like steaks aren't steak, because people have been doing this for a long time. And they'll be in chewy, or they won't cook well. But sometimes we're able to, you know, take take one cut and change it with the season or give someone something new. I don't know we do a lot of like, a good example of that is that we sell a ton of Copa steaks, or people call them pork neck. So it's like that barrel muscle that's in the pork butt or shoulder. And, you know, typically people think of whole pork show sold there, you got to roast it or break it. And it's this, like, you know, inconvenient long time large format project to pursue. And we can take that muscle out, we can push it into space. And if you cook it the right way, like a boneless pork chop, you have something that's awesome. And I get like three or four different one pound portions to serve to my customers, which just made it go farther and gives them more quick cooking options. So yeah, it's kind of it's kind of cool. It's like, well think about what people want and try to seek and give it to them.

I mean, I noticed in your in your voice on one of the videos I saw of you that you're like, it's not the it's not that you were implying that you didn't like ribs and strips. It's just you were like, You were kind of like Come on dudes, you know what I mean? Like, like, and so you know, like, you throw out some steaks honestly that I've never even tried like baseball steak you want to like, like, I mean, I'm probably behind the times, but like, which, which like, what are these kinds of like alternative steaks that you'd like people to try now? And specifically? Like I am not me personally, I'm maybe the people listening are but I'm not interested in a substitute for a rib steak. I want something that is different and like delicious in its own right. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know, for a while we were everyone was about to try it for a while. But of course that has problems because some of them are livery some aren't, you got to cut that little weird little thing out of it. And then I used to like to meet, glue them back together because people don't want to cut through that thing and then chew it out. But anyway, so don't go ahead and give me some you know what I'm talking about?

I've done what I've actually I'm like, What are you cutting out of and tried to

try to if we were coming out of chapter one, it's got that line running down the middle, or is that a different one?

What's the chart? It's like a It's shaped like a bicycle seat. It's like a triangle muscle. Maybe we're having so the cool lap or pecan? Yeah, it's like the the cap on the top sirloin.

I'll look it up I was we got to like Google and I gotta, I gotta go. Gotta go. It's been so many years, I gotta go look up, we used to do a meat glue class. And there was a there was it wasn't an it was one of these steaks that was shaped like a Tri Tip. And then we would cut out there was a line that ran through it in the middle. Like it wasn't like between like a muscle junction it was like through the middle of the steak. And we would cut it out and glue it back together. And the same way that in a rib steak we would we used to cut the walnut out because people get pissed and we will cut and we would cut out that line have you know that? You know that line of connective tissue between the cap and the main part of the meat? And yeah, that line sometimes is nasty, and sometimes isn't. And someone actually has a question about that. So we got to get to that later. But we would, we would we would we would kind of like lift the flap off like you lift the car engine rip that thing off and then glue the flap back down.

Wow. I'm fascinated by this. I like that we're like we're kind of coming to this from opposite sides. You're like the Science Guy. And I'm kind of like a touch and feel gal you know, and me glue. Me glue is like a fascinating thing to me. I was so like, I don't sue be that'll be honest. I just don't have like a cast iron, salt and pepper. I talk a lot. I read a lot about CBT. So I can like educate and support my customers but it's just kind of not my thing. And a chef years ago, was encouraging me to use meat glue for like a pork, like a robot roast. And I was like, Dude, I don't I don't go there. Like that's not my style. He's like, no, no, it's made from plant matter. It's organic. You can do it. And I tried me blue for the first time and like my head exploded and I was like, I never want to go back. This is so perfect. But it's a slippery slope there. You know? Well

my memory just came back was blade stakes that we were

Ah, yes, yes, yes. You might actually like flat irons. They're

a that's what we were doing. Yeah. And then

kind of brilliant.

Well, okay, so I'll give you my thing on meat glue. Right I'll give you my pitch on meat glue. I'll give My pitch in general, and we'll see whether you buy this argument, not saying that it's for you, right?

