Ben Greenfield Finally Discovers The Healthiest, Tastiest Beef & Steaks (& Learns How To Cook Them Perfectly) with Dr. Phil Bass.

Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of The Boundless Life Podcast. Let's start here. Let's start with this box. Like I mentioned, if you get a half cow or whole cow from Monzo, you get to like get your own custom box. All right, do you know what's in here, by the way? No. Okay, so Phil's just like, I mean, I can probably identify. On the spot. All right, here we go. This is like Christmas for carnivores. Yeah. Okay, so let's open this one up. Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield.

I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond.

So, one of the, I would say, the more popular podcasts, at least amongst the foodies that listen to this show over the past few months, was when I interviewed this guy named Justin Owens. And, he's got this Piedmontese cattle operation. We talked all about the fascinating history of this cattle and the weird aspects of the meat, like the high collagen content and the tenderness. And I actually had the opportunity after interviewing him to try some of the steaks that he sent my way. And long story short, even though I want to hear your take on this whole Piedmontese cow thing, is that me and my family got a whole cow.

Okay.

And, and that's, you know, we have this box sitting in front of us like Justin and I talked about when I interviewed him. You get this like this custom box we had actually designed like the outside of our house with this cool like charred black exterior. And even though there's not an entire cow in our kitchen right now. Right. So that's another thing Justin and I talked about. I was like, if you get the cow, store some of it.

Yeah.

Ship as you go, which is great. So I don't have to buy an extra freezer. Yeah. But we got to talking after I decided to get this cow, and he's like, dude, we have all sorts of crazy cuts that nobody's ever heard of. And there's this guy named Phil Bass who is in the animal sciences department at University of Idaho, who, correct me if I'm wrong, because you are Phil, by the way, guys.

I am Phil.

I am Phil. Got sent over to Italy to train in these weird Italian butchery techniques. We thought, heck, let's do like a follow-up podcast and learn about— for people who want to know about different cuts of meat they might not have heard of before, maybe get some cooking tips and tactics to be able to do so. So if you're watching, listening to this episode, first of all, that first one that I did with Justin is at bengreenfieldlife.com/beefpodcast. BenGreenfieldLife.com/beefpodcast.. And then all the show notes for this show that we're about to dive into, that's at bengreenfieldlife.com/eatmeat. It's bengreenfieldlife.com/eatmeat. Yeah, we're, we're, uh, love it. We're not, we're not getting any new plant-based listeners with this episode series. And then, um, as far as like these, these actual cows go, like if you're listening and you want to try some of this meat for yourself, you get half cow, you can get whole cow. Um, if you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/monzo, M-A-N-Z-O. In the show notes for this show, I'll put some fat discount codes for you. And then you can also opt to just like order a few steaks and try it from that same website if you want to. But anyway, so Phil, I know you're from Northern Cal. I know you're working in animal sciences department at University of Idaho now, but what got you interested in this whole scene of cows and cattle?

Yeah, well, I mean, how much time you got? So I mean, I grew up around cattle.

Well, I don't have a lot of time, by the way, because we're surrounded by meat and I'm just getting impatient. I hear you.

Uh, no, it's, it's a passion of mine. Met Justin at a Washington Cattlemen's Convention, little small little operation. Um, but I was doing a cutting demonstration and he found some of the things that I was doing interesting. So we visited a little bit. He told me about his Piedmontese. I knew very little about this breed.

I'd heard about it.

Yeah. All right. And I showcase a little about their unique characteristics in my class, but never really experienced them. So, um, so we parted, we parted paths that day. And sheepishly, he calls me up one day in January. I remember this and said, I don't know if you'd be interested, but maybe would it be possible to go to Italy and hang out with some butchers?

Everybody asks, and I'm like, he just says no, no, I need to digest.

Right?

Yeah.

So it's kind of like a dream come true, honestly. I tell people that all the time. My dream is just travel the world and hang out with other Butchers because there's always something to learn. Um, so I did. I, we went over, um, with the other, a few other breeders with Piedmontese cattle, um, and, uh, uh, got some tours of a number of different farms for one week. And then the second week I hung out with Butchers, which was, it was fascinating. It was amazing.

So, I mean, I've been to Italy and I've eaten those Florentine steaks, which are just like this massive, I don't know, they're usually Chianina.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's the breed? It's like Chianina. We stayed at a farm, giant white cow. Yeah, they were big, kind of like these, these Piedmontese cattle. And, um, the, the meat was incredible, but I didn't know there was like a certain style of butchering that they do in Italy. So why would you go all the way to Italy? Uh, well, that's special about that.

Honestly, that's what we were trying to figure out is how much different is it and how can we take what they're doing and bring it back to the States to make sure that we're treating the meat the best it can be, um, in its kind of unique way. And so, um, the Piedmontese cattle are double muscled. You went into that with Justin, so folks can go and look at that episode. But they are a unique animal. And the first time I got to cut one, I was absolutely astonished and amazed. There's almost no fat on the outside of the carcass. You can see every single bulging muscle on the carcass. It's a beautiful thing to look at. And then putting a knife to it, it was very unique. And so So conventional meat cutting here in the United States historically has been take it to a saw and just start cutting across. Okay.

