The Healthiest, Tastiest Beef & Steaks (& How To Cook Them Perfectly)

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. Phil's just like, I mean, I can probably identify on the fly. All right, here we go. This is like Christmas for Carnivore.

So.

Yeah. Okay, so let's open this one up.

So one of the, I would say the more popular podcast, 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 that's, you know, we have this box sitting in front of us and 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 was another thing Justin and I talked about. I was like, if you get the cow store of the ship as you go, which is great, so I don't have to buy an extra freezer. 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. Got sent over to Italy to train in these, like, weird Italian butchery techniques. And so 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 and maybe get some. 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 BenGreenfieldOfLife.com BeefPodcast BenGreen.com BeefPodcast and then all the shownotes for this show that we're about to dive into. That's@BenGreenfieldLife.com eatmeat It's BenGreenfieldLife.com eatmeat yeah, we're, we're. Love it. We're not, we're not getting any new plant based listeners with this episode series. And then as far as like 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. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Monzo M A N Z O in the show notes for the 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? This whole scene of, well, 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. No, it's, it's a passion of mine. Met Justin at a, at a Washington cattleman's convention. Little, small, little operation, but I was doing a cutting demonstration. He. 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. So we parted, we parted paths that day and, and sheepishly he calls me up one day in, 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 like hang out with some butchers?

Everybody would get asked and I'm like. He just says no, no, I need to tell you. Right.

Yeah. So it's kind of like a dream come true. Honestly, I, I tell people that all the time. Like my dream is just travel the world and hang out with other because there's always something to learn. So I did. We went over with a few other breeders with Pre Montes cattle and 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 were just like this massive. I don't know, usually Canina.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's the breed? It's like we stayed at a farm.

Giant white cow.

Yeah, they were big, kind of like these, these Piedmontese cats. And 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?

Well, 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 in its kind of unique way. And so 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, 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, on the carcass. It's, it's a beautiful thing to, to look at. And then putting a knife to it, it was, it was, 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 chunks.

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, in the States to an extent. But that, 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 you get these cadaver shipped in usually from University of Washington. And my job was to go in via the fascial line, separate all the muscles, put a little almost like zip tie tags on the stages to come in and learn what the, you know, semi tendrinosis, some nemorinosis stern.

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 like separating the fascia and, and separating out each individual muscle.

Individual muscles, yeah. And, 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, we mean that.

Okay. So there's, there's one specific chunk that so out of, 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 will skin that, but not always because sometimes you want that collagen on there, you get that gelatinization that 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 muscalo, you will individually piece those pieces out. Whereas in the United States oftentimes we would make a cross cut. So you'd hear have cross cut 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, you 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. It's great, it's a great eating experience and it's a slow cooked as well.

Yeah. So I got my average towel that is butchered using like 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, you know, versus standard American method?

Surprisingly, it's not that much more time if we do cross cut with a band saw in the, 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. Okay. And so, so if you don't take that off, you have color issues and things like that.

I won't get into the science of the Kelsey.

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 moose glow, I mean, it's. It's just soft muscle tissue.

Yeah.

Very easy to package, very easy to present. And then I remember it 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 seeming 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.

Yeah.

Have it with her cat or whoever, grandchildren or whoever's coming over that day. And it's just kind of an everyday occurrence that they have that, that. That nice little packaged of meat right off the animal. I mean, it's, 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. The actual fiable, like the muscle fiber, something like 116 the diameter of what you'd find in. In like a non ped.

Yes. Yeah. Much smaller. Yeah.

What's that? Like, can you feel that? Like, is it more tender, like the feel of the muscle?

Yeah, I think you can detect some of the texture that's there, especially when you get into, say, your middle meat, your ribeyes, your strip loins, tenderloins, that kind of stuff. 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.

Yeah.

For a steak and let it run normally. I'd pull it like. Like in the 130s.

Sure.

Minimum for like a medium rare. Yeah, yeah. And so the first two times I cooked with these sticks that he sent me, I went over. It wasn't bad. It was kind of like have 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. We came home. And of course, it was wonderful because the house smelled great. She had these states ready, and she's like, I pulled them in 95. I'm like, all right, well, let's see what this is like. And, dude, it's shocking. It was just like. I think a lot of people think, oh, it's getting, like, food poisoning or something like that, pulling at that temperature. But you don't have to worry about anything, like, 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 me. It's coming from 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 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. I want to experience that even more. And so the way that the Italians would prepare this in. In the little butcher shops in towns is that very often was eaten raw. I ate a ton of raw beef when I was in Italy because that's just.

Yeah, the, The. The. The tartar would be out there just waiting for you when you sit down in this region of the. Of the country because it was such a popular item. 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. And then.

