S6 E20 : Part 1 - Different Cuts of Meat Explained, with Charlotte Wasylik from Chatsworth Farm

We had so much to talk about with Charlotte Wasylik from Chatsworth Farm, we split it into two episodes! Part II is also available now!

This week we're talking about one of the most confusing things for home cooks, cuts of meat:

- what they're called (why are there so many names for the same thing??)

- why the names don't always mean what we think they mean

- and how that can leave even the most confident home cook feeling unsure about what to order from the farmer or butcher. 

To help us make sense of it all, we're joined once again by Charlotte Wasylik from Chatsworth Farm, who brings deep expertise from the producer side of the food system. She explains that names given to cuts of meat often vary by region, so if you're not finding what a recipe calls for, there may be a different name for it -- you just have to ask! Sometimes it helps to explain what you want to cook in order for the farmer to guide you to cuts that will work the best. And understanding that, an unusual cut doesn't have to be intimidating when you know what to do with it.  

Be sure to listen to part II of this conversation next. And please check out Chatsworth Farm for more information. www.chatsworthfarm.ca

 

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Transcript

Erin W (00:11)
welcome to today's episode of Three Kitchens podcast. Right off the top, we want to let you know that this is a two-part episode and this is part one.

Heather (00:20)
We just, had such a good conversation with our guest, all about cuts of meat and how to cook them, that ⁓ we decided just rather than edit it down, we'll just give it all to you. So be sure to check out part two when you're finished listening to this one.

Erin W (00:35)
All right, so hello and welcome to another episode of Three Kitchens podcast. I'm your host Erin Walker with my co-host Heather Dyer. Hello, Heather.

Heather (00:48)
Hello.

Erin W (00:50)
And today we are going to bring a guest with us to discuss one of the most confusing things for us as home cooks that you might also experience in your kitchen. Cuts of meat. What are they called? Why are they called that? How come it changes? And how can we be more confident if we're at the grocery store or at the butcher in choosing what we want for what we want to cook?

And to help us make sense of all of this, are joined by Charlotte Wisselek from Chattworth's Farm, who was with us surprisingly three years ago to talk about knowing your farmer, where your meat comes and the process by which we get meat here in Alberta. And so she's going to talk to us because she's got all the expertise about the food system and

how we can understand more about our cuts of meat. So thank you Charlotte for joining us again.

Charlotte (01:53)
Thanks very much for having me. It's always fun to be able to talk about something that I really love and that people are interested in learning more about because then you have so many more tools in your tool belt when it comes to cooking in the kitchen.

Erin W (02:08)
Mm, yes.

Heather (02:10)
Can you tell us, just to get started, tell our listeners a little bit about Chatsworth Farm?

Charlotte (02:16)
Yes, our farm is two and a half hours east of Edmonton. So from Calgary, we're about, we're just close to five hours north of Calgary. We're about 45 minutes from the Saskatchewan border. And our farm is a mixed farm, which means that we raise a lot of different things and that includes livestock and grains and, or just overall crops. And then within our livestock, we have beef cattle, sheep, pigs, and then ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys. And then

we

have I have some horses we also have our dogs whether they're livestock guardian dogs or herding dogs and then we have a whole little herd of cats as well and on our farm we we have a farm to table program so what that means is the animals that we have on our farm and we do a full birth to butcher so they're born on our farm

And then we raise them up until they reach that finished weight, which means they have the appropriate layer of fat on them for them to be ready to take to the butcher. And then we sell those directly to customers, whether they're in Edmonton, Calgary, in our small town of Vermillion. We do the pork and the lamb. All of the animals that we raise go through our farm to table program. And then for our cattle, it's about 25%. And the other, uh,

amount of our cattle we sell through the commercial market because we just aren't able to sell roughly 200 calves directly to customers yet. We're hoping to get to that point one day, but for the most part we sell around 25 head of cattle through our farm to table program every year.

Heather (03:58)
busy. Like that's a lot of variety of livestock and.

Charlotte (03:58)
Mm-hmm.

It is and for some farms they will focus on one or maybe two species because it is a lot of work and every animal has their own nuance.

So it is pretty uncommon for farms that do sell farm to table to have all of them.

Heather (04:21)
it like a one-stop shop for us

Charlotte (04:22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Heather (04:25)
And it's your family's farm.