I'm ready to be sold. I'm like, very right right now. So let's see what you got.

meat glue got a really bad rep. I think for bad reasons, people were using it to take, like, hacked up pieces of meat, glue them into a faux steak. And it's like a patchwork quilt. And, you know, as you know, you know, as a meat person, like that just doesn't work like that, like it does. It doesn't imitate what a real muscle does. It's not, it's not a good idea. It's terrible idea, right? Things shrink at different rates, depending on what muscle it comes from. And it's just, it's just a freaking nightmare. And also, it's dishonest, right? So I tried to and I've never been like, I never liked an argument where someone's like, oh, well, I could pretend like I bought good meat and I can buy crappy meat. No, I mean, if you can get less expensive meat and make it delicious, that that's a good idea. But if you're trying to rip someone off or pass something off, that's always a terrible idea. Right. So that's just as a as a starting point. So now, there are certain cuts of meat where I think they are delicious. But they have inherent problems from a customer perspective. So for instance, like the blade steaks got that line running down the middle grade steak, if you take out that line, he's put it in, you put it back together, and you're not, you're not like, you know, patchwork quilting it, you're just kind of doing like spot surgery on the meat or like, or like I was saying, like, you know, everyone, everyone loves a rib steak. Except for if you're going to do the, if you're going to do the big rib steak on a plate and you're going to slice it and serve it like that that line that runs through that sometimes is you know, cartilaginous and doesn't break down, not as not as pleasant. And as someone who isn't necessarily like someone who loves all of those textures isn't going to enjoy it as much. Right. Same with the walnut, you know, what I call them? I don't know what you call it. But you know, you know what I mean that

I don't have a name for it. But as soon as you said walnut, I knew exactly what you're talking about. So let's adapt that.

Yeah, anyways, so like, like, if you're just taking something like that, and, and you're doing it like kind of upfront. And you're saying this is what I'm doing, then. And you tell people that you've done it, because of course, as soon as your knife goes into that piece of meat, it's now contaminated, right? So you have to let people know you've done it, because you know, you've done it. Anyway, so I think