Chunks.

Yeah. Okay. European butchery is very much seam butchery. And so you're following the individual muscle seams. And so we've been adopting that in the States to an extent. But that was the opportunity that I got to learn from.

So when you say following individual muscle seams, I don't talk about this much on the podcast. This is gross. I'm sorry, but I used to dissect human cadavers at University of Idaho. So again, We get these cadavers shipped in usually from University of Washington, and my job was to go in via the fascial line, separate all the muscles, put little almost like zip tie tags on them for the students to come in and learn what the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, sternocleidomastoid, all these fringe Latin names. So it sounds to me like what you're saying is that what you learned was kind of like a finesse style of separating the fascia and separating out each individual muscle.

Individual muscles, yeah. And cool thing about these Piedmontese cattle is the muscles are so big, and so you can make a specific item just from that individual muscle. And so we're starting to do that with conventional cattle in the United States, but it's not quite as adopted as definitely what's happening in Europe right now.

Creating a specific item from an individual muscle? Yeah. What do you mean by that?

Okay, so there's one specific chunk that— so out of the, what would be the equivalent of our forearm, but the foreshank on the beef animal, they're pulling some of those individual muscles out of there. And honestly, I don't even know all of those muscles. There's quite a few, but they'll pull those individual pieces out. In many cases, we'll skin that, but not always, because sometimes you want that collagen on there. You get that gelatinization as you slow cook those, right? Yeah. But it's called muscolo. And so it's literally just muscle that they call it. I mean, the Italians just call it what it is in many cases. So, but the muscolo, you'll individually piece those pieces out. Whereas in the United States, oftentimes we would make a crosscut. So you'd hear, okay, have crosscuts. Shanks. If you've ever heard of osso buco, literally a bone with a hole in it. But that's across the grain. You get a lot more, uh, you got to get a lot more other muscles in there. Now it's an individual muscle, and so you're going to have a very consistent bite all the way through. You're going to have, um, it's, it's great. It's a great eating experience, and it's a slow-cooked. Yes.

Well, yeah, so I got my average cow that is butchered using our standard sloppy-ass chainsaw American techniques. And then we got our Italian butchering techniques. How much time are we talking as far as the difference in time to butcher a cow using this method that you learned versus standard American method?

Surprisingly, it's not that much more time. If we do crosscut with a bandsaw in the more traditional American style, Yeah, it's quick to go across the bandsaw, but then you have to sit and scrape the little bit of what we call bone dust off there.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so if you don't take that off, you have color issues and things like that. I won't get into the dirty science of calcium. No. Well, you're going to still get plenty there. There's still plenty of mineral in there. But no, you scrape that off for color and appearance. So yeah, you make the piece quickly on the bandsaw, but then there's other preparation that goes into it. And anytime you have that bone in that item too, usually there's additional packaging requirements to make sure that you don't puncture through the bags and things like that. Whereas this muscolo, I mean, it's just soft muscle tissue.

Yeah.

Very easy to pack and very easy to present. And then I remember distinctly hanging out with this one set of butchers, and I can't remember the tiny little town that we were in, but they had me seaming out that, that foreshank area. And then you just had the little nonnas coming in off the street. She comes in, she gets her tiny little bit of muscolo. She's going to take it home. She's going to bolito that, so boil it, and have it with her cat or whatever, grandchildren or whoever's coming over that day. And, it's just kind of an everyday occurrence that they have that nice little package of meat right off the animal.

I mean, it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. So, one of the things that came up when I was interviewing Justin I just found fascinating was I think he said that the actual fiber, the muscle fiber, something like 1/16th of diameter, of what you'd find in, in like a non-Piedmontese.

Yes. Yeah, much smaller.

Yeah. What's that feel like? Can you feel that?

Like, is it more tender, like the feel of the muscle?

Um, yeah, I, I think you can detect some of the texture that's there, um, especially when you get into, say, your middle meats, your ribeyes, your strip loins, tenderloins, that kind of stuff. Um, uh, when you get into— in— I mean, yeah, it's a much smaller fiber diameter. What that does is it makes it just easier to bite through. So in your steaks that you're grilling You don't have to cook them very much. And in fact, we don't recommend cooking them very much because there's not a whole lot of fat in there. You don't want to, you don't want to dehydrate it, but they're super tender as a result.

I didn't believe Justin when he told me to pull. I think he told me to pull it like 95 or something like that for a steak and let it run. Normally I'd pull it like, like in the 130s and sure, minimum for like a medium rare.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so the first 2 times I cooked with these steaks that he sent me, I went over. It wasn't bad, but it's kind of like having a medium. Yeah. I think my—

I did the same thing, man.

Two weeks ago, she pulled out a few and the boys and I were gone. I forget where, but we came home and of course it was wonderful because the house smelled great. She had these steaks ready and she's like, I pulled them at 95. I'm like, all right, let's see what this is like. And dude, it's shocking. It's just like, I think a lot of people think, all right, she get like food poisoning or something like that, pulling with that temperature. But you don't have to worry about anything.