Charlotte (04:27)
It is, it was started by my dad in 1994. His parents both grew up on farms, but his parents moved to town and so my dad didn't actually grow up on a farm, but he spent a lot of time at his uncle's, at his grandparents. And then in 1994, he bought our home quarter and that's where my brothers and I grew up.

We all currently farm and I actually have my own farm yard now 30 minutes up the road But I go back and forth and I I'm very involved in the main farm yard all the time and it's something that we really enjoy and We wouldn't want to do anything else

Heather (05:04)
Nice.

Is it true that the majority, I don't know if that's the right word, majority, but many farms in Alberta specifically are small family farms like yours?

Charlotte (05:15)
Across Canada, the stat is very high. I can't think of it off the top of my head, but I believe it's around 97%.

that's what you see across the landscape of farms in, Canada.

Erin W (05:28)
That's always surprising to me and I don't know why but because we're always sourcing, we don't often source directly from the farmer because we're at a major chain often to receive our meats and whatnot. You forget that it all comes from these individuals. So that's really very interesting to know. And is that very different from the American farming system? Would you know like?

Charlotte (05:32)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

No, I think it would be it would be pretty similar. ⁓ I'm not sure what their stat is. beef and lamb are managed very, very differently to say commercial poultry and pork. They are usually found in very, very large scale barns.

Erin W (05:56)
Okay.

Okay.

Charlotte (06:09)
Whereas with cattle and sheep producers, we as those everyday farmers, no one tells us how many animals we need to raise. We can raise five if we want to, if that makes sense for our farm, or we could raise 5,000. There's nothing that really controls the market.

And that's why there are lot in beef prices right now because we are at the lowest beef herd numbers since the 80s. Last year 2024 was the was up a tiny, tiny bit.

They're not as many farms. So it's definitely that supply and demand. Whereas in say, meat, chickens, eggs, they have, they have quota systems, dairy does as well.

So that's why beef prices are so volatile because it truly is a supply and demand thing because one year a farmer might decide they're going to raise 5,000 calves and the next year he might say that was too many. I'll do 15

Heather (07:14)
Yes, yeah. And is this a good thing not to have that quota?

Charlotte (07:19)
It makes it much easier for farmers because you can work around what you want to do.

Heather (07:24)
yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people wonder. And often you hear it's because of demand and less supply, but you don't really hear why the supply might be less.

There's so many elements that go into it that us, know, city folks might not even be aware of,

Charlotte (07:42)
Yeah. And

for cat and for cattle, takes a really long time to get those numbers back up. it takes you two years to get back to be able to supply the food chain in that in that way. Whereas with chickens, take six months, seven months.

Erin W (08:00)
Great.

Yeah, the life cycle of a cow is a little bit longer than that of a chicken. ⁓

Charlotte (08:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, she'll have a baby when she's

when she's two So you have to wait that amount of time and then you actually have to wait until that calf is ready So it takes another year in a bit Before you can kind of add add to your herd with the with a meat product

Heather (08:21)
Mmm, yeah.

think this is really important information for those of us when we're shopping and thinking, ⁓ gosh, it's so getting so expensive or whatever. There's a lot of investment that has gone into it at the farm before it ever hits us at either the price at the farm or the butcher or wherever we're sourcing our meat for dinner. So that's important to know. Yeah.

Charlotte (08:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Erin W (08:51)
So many interesting

factors that we just, I do not consider when I'm walking through that. My grocery store aisle, so it's great to have this open our eyes a bit more to what's going on behind the scenes.

Charlotte (09:05)
Yeah.

Heather (09:06)
Mm-hmm.

Charlotte (09:07)
There's a lot to it.

Heather (09:09)
Okay, so the idea for this particular episode came about when you posted on social media, I don't know if it's you or the farm, someone at Chatsworth Farm in your family, made a post, it's a while back now, I think last summer maybe or something, and it was regarding the confusion that sometimes customers have with...

what to order and then sometimes they'll order a cut of meat and what they get is not what they were expecting. So can you tell us a little bit about what prompted that social post to try to educate people?