like this is also like the setting situation where you're talking about doing this in a restaurant context, right, where you're trying to cook meat, and then serve someone and have them have a perfect eating experience. Right. Whereas like I do, so I do work with chefs, I love working with chefs, but I've kind of tried to, I try to learn about their cooking style and what their menu is and then appropriately sell the right cuts into it. Like if they if they have a concept in mind. And something that they would want to use, maybe there's not enough of them on an animal like it's like, you know, if you're going to ask me a hanger steak, we can't do it. But maybe I might talk to you about using a bavette or even like a Denver steak or something that's going to have that loose grain texture that we will get a higher yield off the animal. So that's that's kind of like as far as I go with chefs. And then I kind of put it in their hands and let them do their magic. And it's pretty fun for me to then go and sit at the table on the other side and see what they did. But I spent a ton of time really cutting meat and selling meat to home cooks. And I my safest assumption is to just kind of like assume that everyone is just a mediocre cook at best and try to do everything to set them up for success. Because even things like, you know, it's might seem like there's some obvious way to cut a portion of steak. But the way in which we cut it, and presented to them is going to guide how they then you know, cut it and slice it when they cook it. So you know, it is actually really important that you're you're, you know, like you're slicing and portioning a steak so that the grain when they look at it and have a natural instinct about how to deal with it, that they're gonna, like, follow and cut across the grain, or like the way that we tie things, or even portioned them and kind of the importance of how, you know, when people when butchers are learning and training and they can't, it's not that easy to kind of flat steak to be honest, like it takes a lot of practice to not watch them and have them be exactly especially as they're bigger, you know, an inch and a half thick from end to end. Because even like a tiny little slip up where it's an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch thicker on one end to the other is going to set somebody up. So one side overcooks on one side under cooks. So there's just like a lot of that that we go into thinking so this I'm so fascinated by the blade steak thing. So the flat iron is one of the coolest muscles in the beef. Because it is it's a tap to the scapula like the shoulder blade. So like, if you've listened to things from me before, it sounds like you have like, you know, I love to talk about what muscles do in live animals because that's what affects the flavor, the texture, the way they cook, like all the things that we experience as cooks and eaters. And so, you know, the more active muscles are the more they taste amazing, but all that activity you know, builds up things that are Probably not pleasant in your mouth like connective tissue and sinew and all that. So the shoulder obviously, you know, these animals walking on all fours leading with the front of their body, active part of the animal, that's the chuck in the beef. That's where all the flavor is. So the flat iron is the shoulder blade is deep within the shoulder, and it moves with every step. But the flat iron is like attached to it like it's bone skin, we call it like you peel it off. So that muscle does not move independently, it's just kind of stuck to the shoulder blade. And as the shoulder blade moves, the muscle moves, but it doesn't have to expand and contract to do that. So it's one of the most tender muscles in the beef, like after tenure line or fillet. Flat Iron is like Go for it. It's so incredibly flavorful because of that activity or surrounding it. But it doesn't do a lot of work itself. So it's going to be melt in your mouth tender. But it's like this thick muscle. And there's this terrible, inedible seam that runs through it, that's so tough. And what we do is we like you're playing a fish, you know, like you're flying, you know, the skin or like muscle off of off of one side of a fish use away that that muscle off of that sinew, so you end up with two long, thin steaks. Any butcher can tell you that no matter how long we've been butchering, for, no matter how much you practice, this is not that easy to do. Because that sinewy seam is like it's not perfectly flat, it kind of like bends and changes and following it with your knife and not leaving meat behind is not easy to do.

And it also doesn't separate easily like a silver scan or something. No, no, no,

not at all. Like it doesn't Yeah, it doesn't peel easily. It's not that easy to follow with your knife. So it's like it takes some real practice to perfectly like fillet off those two muscles off of that center seam and not leave a ton of trim and like, you know, guilt. Can I say that family show sorry. ruin your yield. So, so yeah, so it takes a ton of practice to get a clean state that you haven't hacked into the haven't left trim behind. And it's just not awesome. And I remember the first time that I was like in charge of a butcher shop, I was thinking like, maybe we'll maybe we'll sell them and cut them this way instead of this way. And I learned about the blade stakes, as you call them. I call them feather stakes, because that's kind of what they look like when their portion with that seam running down the middle. I was like, Ah, I've cracked the nut. This is so much faster, it's so much easier. We don't lose trim, they look pretty. We're never selling flat irons again, like Blade stakes, feather states won the war. So I was selling them out of my case. And then I had a customer come back to me and say, Hey, so I bought one of those feathers, steaks. And it was the worst steak I've ever had. It's just being so like, this was a cook that was really talking to me like he wasn't complaining, you know, in just sort of like an unhappy customer way. And he's like, there was these incredibly delicious tender bites. But that stuff in the middle was just there's so much of it. And I left it all behind on my plate and it felt terrible. And I just like, I could just empathize with this experience and be like, Oh, that's that sucked. I'm never doing this again. So now I've come full circle, and I'm all pro flat iron. And we do that every time. But I watch my butchers do it. I do it. Like it's just terrible. It's so I don't know, I'm thinking about your meat glue to bring this back in this context. And she says it's like corrective surgery and you still got this beautiful tender cut that you've just taken out that will offend her the middle.