Not, not with whole muscle items, honestly. And if you're doing everything right, you should not be that concerned about, about pathogens. Yeah, especially in— it's inspected meat, it's coming from a, a legit plant. I go there regularly, the guys do a great job.

Is it true that— and I think this might have been something else that Justin told me— that because of the texture of the muscle, that you could take like a cut that would traditionally be kind of more tough, maybe more like a stew meat, and it still has the tenderness of what, say, like a filet mignon?

You know, that's what I'm still learning about, and that's what I want to That's what's blown me away with this animal and how little I've known about them in the past. I want to experience that even more. And so the way that the Italians would prepare this in the little butcher shops in towns is that very often it was eaten raw. I ate a ton of raw beef when I was in Italy because that's just how they like tartare or carpaccio. Tartare, carpaccio.

Yeah.

The tartare would be out there just waiting for you when you sit down in this region of the country because it was such popular item. And oh yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, I mean, I'll just, I'll just eat it on with a spoon if you give it to me.

So shut up, it's not dinner time. Sorry, I've had dinner.

And then, yeah, and then, and then, um, yeah, a lot of the round cuts, which are all the time been going to be considered a, a less tender piece of meat, um, we're super tender, um, eating in that raw state.

So interesting. And then the other thing, and by the way, for those of you who are watching, I highly recommend you watch the video for this episode. Again, the show notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com/podcast. Ben-greenfield.com/eatme. And in the video, we're going to be showing some of the cuts that actually I haven't even really dug through these boxes. I don't know what's in this. It's going to be like, yeah, I don't either. Saying earlier, it's like the Mary Poppins mystery box. See what comes out. But one of the things that Justin mentioned when I talked with him was, and for some reason this just stuck with me and I got to ask you about it, he said there's like some cut called something like Thor's hammer.

Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. What is that one?

Well, that's another different way of eating the shank. And so you can make it out of the hind shank, which would be kind of more the calf area or the fore shank. And that's where you do what's called Frenching. So if you're familiar with culinary term, the Frenching is where you clean off a section of bone. And so you'll have the entirety of—

I was just putting like tea sticks and butter and everything.

That too. It's not a bad idea, but in the butcher term, so Frenching is where you clean off a piece of bone. So you get the appearance and it presents amazingly well. And so it's, again, you get a lot of those additional different muscles, but then it stands up so tall on the plate.

Wow. And that's just like a big old whole piece of shank, almost like you get like a lamb shank. Yes. Yes. Except it's a cow.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, hope you're hungry. Wow, incredible. Okay, awesome. All right, so, um, we've had these things sitting here staring us in the face for a while. I got a big cooler, you probably can't see this in the video, but we got a big Yeti behind us with some extras. But let's start here, let's start with this box. Like I mentioned, if you get a half cow or whole cow from Monzo, you get to like get your own custom box, and these are pretty cool. I mean, if you heard my interview with Justin, they're shipping these things out to like celebrities and pro athletes, and like it's It's a very, very, um, kind of like prized beef to get your hands on. So goes together like that. That's the lock for the box. All right, do you know what's in here, by the way? No. Okay, so Phil's, Phil's just like, I mean, I could probably identify. All right, here we go. So that's awesome. So I mean, look at what they did here, you guys. I mean, talk about like a, a gift for somebody or for yourself. They even got like me, uh, very self-conscious. I feel narcissistic now opening this box. It's got my logo on there. It's got like me running through a field. And then we've got these bags like this. You know, there's anything special about these bags? These are just old cool bags. Uh, yeah. Okay. So let's see what we got in here. And I'm just going to start putting you on the spot. Sure. Uh, Phil, now when these are shipped, obviously you get them shipped frozen to your house. And I am assuming And I don't know if you know the answer to this question, Phil. I think I had talked with Justin about this, but I think you can like somehow dialogue with Monzo and tell them, hey, I want this, this, and this shit. Let's say you're throwing a dinner party or whatever, and they'll just like send whatever cuts that you want.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. If you get, if you get a whole half or, or a whole animal.

Yeah. Okay.

What you need.

Cool. All right, so first thing coming out of the bed, this is, uh, ground beef. What's trita mean? You know, trita and scamone. Trita and scamone and mozzarella di pancetta. All right, tell me about these. We got a, uh, this one's bavette, yeah, uh, baseball top sirloin, and two different ground beef that says trita on it. Tell me about these.

So, so, so trita is just ground, ground beef in Italian, and, and we made sure that we did put marry up all of the Italian names with the American equivalents.

Yeah, it is kind of cool. I mean, if anything, it just makes you sound sophisticated.

Well, very much so. So, yes, scamone, that's top sirloin. And again, they would take that many places. Say you go to a lot of grocery stores, they still cut whole brontosaurus-size top sirloins. This is an individual portioned item, and we take it down to the individual muscle. And even within the individual muscle, you have certain seams of connective tissue. Well, we don't want you to hit some of that. We want you to be able to experience nothing but pure joy with this. And so we work with the butchers to make sure they're cleaning that thing really, really well.

