The Family Pot Roast

I grew up in Brook Park.  A pot roast was family dinner. Whether you called it a 7 bone roast, an English roast, a chuck roast, or simply a beef chuck pot roast, it was whatever mom threw in the slow cooker. For those of you unfamiliar with beef carcass nomenclature, the chuck is the front shoulder – from the neck to the 4th rib, down to the bottom or the neck, called the brisket.  It is more marbled with fat than the hind leg – the round – which contains more exercised muscles.
Between the chuck and the round are the prime center sections – the rib (short ribs and ribeye steaks) and the loin (strip steaks, tenderloin, porterhouse, T-bone, and flank steak).
Over Christmas, we sold a lot of center section cuts – standing rib roasts, strip loin roasts, and tenderloin. In fact, we cut down the center sections of 7 steers. That left us with a lot of chuck and round to figure out what to do with.
Round went into roast beef lunchmeat and stew meat. But for the chuck, I refused to cut traditional mom cuts. OK, I can’t lie. Our band saw is too small to even make those cuts. I had to carve out cuts for the weeknight dinner plate. By following the seam of the muscles and the edges of the bones, I extracted tender, quick cooking cuts like the shoulder heart clod, flat iron steak, mock tender, and petite tender. This weekend stop in and take a look at our selection of beef cuts.  I’ll be cutting down more beef on Saturday and can cut to order.     – Adam