Charlotte (09:42)
Mm I can think of many examples off the top of my head. For example, there was one a customer from she was from the UK. She spent some time living in South Africa. She was looking for a particular beef cut. She was looking for

Heather (09:43)
Thank

Charlotte (10:01)
Porterhouse, she wanted some Porterhouse steaks. And Porterhouse steaks, if you're not familiar, they're cut from the loin, which is where your T-bone steaks, your strip loin steaks all come from. And T-bone, Porterhouse, and strip loins.

they're all the same cut, they're all the same muscle. But what makes them different is that one is boneless, one is bone in, and the other one comes from the furthest back part of the loin, which is the porterhouse. And so it has the largest part of the fillet. So when you're looking at your T-bone steak, you have your really long skinny side, the bone in the middle.

And then you have that kind of more roundish fillet. now depending on where that T bone is cut from that loin section, it might have a slightly bigger fillet or it might almost have no fillet at all. Still a T bone. Now what

differentiates a T-bone from a porterhouse is that a porterhouse has a fillet of one and a quarter inches or larger. Anything less than that is a T-bone. So I like to say porterhouses are T-bones, but not all T-bones are porterhouses. So when you have a customer who is wanting, like you're really, really wanting those porterhouses thinking that they're this really special cut, they are.

in their own little way, just because they've got a fillet that's an inch and a quarter larger, but you're getting the same exact muscle as you would from a T-bone. So going back to that story, the customer wanted a porterhouse and I finally had porterhouses. She got them.

In the end, I followed up with her and I said, how was the steak? I know you were really looking forward to it. And she said, I haven't even tried it yet because I noticed that it has a bone and that's not really what I'm looking for. But in South Africa, apparently Porter houses are what they call strip loin. So Porter houses are boneless. Whereas here Porter houses have the bone. So there was just a lot of confusion from her end because in one country it's called one thing in another country it's called another.

And I came across that quite a bit as I was working on our new website because now we're just like any online store, every product has its own page and it has a description. And I was just looking at other websites to see how do they have it formatted, just getting some ideas to get creative. And in the UK,

I was looking at all their steaks and I was seeing these beautiful strip loins. In the UK, they call strip loins sirloins. And in North America, strip loins and sirloin steaks are two different things. So that, just adds to the layer of confusion because there's no standardized terminology across your own country, across...

different hemispheres, it's all so so different. So really understanding what you are wanting and then translating that or really being specific with your butcher or your farmer about what you're getting because they might call it something different. For example, blade roast and chuck roast.

They're both the same cuts. One term is used more in the East. One term is used more in the West. So people use them interchangeably. One of my butchers marks them as chuck roasts. My other butcher marks them as blade roasts. So it can just be something that when it comes to what you're cooking, really know what you want. Is it boneless? Try and figure out the location that it comes from on the animal, the primal. A beef.

Heather (13:30)
boy.

Erin W (13:32)
Ha

Charlotte (13:44)
especially because it's just so large you're working with so much is broken up into eight different primals and those primals then have sub primals so if you're able to kind of figure out what primal that cut is from then you can get a good understanding of is this cut one of the more tender ones or is it one that is a little bit tougher

And the cuts that are tougher aren't just tough for no reason. It's because they're located on a part of the animal that works out a lot. For example, the cheeks, like when you think of beef cattle, they're ruminants. And so they are constantly chewing their cud. So their cheeks are going to be so, so tough because they are using them even when they're lying down, when they're not moving, they're still working those cheek muscles. So they're going to be so tough.

Erin W (14:30)
Right.

Charlotte (14:34)
but if you give them the right preparation, they're going to be so fantastic. Same with shanks and shanks are the leg part of the animal. That's the culinary term. Again, they're going to be used so much because the animal is going to be walking every single day. Cattle in particular, you can kind of break their...

day into thirds. So they spend a third of their day eating, a third of their day ruminating, so chewing their cud, and then the other third is just kind of, you know, walking to go get water, sleeping. So they spend a huge portion of their day chewing their cud and then walking. So that is

That's a big component to think about when you're looking at cuts and determining the type that you're looking for.

Erin W (15:22)
Right.

Heather (15:23)
So what kinds of questions should we be asking the farmer when we want to order if we're not sure of what cut in particular to ask for?

Charlotte (15:27)
Mm-hmm.