Yeah.

Okay. So top sirloin, baseball.

Butter.

Oh yeah.

What's baseball mean?

Baseball top sirloin, just literally the size. Okay. It ends up with. Yeah. If I had a whole top sirloin, I could walk the whole thing through you.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Baseball. Awesome. Well, there might be Um, so bavette, mola di pancia. What's this one?

Mola di pancia. Mola di pancia means bounce of the belly.

Okay.

Um, and it literally is— it's the, it's the, um, uh, oblique, uh, obliquus abdominis internus muscle.

So one of your oblique muscles.

Yeah.

Um, the ones that we do Russian twists and cable torso pulls, you tend to develop.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, I'm sure I use mine at times.

The exercise guy.

Okay, so, um So the bavette, a beautiful piece of meat, honestly. So bavette is French, and bavette means bib in French. I learned about this cut actually when I was traveling around in Canada in the province of Quebec. That's their go-to. Well, it turns out we can also make it in the Italian style here as well. And so the thing about the bavette is look carefully at the grain. And so you'll go ahead and grill this thing to your required degree of doneness, but then also make sure you cut against the grain. Okay.

Yeah.

Otherwise, you know, it's very, very tender, these animals. Okay. But let's give it the absolute benefit of the doubt and slice it against the grain.

That's pretty much the rule with all cuts. Yes. That against the grain.

Yes.

Yeah. For the most part. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. By the way, I just got to ask you as we're going through this, are you like, if you get your hands on a steak, what's your favorite way? Are you like a reverse sear guy? You like a smoker?

Oh no, I'm not too fancy.

Just go. Just fire on the grill. Made in fire. Yeah. All right, fair enough.

Made in fire salt.

Fair enough. I feel like sometimes I gotta be super fancy. Okay, and then ground beef, you're just using this for like burgers? Okay. Or is there something special about that?

Absolutely. But if you want to truly experience this like the Italians, okay, try this as tartare. As tartare. Yeah. And a little bit of sea salt, like a coarser sea salt, Maldon salt. I love Maldon salt over the top and just drizzle some, uh, olive oil and—

Okay, so if I step in the freezer— Yeah, yeah, let's just see. My wife's out of town right now at a tennis tournament, but I'm pretty sure that this in the freezer— You said tartare, right? Yeah. So theoretically, I'm just saying that, uh, if We take one of my wife's hobbies, which is making big old cannonball-style loaves of sourdough bread. Yeah. You're saying thin slice that little baby, like, uh, what do you call it, the, like, a crudette style or crostini?

Crostini, yep.

Throw some of that on there. Yep, yep. And then a raw chicken eggs in the middle, uh, if you're into that.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, I, my preference So I would take this, about half of that, and kind of almost mold it into just a little bit of a hockey puck kind of size. Go ahead and salt it, a little bit of your olive oil over there, and just a little scoop with thin slices.

Incredible.

Yeah, incredible. Okay, can I tell you about how excited I am of this? Oh, tell me.

Okay, so I think I'm as excited.

So I'll tell you, like, first time I tried this particular one, and I ate a lot of tartare, steak tartare, in Italy, in the Piedmont. And I'm not saying this because we're on camera. I tell everybody this. This beef was different. Yes. And I strongly believe it has a lot to do with what Justin's— Justin, the rations that they're feeding them. And so they're getting into some regional grains that are up here in the Northwest. Peas and the lentils. And you can taste it in there.

Wine.

Oh yeah, grape pumice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's there and it's, it's super tasty.

Wow. So it's like wine, you know, the terroir effect.

The terroir, right? Yeah, it's almost like— well, and that's not, that's not terribly surprising. It's just that I haven't had a chance to experience beef that's been raised like that. This is different. And, um, I, I probably wouldn't say it if we had some of the native Italians in the room, but this was better than what I had in Italy.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay, this is like Christmas for carnivores. So yeah. Oh, okay. So let's open this one up. And again, like, Phil and I didn't talk beforehand, so I'm literally just putting them on the spot. We didn't even know how to open the box. I didn't even— yeah, we obviously didn't even know how to open the box. Okay, so this one— now let me have to write a new cookbook. I'll just hire you. Um, okay, so next we got a beef boneless shank meat, a beef oyster steak, and a T-bone bistec. Oh, this is the one I was talking about, Florentine steak. Yep.

Size of that thing, big old honker.

Geez, what is that, like a 24-ouncer? Probably more.

Yeah, probably more than that.

Yeah. All right, all right, so what do we got here? Okay, all right, I'm gonna clean as we go just so you don't have too much of it. Of the meat mess on the counter as we go. Okay.

So, so I'll start with the oyster steak. So we haven't, we haven't gotten the, the Italian name on here, but this would be the aragna. So the aragna is, is, is spider.

Okay.

