SLAUGHTERING A COW

What to do, what to expect, how to spin it to your favor.

Background: I am the owner/operator of a mobile slaughter unit in Texas. I have a lot of clients who are new to mobile, and they tell me a LOT of things. What they expected, what they got, what mystified them, and then all the things that wow them when they watch me do one right in their yard start to finish. So buckle up and I will give you the low down on butchering cows!

A common misunderstanding that I hear from a lot of sources: They didn’t get all their meat back. This comes from many different angles.

#1 is folks don’t know how much meat a cow actually has on it. The AVERAGE is that 40% of a cow is actually edible meat. If you have 1000 lbs of cow, you should expect about 400 lbs of meat. This weight will go up if you get bone in cuts. But you can’t eat bone. This number will also fluctuate depending on your cow. Young/old, what breed, what gender, what condition, etc. But 40% is a solid ballpark figure and if you’re anywhere near that poundage, you should be good.

#2 is some brick&mortar (b&m for future reference) DO take your meat. This is sad, but true. The basic rule of thumb is that if they have a meat counter for sale direct to public … they’re probably scalping off their custom clients. Sad, but true. I am not saying all do … but those that are 100% honest are truly rare.

#3 when you slaughter a 1000 lb cow, you DON’T get 1000 lb of steaks back, much less 1000 lb of tbones. A typical cow only has a few pounds of Tbones, and roughly half it’s meat weight will be cuts of some sort, but only half of those cuts will be actual steaks. So if you have net 400 lb meat, you should have about 100 lbs of various steaks… and only a few of each kind. The other cuts will be things like fajitas, briskets, roasts, etc. More details on this later. The other half of your meat will be either stew meat or ground meat. Generally a MINIMUM of 1/4 of your meat will be ground meat simply because it’s trim. Up to 1/2 of your meat will be grind if you don’t get any stew.

#4 B&M facilities will charge you on “hanging weight”. This means they will remove the hide, head, guts, and feet, THEN weigh the carcass to determine what they’re charging you for. This is still with a lot of f*t and bones in it. Just because you got charged for 60% of live weight does not mean you are getting 60% of your animal back. There are ways to boost this, but simply put … it isn’t going to be meat because it’s bone weight. Soup bones and asking for your tallow back can boost your returns.

Okay, so now we have that out of the way, lets get to that nifty little cut sheet they gave you to fill out. The cut sheet is something that a B&M will use for you to tell them how you want your cow cut up. Simply because they do quite a lot of cows in a day and aren’t going to remember what you told them. There are a lot of things on that cut sheet, some you will be familiar with and some you won’t be. There are also things that WON’T be on that list they gave you, that you really should make a point to ask for! I will fill you in on all this. But the basics of a cut sheet is this. They will cut whatever you check off, and EVERYTHING ELSE YOU DON’T CHECK … will either disappear into that sales counter, or if they’re honest, will disappear into your ground meat. One of the two. So this is why some folks get a huge ??? when they get 10lb of steaks and 360 lb of ground meat. Because they didn’t check the boxes! So, long story short, if you want less ground meat, check off ALL THE BOXES. When you butcher a whole cow, you get the whole cow. Not just the cuts they showcase in the grocery store. I promise you that what you see in the grocer is not every cut that comes off a cow.

There are a few exceptions to this that could confuse your butcher (lol). If you check tbone, for instance, your New York and your Filet Mignon disappear. Because they’re the exact same muscles. You can get chuck steak, chuck roast, or shoulder clod … but not all of them at once. Because they’re all the same muscles. But remember, you do have two sides to a cow! You can get some of each, but from different sides of the cow, and you’ll consequently have less of each. Because sharing.

Okay, on to the fun stuff, what all can you get from a cow? From the front shoulder, you can get the shoulder clod, OR the chuck roast, OR chuck steak (unless you work the sides, as stated above). Also from the shoulder comes the Denver steaks and the Flat irons. You may or may not know about these, as they aren’t terribly common in stores. But there’s a lot of the shoulder that simply goes into ground meat. It is a hot mess of muscle structures that don’t really line up, and really isn’t good for stew. So into the ground meat it goes.

From the rib and belly area, you get the Flank steaks (2), and fajitas (at least 3, but possibly 5), briskets, and from the inside the Hanger. Make SURE YOU GET THE HANGER. There is only 1 on the whole cow, some butchers throw it away with the guts. It is very tender, and taste a lot like a ribeye. It’s the muscle that operates the diaphragm. All these cuts coming from the ribs and belly is why you don’t get Fred Flinstone set of ribs … most of the meat is removed at this point. There are still ribs to be harvested, but it’s really not a very big area that still has meat at this point. So don’t be upset. Yes, the ribcage is bigger than that, but most of it is just bone at this point.

From the back along the spine you get chuckeye steaks, from by the shoulder, followed by Ribeye, followed by New York Strip – IF you didn’t mark down tbones or porterhouses. Porterhouses are basically really thick tbones, they come from the same general area, but there IS a slight difference. Porterhouse is behind the tbone, right up against the hip. Both of these bone-in cuts will consume your New Yorks and your Filet Mignon. You can get whole tenderloins OR Filets – but do make sure you get them! This is the hands-down tenderest cut on your animal. Don’t be fooled though – some butchers try to take them, and swap out your Eye of Round for a tenderloin to fool you. You should have TWO tenderloins AND two eye of rounds. If you don’t, you have a problem! There’s also a pretty unknown cut that comes from the spine that is absolutely delicious. They’re called spinals. They’re tiny little cuts that really don’t look much like steaks – but they’re fabulous! If you get bone-in ribeye, they’ll be wrapped around the outer edge of the ribeye. If you get boneless ribeye, make sure you get your spinals!