I always throw it back to the customer. It doesn't matter if it's an individual cup purchase or a whole animal. say, what do you like to cook? Because figuring out what you like to cook is going to be the easiest way for me to figure out what you're looking for. So if you're looking to make something like,

We'll go beef stroganoff for example. You can make it out of tougher cuts, but it's really lovely if you make that beef stroganoff with something that's really tender because you can just see it really quickly. So something like Denver steak, ribeye steak, even flat iron steak. Are you wanting to make something that can really hold up to bolder marinade? So something like skirt steak is going to be really great. Flank steak.

are you wanting something that will slow cook but you can also cook it hot and fast. So think about how you want to cook that piece of meat because depending on what you're wanting to cook there can be a few different options. For example tritip which comes from the bottom sirloin of the animal. It's a triangular shaped piece of meat. It's got grains of meat actually running in two different directions.

So you have to alter the way you're cutting it as you're slicing it. It's got a lot of really nice intramuscular fat. So you can cook it as a steak. And it's got one really thick end and one really thin end. So you do have to be wary and careful about that, but it's got enough intramuscular fat and it's tender enough that you can just barbecue it really fast. But it's also got that fat.

content that you can put it in a slow cooker or a pressure cooker and it will break down and you'll have beautiful pulled beef. You can't do that with every single cut. If you quickly sear and barbecue some beef shanks, you are going to be a very unhappy person because they are just, need, they need that time in a slow cooker or a pressure cooker. There's no getting around that. So really think about what you want to cook and how you want to cook it.

And then from there, have a few different options to play with in terms of the cuts.

Heather (17:46)
When

you mentioned the cut that has the grains going in two directions, how do you cut that?

Charlotte (17:51)
Mm-hmm.

the tri tip. So when you're just cutting it, look at the grains of meat before you cook it because that's the easiest to see. And you can just sort of see where that point is. It's kind of halfway in the middle. And then you just rotate it. So you're always wanting to slice against the grain. But if you're making something like pulled meat, so say you throw it in your slow cooker,

then that is kind of irrelevant because you're not slicing it, you're pulling it apart.

Heather (18:23)
Mm-hmm. Hmm, interesting.

Erin W (18:24)
rates.

Charlotte (18:25)
Yeah,

and it's a cut that's called the California tri-tip too because it's hugely popular in California. It's not super well known really outside of California, whether it's the US or in Canada, but the more and more people who realize how cool and unique and delicious it is, the more popular it gets.

Erin W (18:47)
So when you talk about different cooking times, Is that to do also with the area? were you calling those primals?

Charlotte (18:57)
Yes, so you've got your big primals where say your cheeks on a beef animal, they're technically not in a primal

Erin W (18:58)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte (19:05)
It's not the thing that people have been accustomed to using. So they're part of the Oregon category, even though they're technically not, they're not in Oregon. ⁓ So that, that also makes things just extra confusing because if you're looking on,

Erin W (19:14)
okay, interesting.

Charlotte (19:20)
maybe a sheet that has all the primals listed and it's got everything in there and you don't see cheeks well that's why because they're not technically in their own primal because the head gets removed and then the primals are everything essentially from the shoulders to the to the back end and the head is not in there and of course that's where the cheeks are it is yeah even though it's technically not an organ

Erin W (19:34)
Right.

Right.

Heather (19:40)
And the tongue too. Is tongue considered awful? ⁓ okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Erin W (19:46)
Mm-hmm.

Charlotte (19:47)
So yeah, those are, those are very good points. So think about where that cut comes from on the animal, but then think about how much fat content it's going to have, because if it has a larger amount of fat content, that probably means that it will do well in a, in a long, slow cooking situation.

Erin W (19:55)
Mm-hmm.

Charlotte (20:08)
the shoulder historically has always been a category of tougher cuts because again, that shoulder is always powering the animal's momentum, always moving forward. And that's where you get your chuck roast. So if you're wanting to make pulled beef, if you're wanting to make, get some short ribs from there, some chuck ribs, those are all cuts that need that long and slow cooking time.

However, in 2007, 2006, some meat scientists went through the carcass and said, okay, we need to find some cuts that are a little bit more economical because the rib eyes, the strip loins, those are at a very high price point. We want to be able to find some cuts that are just as tender, just as delicious, but maybe we can make them a little bit more affordable. And that's where they discovered the Denver steak.

Erin W (20:55)
Mm.