So that is something that's starting to pop up in certain culinary areas in North America. It's well known in Europe. So, so great. Going right on the grill. It's kind of like a skirt steak. And this comes right out of— so this is the, the obturator muscle. So right on the inside of that hip, and we scoop it out.

And that's one that I hate when my massage— right, the spines, they can get to it.

Yeah, right. So, um, so actually, I, you know, the first time I experienced one of these, I thought, that's good, that thing's going to be like shoe leather.

But, um, especially with this, it's, it's amazing because that thing's basically contracting every single time an animal takes a step. Yeah, yeah.

But it, but it's not that tough, really. Yeah, it's amazing. So this would be one I'd probably still recommend going into kind of like a fajita kind of thing or a pita or something if you're going more the tacos. Yeah, tacos for sure. Great piece of meat. Okay, beef boneless shank meat. Again, we don't have the new Italian name on here, but this is the muscolo.

What'd you say? Muscolo? Muscolo. Muscolo. Like muscle, but— Yeah.

Okay. So this is right out of the shank. You can see we cleaned a lot of the connective tissue off the outside. We can leave that on if you want more of that gelatinized collagen as well.

Okay.

There's collagen all throughout from a science perspective, but you can get even more if we leave that on there. And it really is a beautiful mouthfeel. Some people want it, some people don't. We're starting out with just the really cleaned version, but yeah, I know if folks are asking for more of that gelatinized collagen, yeah, we can leave that on there.

Okay. Okay, so that's what the, like, what the muscolo looks like. Was talking about how you're just like taking as a whole item, right? Just like cutting with the saw. Right, right, right. Through the shank. Yep. Okay, cool. Yeah. So we got the oyster, the oyster steak.

Yep.

The shank. And then this big boy. I mean, everybody knows what a T-bone is.

Yeah.

Anything special about these T-bones?

Yeah. Turn this thing over. Okay. So T-bone, T-bone has two main cuts on there that, that maybe not everybody understands. So this is lumbar vertebrae right here.

Yep.

Lumbar vertebrae, transverse process. This would be pointing up dorsally, ventrally.

Yep. So if you were like looking at my back, this would basically be just like—

yeah, just like that.

Yep. Yep. Okay.

So this is the longissimus dorsi muscle. So that's your classic ribeye, strip loin kind of thing. Okay. Runs long and dorsally. That's the tenderloin.

Oh wow.

Look at the size of that thing.

That's massive.

First time I saw this, I just, I didn't, I didn't know what to say. And usually I'm not that lost for words.

Yeah.

Yeah, you get a lot of tenderloin off of one of these.

That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the T-bone kind of is almost like two different steaks in one.

It is, it is two different steaks in one, but in, you know, in the classic Fiorentina style, I mean, you can serve it almost like that.

Yeah, incredible. Sorry, another random question for you. You're eating out at a restaurant, or I suppose at home, are you the guy that gets the bone? Like, you— Oh, definitely.

Oh, I have to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm very— arm wrestles at the steakhouse. Yeah, like if there's a tomahawk out there. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, definitely rib bones. I will take one for the team and eat none of the meat. As long as I can get just the tomahawk bone, I'm good. Yeah, yeah, there's something special about that on there right there.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, cool, cooler time, you guys. We got more, don't go away. Don't go yet, there's more. Um, so we got a cooler here and I'm just gonna start pulling stuff out. Look at this, scaramella, short ribs, short ribs. What do you like about these?

All right, so a couple things I liked about the short ribs, Normally you're going to go ahead and braise these. Definitely, definitely going to have a lot more connective tissue that you need to break that down.

Okay.

Yeah. The presentation is amazing. The bone itself, like this, this is a, this is a brontosaurus style. Like we can actually, we can cut them much smaller depending on what your options are.

This would be one that you have one of those big Dutch ovens. Yes. Oh yeah. You would basically maybe brown that with a little bit of flour and then add your, your aromatics and everything. So bay leaves, carrots, onions, and just do like long braised.

Absolutely. Or, or you do some kind of seasoning overnight and go to a smoker with this too.

Oh, incredible.

Yeah, so very versatile.

And that Traeger is going to get some work.

Yes, absolutely. Cool. Yeah, so lots of great meat in that thing. Um, I—

yeah, I love short ribs.

Amazing. Wow, those are big short— I mean, yeah, those are massive. They're not very short. Short ribs.

Yeah, they have been short.

Those short ribs are playing in the NBA. Um, all right, top round.

Yeah.

Top round, fesa Milanese.

Fesa. So, so fesa is the cut. So this is, this is predominantly semimembranosus and adductor muscles. Okay.

So basically hamstring, a little bit of the inner thigh.

Inner thigh, inner thigh. Yep. And then the recommendation, this was the recommendation, cut it to Milanese. So Milanese. So where we are, where we were in the, in the Piedmont, you know, yes, you have the history of the kings of the Savoys living up in that area. But there's still a lot of just blue-collar peasant-type food. And when you go and sit down at a lot of the little cafes and restaurants, Milanese is very, very popular. And really, it's like chicken fried steak, but just a fancy chicken fried steak.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you're going to slice some nice thin pieces. You can pound it, you don't have to because this is super tender. Yep. Um, and then bread it and fry it.