I can tell you that. It's delicious. Yeah, I used to do it as part that was one of the in when we taught me glue classes. Now this was in 20 I don't know 11 or something. Yeah, back when we were teaching meat glue classes, like that's one of the ones that we did, because those steaks were also I don't know how what they cause now, but they were not that expensive. Yeah. And yeah, because what you know, like from a, you know, butchers perspective is different necessarily from like a cooks versus a customer's perspective. Right. So like, I know from watching my family eat things that I've made. And you know, the students back and we were teaching them that once you sear off a steak, it's real hard to necessarily see where are those tough lines are so you can't even it's hard to do the surgery at your plate sometimes if you're not paying attention and most people are talking and like drinking their wine or whatever and so they just cross cut, they're using a sharp knife because everyone hands you a sharp knife when you're so it's not like you know you can tell based on your knife, they'll cross cut notice put the whole dang thing in their mouth and people aren't like used to having to like people aren't used to having to follow muscle lines on their own plate. You know what I mean? So you know and like if you're doing it for yourself, you would know that and you wouldn't just slice across that thing and eat it but it's very hard education problem anyways,

yeah, I mean even like selling someone so I love to sell bones in meat. I mean it's just like there's there's multiple reasons for it like from a yield and profit standpoint, it makes a whole lot of sense for me to you know, sell the bone with the meat not have it be something that I separate out and give the customer all the muscle and keep the bone for me to deal with and then you know There goes the weight and I buy whole animals and then a lot of contacts, you know, Bones sort of improved give like some structural integrity or in a long cooking situation as flavored, all the rest so I like to sell bone in New York strips. Why not, you know, the like Shell steaks essentially, I think they're cool. They present well, they cook kind of nice. They cook nicely and but I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with someone over the counter Ron visibly holding up the steak and trying to show them. So when you finish cooking this, you know, you're going to take your knife, you're gonna slice along here to take the whole muscle off of the bone. And then you could cross cut and slice this thing on your plate. And to anybody who cooks regularly, that doesn't seem like a very hard thing to do. But you'd be surprised how many home cooks out there have never just cut the ribeye off the bone or the New York strip off the bone before they then slice it and serve it. And they're up for it. But it's like, you know, you really got to like I said, you got to do some coaching, you got to kind of set them up for success. And it's a funny conversation where someone's like, Well, do you have any boneless New York strips? And I'm like, Well, I can make anything boneless. I'll do it for you. But you want to

price Yeah, same price anyway,

does that make them more expensive? So

but question in the chat is sort of about like how you counsel novice share your chef's. Chef Joanna asks, is there an EASY Quote unquote trick to tell home cooks? How to choose the right cut when the thing listed in the recipe is unavailable? Oh,

I mean, that's a great question. I don't know that there's necessarily like a trick for that it really just is being knowledgeable. I mean, that's kind of my job as a butcher, to be honest, to be knowledgeable about how different muscles will cook and behave. And then to make the appropriate substitute. So like, mainly, I have kind of my series of questions that I will ask people to try to hone in, you know, if they give me a recipe, I could just tell them what the answer is. But it's like, okay, are you looking? Are you braising? Are you smoking, you know, you're cooking slow or fast? And then let's say that we're just talking about a steak. So what were they after? Like, if they're asking me for a flank steak, for example? It's like, Well, was it the long grain and the quick cooking, you know, thin fineness about it? Or was it that's incredibly lean muscle? You know, because I could recommend something else that would look the same, and it might be fattier. So it's really just kind of like, the cooking technique. And then I think more if, like I said, if the fat or the sort of muscle grain because there's kind of these like smooth, dense steaks, you know, like, top sirloins, New York strips, things like that. And then there's those ones that have kind of, like, looser, longer grain, like a, like a flank, or a skirt, or above that. And to me, those are apples and oranges. So, you know, that's, that's kind of the thing, I guess, like, what's the end goal? And what are what are they trying to get out of it?

Right, but if you were matched, if you were matching someone's recipe, like, Would you would you match more on flavor? Or more on texture? Or would you match? Like, like, where would you? Where would you match first?