Charlotte (20:59)
⁓ I don't know when the flat iron steak was officially discovered, but flat iron steak is a little bit more known than say the Denver steak. And it is the flat iron, which comes from the chuck, comes from the shoulder, this previously thought to be such a tough, just primal. The flat iron is the second most tender cut of meat on an animal, second to the tenderloin. And it's got really beautiful flavor. So you've got the

Flat iron, really nice and tender, obviously. You've got Denver, which is akin to a rib steak or ribeye again, same cuts, one just has a bone and the other one doesn't. And then you also have the Petite Tender, this actual Latin name for it, the muscle name is Terus Major.

and it comes from the chuck. So you've got all of these very, very tender cuts that come from a historically thought to be very tough part of the animal. So when you actually...

literally cut through and break this animal apart, you realize that there are these cuts that are kind of hidden in there that people didn't realize and that they offer so much and they're super tender. But when you think about say flat iron, there only four flat iron steaks per animal. It doesn't matter how big that animal is.

So that's why it can be a challenge to find those steaks. Same with Denver, same with Petit Filet. ⁓

So for those bigger companies, for those bigger processors, it is not worth it for them to go through and cut two of these steaks per animal. It just doesn't make sense.

Whereas with say rib eyes and strip loins, you get maybe 10 or depending on how they're cutting them, You're getting at least, you're getting more than two stakes per animal. So that's why.

the stakes that we offer do sell really quickly because they're just limited on the animal itself.

Erin W (23:00)
Right. Now, when we're talking about blade roasts in the chuck section, the same section, two names, I often see like a big piece of meat in my grocery store called a blade steak.

Charlotte (23:07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Erin W (23:15)
Is that akin to a denver? Because I'm not familiar with the denver.

Charlotte (23:21)
So they'll probably be sitting right next to one another. And this is where I want to actually go to a meat cutting course. So I don't know my carcass as well as maybe it sounds

me looking at the muscles when they're all nicely cut and wrapped, I can ID them. No problem. I can tell you about them all day. But if I were to be let loose in a butcher shop and told to actually

cut these muscles, I wouldn't know where to start because that is an art. It takes a long time to learn and look at the different muscles. But I can tell you that if it's the blade steak, it does come from the Chuck Primal and some of them do include part of the Denver steak. And this is where, again, it gets super confusing because there is no standardization

Maybe the Denver is included in part of it, maybe the Denver is not.

the blade steak, is grocery stores and butcher shops offering you a steak that's a little bit more affordable, but that steak probably isn't going to be as tender as say, your ribeye. So you do have to think about it. So if you cook it up and think, this steak maybe had a tender element to it, that was probably the Denver, but then maybe the rest was a little bit more chewy. That's because it is from that.

Erin W (24:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Charlotte (24:39)
chuck section, there are going to be tougher elements to that part of the primal. So thinking about that, but it's always been one of those stakes that's just a little bit more of a value cut versus say one of the more expensive rib eyes or strip lines.

Erin W (24:57)
Yeah, Years ago, I had bought one, cooked it and like you say, there was a lot of variety how the different parts turned out and like when you look at it, it looks like a very diverse piece

Charlotte (25:02)
Yeah.

yeah and depending on what it looks like you can actually see all the different muscles that are comprising that one piece so you might have you might have four different muscles and those four different muscles are all going to have different tenderness qualities to them.

Erin W (25:26)
Mm-hmm.

is that?

Heather (25:27)
That just makes it

so much more confusing to know how to cook something if you're not familiar, right?

Charlotte (25:30)
Yeah, it does.

Erin W (25:33)
Yeah, so is that something then you would want to break down further at home depending on, you know, I'll keep these pieces for cooking low and slow if I'm going to put them in a stew or something and then take out the more tender pieces or is it like...

Charlotte (25:50)
personally wouldn't put that much effort into it because you're just gonna have these teeny tiny little pieces

so I I wouldn't bother either choose that steak and Really think about how you want to cook it if you're wanting to cook it as a replacement for say a ribeye I would say probably don't because you might not be happy with the results But if you're happy to cook it in a little bit more of a slow manner, you're going to be happy

Heather (26:40)
We might need to make two episodes, a first and a second part. We might just need to do that with this one.

Charlotte (26:40)
You can do two parts. Yeah, yeah. ⁓