Incredible. Yeah.

Okay, nice breadcrumbs.

And yeah, actually shout out to, uh, there's an Italian restaurant off— yeah, have you been to Sorella up in Spokane?

No, no.

So I've got— they're pretty good. They aren't super new, they're probably there for 2 years now. It's kind of hard to get it. Yeah, you like call 4 weeks ahead to get— okay, anybody's watching, go to Spokane, call ahead, yeah, get into Sorella. And they do a, uh, I think it's, it's a Milanese style.

Okay.

Um, uh, you know what, I think up there it might be veal, but yeah, very common to have veal as well.

But where we were in the Piedmont, they—

so, so this one I'd go against the grain.

Yes.

And then I could pound it and then just do it the same way I do almost like a, uh, um, like a, uh, what do you call it, not a Parmesan.

Yeah, yeah, kind of like, like, yeah, yeah, like a veal Parmesan, chicken Parmesan kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool.

So Other thing I have to tell you about this though too is that in the Italian butcher shops, this was a main go-to as well because— Do that again, just like near the key.

Okay.

And I can still flip it?

Yes. Okay.

All right. I got to tell you one other cool thing about this is that in the Italian butcher shops, this was a main go-to for a lot of the customers. Okay. Because beyond the Milanese style, so that's cutting it to maybe a quarter, half inch thick. This is where you'd go carpaccio right here. Oh, and man, super. This will change your life.

Super.

This meat especially right here will change your life.

Really? So against the grain, better than it in carpaccio style. Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah. Slice it thin against the grain.

Go nice. Well, you know, I forget if I fully filled my wife in about what we were— she's off playing tennis. Okay. But basically, I'm going to totally wow her. She's going to come back. How'd you even know what to do with this one? I'm going to not even say you were here. No, that's fine. Babe, I've been studying the Italians.

Yeah.

Oh man, you're making a happily married man. So eye of round. Eye of round. Girello. Girello.

Girello.

Yeah. Okay.

So which means walker.

Okay.

So that is the semitendinosus muscle. And also, so you can go Milanese. That's, that's, yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Wow.

Dude, that's actually been trimmed down because we've really cleaned those things. So, so the carcasses, hang at this packer for a couple of weeks. And what that's doing, it's adding tenderness, but it's also, um, adding some additional flavor.

Is that the same as dry aging?

It is dry aging. Okay. Yeah, but we're dry aging on the carcass level. So this is a whole nother— this is something that cannot be done at large-scale packers. We have to target with these guys. So anyway, um, with the dry aging, we do like to take that dried crust off, so you're just not having to deal with that. That's why I say that's not even the full thing. Like, yeah, we were cutting down into it to make to make it a little cleaner. But amazing for carpaccio because it's like this perfect round. So like with the fesa, the top round, this is— every cut's going to be a little bit different in shape. No big deal if you're just walking down the street, you want to grab a few pieces, you're going to come and have it up. This is the one that if you're really trying to wow on a plate, they're going to be nice, perfect round pieces. Yeah. And just again, life-changing.

Okay. So good. Now, when you say nice, perfect round pieces, you mean done as a steak, or are you talking about carpaccio? Carpaccio. This as well? Okay.

Interesting.

So by the way, with the dry aging, you talked about like the crust. It's my understanding that that's almost like— is it like a bacteria that enzymatically breaks down some of the meat? Is that what's happening?

Amazing you ask that, because we've done research at the University of Idaho on this. We've looked at the microbiome that's growing on the outside.. And sure, there's bacterial DNA, but they're probably all mostly gone because it's dry on the surface. But there are molds, really beneficial molds. And I mean, I won't get into all the specifics of them, but they absolutely are enhancing the meat. They're digging in. It's a mutualistic living condition that they're in, and they're imparting their own unique flavors, just like the terracotta.

Like, almost like the kombucha of the kingdom. Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Okay, cool. Oh my gosh, I gotta make sure my knives are sharp.

Okay, okay. So, oh, there it is.

To the devil.

Yeah, speak of the devil.

Look at the size of that tomahawk, you guys. All right, so we got a tomahawk here. Tell me about this.

Okay, tomahawk. Yeah, this is— it's— I mean, it's a ribeye steak with a bone, but it's got a very long, uh, piece of—

shock of the number of people who just like have eaten at steakhouses their entire life and just don't even know, like, like that this is the rib—

that's the rib bone.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean think about the size of these critters. That's, that's the back, that's the top of the back, that's where you'd be riding it unless you're riding it wrong.

I have videos on the show notes, by the way, for this show I did with Justin. I'll put them in this show too where you guys can actually see these things on the farm about an hour from here walking around.

They're massive. Yeah, yeah, beautiful animals, by the way. But yeah, so, um, again, beautiful presentation. There's not much on there because we French the bone, we cleaned it really, really well. Um, but if you're, if you're trying to wow some folks, that's the way Wow. Incredible.