And then, yeah, a lot of the round cuts, which are all the time going to be considered a less tender piece of meat. We're super tender 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 @Ben Greenfield, life.comeatme 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 is going to be like, you know, I Don't either. Say it earlier. It's like the Mary Poppins mystery box. What comes out.

Yeah.

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 cold. Something like that. Thor's hammer.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

What is that one?

Well, that's. That's another different way of eating the. Eating the shank. And so you can make it out of the hind shank, which would be kind of more the calf area or. Or the foreshank. And that's. That's where you. You. 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'll just put, like, two sticks of butter and everything.

That.

Not a bad idea.

But in the butcher term. So frenching is where you.

Where you.

You clean off a piece of bone.

So you get that.

You get the appearance. And. And it's. It presents amazingly well. And so it's. Again, it's. It's. You get a lot of those additional different muscles, but then it stands up, you know, so. So tall on the plate.

Wow. And that's just like. Like a big old whole piece of shank. Almost like you get like a lamb shank. Yes.

Yes.

Is a cow.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

Hope you're hungry.

Wow. Incredible. Okay. Awesome. All right, so we've had these things sitting here staring us in the face shirt. Wow. I got a big cooler. You probably can't see this in the video. 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, I'm shipping these things out to, like, celebrities and pro athletes. And, like, it's a. It's a very, very 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 bill's just like.

I mean, I can probably on the fly.

All right, here we go. So that's awesome. So, I mean, look at what they did here. You got. I mean, talk about like, a gift for somebody or for yourself. They even got, like, me 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. Okay, so let's see what we got in here. And I'm just going to start putting you on the spot. Sure, 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. 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 ground beef. What's trita mean? You know, trita and scamone.

All right, tell me about these. We got a, this one's bavette.

Baseball top sirloin and two different ground beef that says treata on it. Tell me about these.

So, so, so treata 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.

Yeah.

So yes, Camone. That's, that's top sirloin. And again, they would take that many places. Say you go to a, a, a lot of grocery stores, they still cut whole brontosaurus size stock top sirloin.

Yeah.

This is an individual portioned item and we take it down to the individual muscle and then even within the individual muscle, you, 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, we work with the butchers to make sure they're cleaning that thing really, really well.

Yeah.

Okay. So top baseball butter. Oh, yeah.

What's baseball mean on top baseball?

Top s just literally the size it ends up with. Yeah, if I had a whole top sirloin, I could walk the whole thing through you.

But yeah, okay.

Yeah, baseball.

Awesome. There might be so bavet. Mola di tanchia. What's this one?

Mola de pancha. Mola de Pancha means bounce of the belly.

Okay.

And it literally is. It's the. It's the oblique obliquis abdominis internus muscle.

So on your oblique muscles, Russian twists and cable torso poles begin to develop.

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

The exercise guy.

Okay, so. So the Bavette, a beautiful piece of meat, honestly. So bavette is. Is. 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 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 that before, 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 ven. That's pretty much the.

With all cuts. Yes. That against the grinding.

Yes. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 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 search? You like a smoker?

Oh, no, I'm not too fancy. I just go meet and fire.

Yeah, fair enough.

Meat and fire salt.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

I feel like sometimes I gotta be super fancy. Okay. I mean, ground beef, you just use this for like burger.

Okay.

Or is there something special about it?

Absolutely. But if you want to truly experience this, like the Italians.

Okay.

Try this. As tartar.

As tartar, yeah. And.

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 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 tour, I meant. But I'm pretty sure that this in the freezer.

She said tartar, right? Yeah. So p. Read it. Okay. I'm just saying that if we take one of my wife's hobbies making big old cannonball style loaves of sourdough bread. Yeah. You're saying thin slice that little baby, like, what do you call it? The. Like a credit style or. Crostini.

Crostini, yep.

Throw some of that on there.

Yep, yep.

And in fact, raw chicken eggs in.

The middle, if you're into that. Yeah.

I.

My preference. So I would take this. About half of that and kind of almost molded into just a little bit of a hockey puck kind of size.

Yep.

Go ahead and salt it. A little bit of your olive oil over there, and just a lot of scoop with thin slice.

Incredible.

Yeah, incredible. Can I. Can I tell you about how excited I am of this? Oh, okay.

So I think I'm.

So I'll tell you, like, first time I tried this particular one, and I. A lot of tartar steak tartar in. 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. Some regional grains that are up here in the northwest, and peas and the lentils. And you can taste it.

Where their wine. Oh, yeah. Great. Pumice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's. It's there, and it's. It's super tasty.

Wow. Smells like wine. You know, the terroir effects.

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 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 carnivore, 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 something.

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.

Okay, so next we got a beef boneless shank meat, a beef oyster steak, and a T bone.

Oh, this is the one I was talking about. Quarantine steak.

Yep.

Size of that thing.

Big old hunker.