Yeah, I guess, I guess for a recipe I would be looking for, like the cook process. So I'd probably say that, you know, like, how, like, how long or what temperature is it telling you to cook this so that we could sub it in and they would have the same result? Right? Saying three to four minutes aside, and this is going to happen, then I want to I want to sub something. And it's going to behave the same way in process, if someone doesn't have a recipe, and they're just kind of chatting about like, this is what I'm in the mood for for dinner, then I think I could go a little bit more with like a flavor texture match, because I could chat with them about adjusting to the cook timer process?

Well, because then and I think the reason this is important is because like a lot of especially people, you know, that I deal with, like on on this show and like in life, are really interested in things that they read from all over the world, they can't necessarily get them right. And some of them are becoming more popular. So for instance, like, you know, a couple of months ago, everyone was asking pecan up economy, kind of the kind of guy and like they couldn't get it. So like, you know, I'm sure now like the, you know, the butcher shops like yours, you could deliver that, but what should they if that particular one, what should they get if they want it or like that? But like, is it? Like, can you get it cut the same? Because it's got that they leave the does it cut exactly the same way with the fat fat cap left on it and everything are? Yeah,

I mean, well, that's that's one of those examples where there is actually like a comparable muscle and it's kind of nice to say have you had this well, then you could try this. And I do that with the Coolatta Konya, which is like the same muscle or the Tri Tip, to me, those are kind of interchangeable because they're both on the outside of the animal. Like they kind of come from the hip, they're on the outside. So they're both kind of have that exterior fat cap. They're sort of a similar size and thickness. So if you're following a recipe and it's giving you like a cook time, it's going to behave pretty similarly. And I actually think like fat and texture muscle fiber wise they're pretty similar. So that's, that's kind of an easy one. But it's like, you know, the most obvious example is like we just went through your Passover and everybody wants brisket and even though I, at this point, buy a decent amount of beef, there's still only so much brisket to go around. So So then you have people coming in looking to utilize those recipes or do those same processes. So then you can kind of go through it down these steps of like, okay, so Well, obviously you're looking to do you're looking into your your grandma's brisket recipes, you're looking to slowly braid some beef. So how much do you care that it's boneless, because if it is, then I'm probably going to recommend that maybe you use a chuck roast or possibly even like boneless short ribs, which we cut from the chuck flat. If you're not so tied to that, then personally, I would sort of jump ship and go to like, why don't you do some some actual bone and short ribs or maybe try some like cross cut beef Shanks or something like that. So it's kind of like, you know, what's the most important to them? Like? Do they want just one big bonus piece of meat that they can like slice and serve? Because then we can't go to something that's going to have to be an individual portion like a bone in short, red? So yeah, there's just like, there's so many questions. It's like, and goal process, I guess, really, the best thing is to figure out to that person, like, what thing Do they know how to do, and what thing they do are they are they going to like, if they're an intuitive Cook, and they're cool with like, improving on a recipe where you could I could give them some pointers about this is just going to take 30 minutes longer, or you're going to do this to it, you know, that then I can like substitute a little bit more freely. If they seem like they're really going to need to lean on that recipe, then I'm going to really need to think about somebody that's going to behave the same. And steaks are like a little like, I think the larger format stuff is a little easier to sub around. The stakes are a little bit more nuanced. And you only have a couple minutes of cooking time. So you really got to get get it right.

Right. So going back to something you just mentioned, the truck the truck rose Chuck is so freakin complicated that I could never wrap my head around the truck route, especially because I tend to do a lot of tests on like low temperature cvwd work. And like, all the muscles in that son of a gun are so different from each other that when you're actually trying to focus, it's just, it's just too complicated for me. And that's why I guess I never I never, almost never use it just because I'm like, oh, like I'll use it cubed up as stew meat or I'll do it in like standard braces, but like actually using those muscles to me is because I can't remember like I can't remember like what it. So what percentage of your things like Chuck, do you leave as that big complicated mess? And what percentage do you break down into like individual things that you know, that are that I can learn the individual properties of?