Yeah. Yeah. This one, this is the type of cut that I would actually do a little bit of a smoke on. Sure. Yeah. And then finish it. Yeah. The grill. I kind of like the— not only the flavor and, you know, I don't even know because I haven't smoked a Piedmontese beef before with a normal cut of beef. I usually get a lot more tenderness when I smoke. I don't know if this is just so tender anyway.

It's going to be pretty tender. So something I would recommend about this is that Doing an initial cold smoke on this, absolutely, I would recommend it. Smoke needs the lean to penetrate. It doesn't penetrate through fat, doesn't penetrate through bone. It travels through the lean. So if you put a— do a cold smoke on this, so you're, you know, set your Traeger to the lowest temperature it'll do, maybe 150 for maybe an hour or two, and that's gonna help to penetrate into the meat and then go ahead and sear that thing off. On, on a grill or a hot pit?

Yeah, the Traeger. I think it'll start off on a Super Smoke at 160. I think it's 160, 165. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Oh my gosh. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Just remember, somebody's got an arm wrestling you for that. All right. This, this is the never-ending, never-ending—

Oh man. Oh, okay.

This is one of my favorites. I want to hear your take on beef marrow because I've got some thoughts about beef marrow. But let's hear what you have to say about beef marrow bone.

Yeah, this is, this is beef butter right here, guys.

So, um, butter of God.

I have only eaten— up until a year and a half ago when I, when I did a cutting demo, um, with, with Monzo and, and a few chefs, um, I had only eaten bone marrow roasted, right? I don't know if, if folks, um, would be interested in this, but try this raw.

No way.

Imagine the best salted butter you've ever eaten.

Seriously? Yes. I never thought about doing it.

I never thought about it either.

You obviously probably have to like dig in there. Like, isn't the texture pretty—

it's amazing. Pretty hard, really.

Yeah, it's amazing.

So there's, there's definitely a lot of fat, you know, the good fats.

Yeah, I mean, you could probably even kind of like shave it almost like a Parmesan cheese as well.

Almost, almost. And then the cool thing about, about— so, so first off, we're not cutting marrow bones like you normally would see where they're, they're little bottles, right, or little pipes. Yeah, these, we're, we're doing it, uh, we're doing it definitely a little different. We're, we're cutting them long ways. We call this canoe style.

Yep.

Um, that way you can really get access to that marrow inside. Um, and I mean, you can just take a spoon and go from there. But then the other cool thing about the Piedmontese cattle, they have a very fine bone. So if this was traditional beef, um, say like an Angus or Hereford, which by the way, I love those animals, but they're just different. Is you would not get this much marrow.

Yeah, it would be a lot more on the outside. It'd be hard to see on the camera, but you could tell like the thickness of the bone versus the amount, because that's the worst thing is like you're at a restaurant, you order the marrow and you get like that little baby spoon.

Yeah, you get half a teaspoon and that's it.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, you ever do a bone marrow shoe?

Not that I know of.

Okay, so, um, I mean, well, just for even though we aren't going to do it, just for the demonstration purposes, Oh, this is great. This, this, uh, I haven't talked about this stuff much before, but this is actually liqueur made from the mastic tree.

Okay.

So it's got, it's got like this, it's a really interesting flavor from Greece. Some people say mezcal tequila is the healthiest alcohol because it's got a lot of agaven fibers in it, which are like an insoluble fiber that's great for the guts. Yeah. You gotta choose like one hard alcohol and you want the healthiest, I'd say mezcal. But this stuff, this is, uh, made from the mastic gum. But basically what you do, is you pour a shot, right? And then once you down the marrow, you get all kind of that umami flavor of the marrow. You literally pour your alcohol as a chute down the chute of the bone marrow. It's pretty incredible. We'll leave that out.

That's a great idea.

All right. So, bone marrow and you guys, even just as a substitute for butter, back to the sourdough bread thing, well, bone marrow, a little bit of raw honey and sea salt, I mean, That's a meal. It's good. Okay, so next up— oh, I'm gonna save this. There's, there's a real special one in the bottom of there. We're gonna save that one. So these two, we've got a flat iron steak and a dino rib.

Dino rib.

Dino. I don't know if I've done a dino rib before.

Tell me about these. Okay, so, so, um, the flat iron steak, um, it, it actually became a pretty popular cut in the United States about 10, 15 years ago, and very tender. This is something that it's like we rediscovered here in the United States. They've been doing this in Italy and in France and Spain for forever. Okay. But yeah, it's called the cappella di prete, which means the hat of the priest. If you look at the whole muscle, which is the infraspinatus muscle right here, it kind of looks like an old-fashioned bishop's mitre. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but yeah, anyway, super tender. Go straight to the grill with something something like that. Okay. Yeah. All right, cool. Yeah. Um, and then the beef dino rib, um, this is again just a short rib, um, individual, but okay. Yeah, so much, much more easier to work with.

Yeah, not entirely sure. Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, it's a bigger than normal short rib, everybody.