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

Yeah, probably more than that.

Yeah, it's hot. All right, so what do we got here?

Okay.

All right, I'm gonna clean as we go. Just. You don't have too much of a. Of a 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 aranya. So the aranya 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 growing 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 the spines, they can get to it.

Yeah, right.

So.

So actually I, you know, the first time I experienced one of these, I thought that's. That thing's going to be like shoe leather. But 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, 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. The new Italian name on here, but this is the musco.

Would you say musco?

Like muscle?

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

Yeah, we can leave that on. Okay. Okay. So that's what the, like what the moose cloth looks like was. We're talking about how you're just like taking as a whole item, just like cutting with the saw.

Right, right.

Be the shank.

Yep.

Okay, cool. Yeah. So we got the oyster. The oyster steak.

Yep.

The shanks, 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. Yeah. Yep. Okay, so this is the longismus dorsi muscle. So that's your classic ribeye strip loin kind of thing. Okay. Runs long end 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 did. I didn't know what to say initially. I'm not that lost for words. So, yeah, you get a lot of tenderloin off of one of these.

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

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

Yeah. Incredible. Sorry, another rant. Another random question for you. You're eating out of the 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.

Arm wrestles at the steakhouse. Yeah. Like, if there's a tomahawk out there. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Definitely ribbons.

I will take 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 it 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. So we got a cooler here, and I'm just going to start pulling stuff out. Look at this. Scorch ribs, short ribs. What do you like about these?

So 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.

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. Bay leaves, carrots, onions, and just do like a long roast.

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

Oh, incredible.

Yeah, so very versatile.

Is going to get some work.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So lots of great meat in that thing. Yeah, I love short.

Amazing. Wow, those are big. Short. I mean. Yeah, those are.

They're not very short.

Yeah, yeah, they have been short. Those short ribs are playing in the NBA. All right, Top round, top round. Face of Milanese.

So. So face 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, the kings of, 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, and restaurants, Milanese is very, very popular. And really it's. It's like chicken fried steak, but just a fancy chicken fried steak. Yeah, yeah. So you. So you're going to slice some nice thin pieces. You can pound it. You don't have to because this is super tender. And then bread and fry it.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Okay.

Nice breadcrumbs and yeah.

Actually shout out to. There's Italian restaurant if you. Have you been to a Cirella up in Spokane? No, no. So I've got. They're pretty good. They aren't super new. They're probably there for two years now. It's kind of hard to get it. You like call four weeks ahead to get. Okay. Watching. Go to Spokane, call ahead, get into Sorella and they do a. I think it's a Milanese style.

Okay.

You know what? I think up there it might be.

Veal, but yeah, very common to have deal as well. But where we were in the Piedmont, they.

So this one I'd go against the grain and then I could pound it and then just do it the same way I do. Almost like a.

Like a. What do you call it? Not the Parmesan.

Yeah, yeah. Kind of like, like, like. 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. A lot of the customers.

Okay.

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 grip better than it Carpaccio style.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah. Slice it thin against the grain.

Go. Nice. Well, you know, I. I forget if I fully filled my wife in about what we were. She's off playing tennis. Okay. But basically I'm gonna totally wow her because she's gonna come back.

How'd you even know what to do with this one?

I mean, I even say you were here. No, that's fine, babe. I've been studying the Italians.

Yeah.

Oh, man. You make me happily married, man. So I have round eye of round jirello.

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 really clean those. So. So the carcasses hang at this packer for a couple of weeks. And what that's doing is adding tenderness, but it's also adding some additional flavor.

Is that the same as dry aging?

It is dry.

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, 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, we were cutting down into it to make it. 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 gonna 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 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. Are you talking about capacious as well? Okay, interesting. So by the way, with the dry agent 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 so happening?

Amazing. You asked 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 dead, mostly gone, because it's. It's dry on the surface. But there are molds, really beneficial molds, and. And, I mean, I won't get to 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 terroir.

Like, almost like the kombucha of the. Sure.

Yeah.

Kingdom. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, cool. Oh, my gosh. I got to make sure my knives are sharp.

Okay.

Okay, so. Oh, there it is. Of the devil. 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. I mean, it's a rib eye steak with a bone, but it's got a.

Very long piece of shock to 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 ribbon.

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 writing it, unless you're writing it wrong.

And 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, again, beautiful presentation. There's not much on there because we French the bone. We cleaned it really, really well. But if you. If you're trying to wow some folks, that's the way to do it. 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 finish it with a 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. 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 anyways. Give me.

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 it. Do a cold smoke on this, so you're. You're, you know, set. Set your Traeger to the lowest temperature. It'll do maybe 150 for maybe an hour or hour or two, and that's going to help to penetrate into the meat and then go ahead and sear that thing off on. On a grill or.

