In a time when many Americans yearn to know the origins of their food, meat education has become a hot topic. As has whole-animal cooking, at-home butchery, and other trendy meat techniques. The current DIY spirit has inspired more home cooks to branch out, turning casual carnivores into informed authorities.
In The Art of Beef Cutting: A Meat Professional’s Guide to Butchering and Merchandising, Kari Underly, a third-generation butcher, reaches out to this new generation of serious home chefs, covering all the fundamentals of butchery, with photos of every cut, step-by-step instructions on technique, and the best beef-cutting tools as well as cooking methods. Her book starts big – at the carcass level – and walks the reader through parts of the animal and individual cuts: from primals and subprimals, all the way down to ground beef. In a word, she is the go-to expert for all things meat.
Whether you’re a connoisseur or simply a curious at-home chef, Underly’s book makes for fascinating – if somewhat niche – reading. But if butchery doesn’t exactly scream out to you as proper bedside reading, here is a clip of a recent crash course Underly gave viewers on the Today show.
About Author