Now we are on the back legs of the cow. This is where the bulk of your steaks – albeit not the best ones – will come from. You should have Bottom Round, Top round, Tri Tip (this is like a small brisket, triangle shaped), Eye of Round (either as steak or as a roast – this is THE toughest part of the cow!! Beautiful looking steaks, but chewy AF. Good for jerky though!), skirt, sirloin, and rump roast from EACH LEG. Meaning there should be 2 of each of these muscles, and each muscle should produce several steaks.

There are also two very small steaks from INSIDE the pelvis. These are Oyster steaks, and they are NOT mountain oysters! Both males and females have oyster steaks, and they are actual steaks. But there’s just 2 of them in the whole cow, and they sorta look like Oysters. Make sure you get these!!

Tips and tricks to get the most back with minimal grind; ASK FOR ROASTS. This will get you complete or mostly complete muscle sections. It is very easy for a steak or two to go missing. It’s a lot more obvious if a whole roast goes missing. Roasts can be easily cut down in your own kitchen, and every roast can become steak, and every steak can become strip, and every strip can become stew, all of which can be ground up in a pinch if you’re out of ground meat. But you can’t go backward! It’s also a lot harder for meat to vanish on you if you’ve got these bigger pieces. Don’t be afraid to put a knife to your meat. This method also gives you maximum flexibility in the kitchen when cooking. Don’t worry – even with asking for roasts you should still get a lot of ground meat. There’s a lot of trim that can’t be anything else.

List of Roasts: Eye of Round, Top round, Bottom round, Tri Tip, Brisket, New York, Rib Eye (or Rib Roll), Chuck, Shoulder clod, Rump Roast, Sirloin roast.

When asking for steaks, get THICK STEAKS. In the store, you see thin steaks, and they usually become these sad little tough chewy pieces of meat. It’s because they’re thin and they overcook extremely easily, unless you cook them to absolute death in a crock pot. If you got to a steak house, where you get tender steaks, notice they’re all thick slabs of meat. Thick steak is how you get tender steak. Also don’t overcook them. Medium rare is warm and tender, well done is an old boot. A lot of preference goes in here, but there’s those tips! Just remember that when you get thick steak, you will have fewer steaks. Don’t get upset. Your poundage is still there, just better quality.

If you can use soup bones, do not be afraid to ask for them! Any bone will make soup. Whether it is ribs, chunks of spine, or knuckles off the legs. The thick leg bones is where you get your marrow though, and there’s a lot of nutrition in that. Ribs and spine, not so much. Spine is also where there’s a risk of mad cow, though, depending on where you’re at. So I personally would shy away from spine bones. This is why they ask you if the cow is over or under 30 months of age. Under 30 months and there’s less risk.

Now for tallow! Suet is the f*t that forms around the organs inside the body. Suet is fabulous and has lots of uses. Render it to cook with it, grease pans and bowls, make candles, make soap, so on and so forth. TRIM F*T is not suet. The only real difference is you can’t make candles with trim f*t. It tends to stay liquid once rendered. You can still cook with it and grease with it and it makes soap just fine. If you want both, be sure to tell them to keep the suet and the trim separate so if you want to, you can really utilize that suet.

Asking for bones and f*t back will get you a lot closer to the hang weight they charged you for. Even so, don’t expect to get all of the hang weight. There will still be inedible chunks that will be thrown away. You can also ask for the head, if they don’t use a firearm to kill the cow. If they kill it with a bullet – they can’t give you the head, it’s illegal. Some people like to cook and eat the head, so keep that in mind. Tongue and organ meats will also get you closer to higher weight. Heart is just muscle – make steaks from it or add it to the ground. Don’t ask them to grind it, you likely won’t get it at all. How would you know? You won’t. And they’ll use that to their advantage. Liver and kidneys are also edibles. If you have dogs, don’t be afraid to ask for the pancreas or spleen, and you might even be able to get the lungs back for dogfood also. These will probably be denatured, meaning it’ll be a funny dyed color. That’s okay, it’s still perfectly fine for the dog, it’s food-grade.

Now, for a really touchy subject. Aging. Dry age is NOT YOUR FRIEND. Aging in general is the controlled decomposition of your meat with the goal of flavor and tenderness. It actually does VERY LITTLE toward tenderness. And given that it’s basically rotting your meat, the flavor will reflect that. The more age it has, the more rotten it will taste. I would NOT ask for any age at all. If you want a little age, you can do it by setting it in your own fridge for a day or two, up to a week, and control this factor yourself. The B&M places will naturally try to argue this against me, as it makes them money to just hang your carcass in their cooler for umpteen weeks. It’s free money to them, and they don’t have to eat it. So of course they’ll try to talk you into as much age as they can get you to do. Wet aging will not dry out your meat, but dry age will. In this process you lose both weight from dehydration, but also a LOT of meat will simply be thrown away in the trimming process, because, well, it’s rotten. You can lose up to 50% of your meat through dry aging. And that’s if they even were able to maintain the very specific set of parameters to do it successfully and not simply rot the whole thing through. Dry age will cost you dearly, not only your pocketbook, but also in food.

I hope this nugget of info is helpful to everybody who looks to take their cow into a butcher! Give you a little bit of forewarning on what to expect!