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. Okay, cool. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Just remember, somebody's got an arm wrestling. You forget. All right, this. This is the never ending never.

Oh, man.

Oh, okay.

This is one of my favorites.

I want to hear your take on beef marrow, because I've. I've got some thoughts about beef marrow, but let's hear you. Okay, so marrow bone.

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

So butter of the gods.

I have only eat. Up until a year and a half ago when I. When I did a cutting demo with. With Monzo and a few chefs, I had only eaten bone marrow. Roasted.

Right.

I don't know if. If folks would be interested in this, but try this raw.

No way.

Imagine the best salted butter you've ever eaten.

Serious? Yeah. Never thought about doing.

I never thought about it.

Like, you obviously probably, like, dig in there. Like, isn't the texture pretty?

It's amazing. Pretty hard. Really. It's amazing. So there's. There's definitely a lot of fat.

Really 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. We're doing it definitely a little different. We're. We're cutting them long ways. We call this canoe style.

Yep.

That way you can really get access to that marrow inside. And, I mean, you can just take.

A spoon and go. Yeah, there.

But then the other cool thing about the Piedmontese cattle, they have a very fine bone. So if this was traditional beef, 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.

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. It was like at a. At a restaurant, you order the marrow and you get, like, the little baby spoon.

Yeah. You could have a teaspoon and that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. You ever do a bone marrow shoe?

Not that I know of.

Okay. So, 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. 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 ltzcal. But this stuff, this is made from the mastic gum. But basically what you do do is you pour a shot, Right. And then once, once you've down the marrow, you get all kind of that umani flavor of the marrow. You literally pour your alcohol finish as a shoe. Yeah, Down. Down the shoes of the bone marrow. It's pretty incredible. So we'll leave that.

That's a great idea.

All right, so bone marrow, and you guys, like, as an Even. Just as a substitute for butter, like back to the sourdough bread thing. Well, bone marrow, like 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 us. There's. There's a real special one in the bottom of there. They're gonna save that one. So these two, we've got a flatiron steak and a dino rib.

Dino rab.

Dino. I don't know if I've done a dino rib before. Tell me about these.

Okay, so. So the flat iron steak, 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 capella di prete, which just 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 stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but yeah, anyway, super tender. Go, go straight to the grill or something like that.

Okay.

Yeah. All right, cool. Yeah. And then the beef dino rib. This is again, just a short rib, individual, but okay. Yeah. So much, much more easier to work with.

Dino rib.

Yeah.

Not entirely sure. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

I mean, it's a bigger than normal, but.

Yeah, 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 just do like one of these.

Sure thing.

You know, if you're home by yourself and family feed. Okay, before I dig into this last week, it's a 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 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 make for myself like one of those giant food saver 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 lecture. 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 terrar 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 vided 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 worth an experiment at least. But.

This is the Monzo brisket.

That's just half of it.

I'm getting my workout. Yeah. All right. Tell them about brisket, Phil. What do you like to do with it? What's special about this?

So I'll be quite honest with you. I haven't really spent much time with the Monzo brisket. In Italy, they don't smoke it. This would be more cut up into smaller pieces, and then they make bolito. 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 this is 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. Try the sous vide version.

Really?

Yeah. I was thinking the exact same thing before you even said. Yeah. Because you're gonna maintain all that great juiciness that's in there.

Yeah.

And you can. You can. You can get that long cook without dehydration.

I'll have to dig back into my cook, but I think I use 145As. 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't still smoke it after it's been sous vide.

Right, right. Still get that.

That great flavor on there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Incredible. And I mean, what we just went through, I mean, if you get, like, even just like a half count 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, and you guys, like, customize the Cuts.

Yeah, yeah. The butcher shop will. Will customize to what it is that 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. So we're trying to stick to whole muscle as much as possible. That's what the Italian butchers would absolutely be focusing on. It's going to be better for them from a merchandising standpoint. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with the ground beef too.

It's.

It's spectacular.

This is fantastic, you guys. No ketchup even required. No. For those of you are Heinz57, catch up, 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 a 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 and how I found this in my own backyard and connected with Justin. That whole podcast is@BenGreenfieldLife.com Beef podcast, I think. But I'll link to it in the show notes. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com eatmeat I'm going to put a link where you can get pretty significant. I think we even have up to a 30 something percent discount on some of the cuts. 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 whole cow, but if you're just like, hey, I want to grab a few steaks and see what this stuff tastes like first, you can do that. And if you visit the show notes@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 be able to pipe in and fill you in on, you know, everything from, you know, what about this cut? 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, this is just incredible. Thank you so much for coming to my house and for making me hungry. Thanks for watching you guys. Hit subscribe. Leave a ranking. Leave a review. If you got a little extra time, it means way more than you might think. Thank you so much.