Yeah, maybe that's why. Okay, so we got our dino rib, and this is just basically like, if you don't, if you don't want to like go through the hassle of doing an entire short rib, you can just do like one of these. Sure thing. You know, if you're home by yourself and you have a family to feed. Okay, before I dig into this last one, this funny story, I forget which one of my cookbooks it's in, but I did this experiment where I, you know, I'm a huge fan of, you know, going to Texas, getting some good barbecue, maybe some brisket, which is what Texas is famous for. But doing a brisket well is laborious. Like, if you really want to do it well, technically you're staying up all night, you're spritzing every few hours. I mean, it's, it's, it's a haul. And it's well worth the payoff. But me being the lazy person that I am, I had this brilliant idea a couple years ago. At least I thought it was brilliant. I thought, what if I, what if I make for myself like one of those giant FoodSaver bags and I bag an entire brisket and I sous vide it? So I did a 60-hour sous vide brisket. And you know, the sign of a good brisket is if you take it out and it's kind of like jiggling. Yeah. And this was the most consistent tender brisket And then I got lectured. I think I put it on my Instagram or something. I got lectured by a bunch of true barbecue enthusiasts who said I was missing out, back to the terroir thing, on like the flavor that develops as you're kind of like barbecuing it overnight. But long story short is I'm a fan of brisket. I've tried some weird ways to cook it, and when I sous vide it, I did finish it on the grill to get a little bit of caramelization on the outside, and it turned out pretty well. So if you have a giant pot and a sous vide setup and you ever want to try doing a sous vide brisket, it's an experiment at least. Yeah, but this is the Monzo brisket, and that's just half of it. I get my workout. All right, tell them about brisket, Phil. What do you like to do with it? What's special about this?

Um, so I, I'll be quite honest with you, I haven't really spent much time with the Monzo brisket. Um, in Italy they don't smoke it. Um, this would be more cut up into smaller pieces and then they make bollito. So again, that boiled meat, the very common. It's very much, you know, classic peasant food. But, you know, you mix in the right kind of accoutrements in there, and that's going to be really something special. Brisket, you know, if you want to barbecue this like a classic Texas-style brisket, just be careful with it just because it doesn't have that fat layer on it. Yeah, it's very, very—

so what you're saying, honestly, it's probably going to cook faster than normal brisket. Yes.

Yes.

You might be able to do this as a daytime job.

Could be. Yeah. And honestly, I think I would really recommend you try the sous vide version. Really? Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing before you even said it because you're going to maintain all that great juiciness that's in there. Yeah. And you can get that long cook without dehydration.

Yeah, I'll have to dig back into my cook, but I think I use 145°F as the temp for this. I'd probably even go lower than that based on what we've already learned about brisket. But yeah, that's a good idea.

And there's no reason why you can't still smoke it big enough for that. Yeah. You can still smoke it after it's been sous vide, right?

Right.

You'll get that great flavor on there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, incredible. And I mean, what we just went through, I mean, if you get like, uh, even just like a half cow from Monzo, obviously there's going to be a lot more than this. But, but, you know, from what I understand from Justin, like, you can basically call him up on the phone and just kind of tell them what kind of stuff you're interested in. Yes. And you guys like customize cuts.

Yeah, yeah. The butcher shop will, will customize to what it is that you want. Say you, uh, you— if you want more ground beef, we can focus on that. We're trying to minimize the amount of ground beef because you get a lot of it off of an animal. There's no question about that. Um, so we're trying to stick to whole muscle as much as possible. Um, that's what the Italian butchers would absolutely be focusing on. It's going to be better for them, um, from a merchandising standpoint, but You know, there's nothing wrong with the ground beef too.

It's spectacular. This is fantastic, you guys. No ketchup even required. No. For those of you who are Heinz 57 ketchup people, no, no, no.

No, no, not recommended.

Okay, so first of all, get this out of the way. I highly recommend that you combine what we just went through, what Phil and I just went through, with the whole backstory, just the fascinating story of how these cows came from the Middle East and wound up in Canada and eventually back down towards the Spokane area. How I found this in my own backyard and connected with Justin. That whole podcast is at bengreenfieldlife.com/beefpodcast, I think, but I'll link to it in the show notes. If you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/eatmeat, I'm gonna put a link where you can get pretty soon. I think we even have like up to like a 30-something percent discount on, on the, some of the cuts. Uh, you get the half cow option, get the whole cow option,— if you don't even know, obviously, it's an investment to get a half or a whole cow, but if you're just like, "Hey, I want to grow a few steaks and see what this stuff tastes like first," you can do that. And, if you visit the shownotes at BenGreenfieldLife.com/EatMeat, you can leave your questions, your comments, your feedback. Sometimes, if I see something in there because I read them all that I don't know the answer to, I'll forward it on to a guy like Phil or to Justin and they'll be able to pipe in and fill you in on You know, everything from, you know, what about this cut? Do you do this one? To, you know, do you have like a tofu Beyond Burger version of this? No. Okay, well, we got that one out of the way. You guys don't even need to ask. But Phil, this is just incredible. Thank you so much for coming to my house and for making me hungry. Thanks for watching, guys.

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