"Minute" Steaks

I can honestly  say I am not sure what cut you are looking at...maybe pops will be along soon to help you out. I think by the looks of the pic cavemans suggestion on how to cook it is right on the money.  I am not even sure what a shell roast is...but then there are different names in different areas of the country for the same cuts.

Sorry I cant help much

SOB

Does this sound right?  I am no butcher but this is my best guess.

http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/shellroast

I looks like it could be what we call a sizzle steak.   it comes from a cut called the "ball tip"  this is the name that the beef packing plant calls them.

SOB

Ahh ok... it looks like from the post above about the shell roast that it is from the strip loin but it is cut the opposite way that you would cut a ny strip steak.  not a hundred percent on this but that is how it looks. the only reason you would cut it that way is if you had a strip loin out to cut it and only needed to use half of it for your ny srtip steak display.....then if you cut it the otherway you can use up the other half and have another cut out in the case by using only 1 type of cut.

Hope that makes sense.

SOB

well think of it this way.  If you cut half the strip loin for ny strip steaks for your case but you dont need any more ny strip steaks for lets say 5 days then you have lost 5 days of case life on the left over half of strip loin by the time you need to cut some from it again. Sooo if you can cut the same meat(strip loin) in a different way,at the same time you cut it for the ny strip steaks, then you use that whole strip loin all at he same time. Even if you have to sell it at half price it is better than waiting the 5 days and possibly having to throw the rest of that strip loin away...because you had to wait too long to use it.

SOB 

Glad I could be a help... alot of times the meat cutting bussiness is about "Damage Control"  you have to find the best way to sell meat but also not waste any either.

SOB

Going back to the '50's, there was a machine known as the 'Minut-Steak' machine which is the original invention of the minute steak.  It was nothing more than a patty-former attached to the head of a grinder; you'd regrind some ground chuck or ground round through your grinder and it would press and flatten the burger into a square patty and push it out onto a waxed paper from a roll underneath in a long strip.  You'd lay those out on the block and cleave them into individual square patties, stack and sell out of your meatcase.  The waxed paper had "Minut-Steak" written in green lettering on it continuously.  Used to have to make tons of 'em on Saturday mornings for the case during the summers.

Then, the idea of a 'minute steak' got transferred to another new invention.. the cube steak machine.  Those originally were known as 'minute steaks' and laid out on pre-cut squares of butcher paper (cube steak paper).

The cut shown in the picture, however, based on it's marbling and connective tissue line, comes from the tail end of a top sirloin butt after the boneless sirloin steaks are cut off.  The fat cap is removed and sliced into small steaks, then monikered as 'minute steaks', coming from the sirloin shell vs. the strip loin shell.  





Those are pics of a sirloin butt, 1st is the face, the 2nd is the back end.  You can see how it tapers down.  When you're cutting it into sirloin steaks, you can only go about 2/3'ds through it until the size of the slices gets too small.  So, what do you do with the tail end of it?

Here's your choices:

1) put it into grinds (burger - lose the most money)

2) cube steak or stew beef (higher retail than burger, more profit)

3) slice into thin 'minute steaks' at higher retail than cubes or stew (even more profit)

4) put in lunch box and take home (0% profit and you get fired! - I'm just kidding, but in most stores I worked in I would make it a point to go out of the store through a register and show the cashier my lunch pail that nothing was hidden!  Eliminates any suspicions - you had to conduct yourself with a 'beyond reproach' attitude.  Employee theft is 60%+ of all theft in a retail store.)

Hope this helps! 

Caveman said:

Does this sound right?  I am no butcher but this is my best guess.

http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/shellroast

Click to expand...

Once again, it goes to show that it would be great to have definition and name standardization, not that it will ever happen.....but thanks to Caveman, I've got a great link to answers.  I was going to ask about Beef Flanken Ribs Bnls, that I found yesterday.  Of course I bought them on speculation (and many of you don't?).  Now I've got some good smoking coming up.  Thanks guys.

This is why I love this place, a simple question about a cut of meat and look at the wealth of knowledge that comes from that. I thought I knew quite a bit about meat and the various cuts but apparently not as much as I thought. Very imformative guys and high fives to FLbobecu for the question and to Cave, SOB, and Pops.