PREMIUM
News

Making the cut

Step 1: This photo shows a look at the “inside” of a blade roast. A steak being a cross-section of a roast. Here is an oyster blade steak beside an eye fillet steak — you can see why the eye fillet is so easy to cook quickly and so tender to chew — there's very little “white” sinew in an eye fillet; whereas the “shoulder”/blade steak is a road map of (white) sinew/connective tissue.

When the cook gets specific, STEVE BAIN cuts to the chase.

The nexus of this article is that Lynn wanted to pot roast a ‘portion controlled’ piece of beef for three people that would also be easy to carve.

The twist?

The cooking time would be limited to two hours.

Two hours is about the minimum time per kilogram to achieve breakdown of the sinewy/collagen (that’s the flavoursome tough stuff).

So the need was to section a typical 2kg-ish blade roast into half (to give a 1kg 'roast' for the recipe) and trim/remove the sinewy pieces.

The trimmed sinewy pieces can go into the pot to add flavour to the mixture. Additionally, the reduction of tough sinew on the cooked beef will make it easier to carve.

Step 2: To trim some of the sinew from a blade roast, and to trim it down into, in this case, two smaller pieces of meat — first, start with a typical blade roast, as butchered from the outside of a carcase’s shoulder (shoulder blade).
Step 3: Turning the blade roast on its side, you can see a “seam of toughness'’ running approximately through the middle of the ”roast”.
Step 4: Start cutting through the roast, at the seam.
Step 5: Follow the seam through the roast, cutting deeper and along the seam as you go — beef on one side of the cut, sinew on the other.
Step 6: Continue to “shave” alongside the sinew/connective tissue (all the way through the block of meat). The knife in this photo points to the large wide seam of sinew. Incidentally, this is this seam that you remove when producing flat-iron steaks.
Step 7: Now that your knife is almost all the way through the roast, along the “inside- sinew” and out the other side, cut through the final layer of sinew on the outside of the roast.
Step 8: The blade roast has now been sectioned into two almost equal pieces. Now to “skin” the silver/sinew from “tonight’s” pot roast. (The second piece can be placed back in the freezer, ready to come out for cooking in a day or two).
Step 9: Start “skinning” by undercutting the sinew and getting your knife between the underside of the “skin” and the red meat.
Step 10: Continue ‘lifting“ the bits of skin with your sharp knife
Step 11: Once the “lifted” bits are in alignment, you can get your knife under the sinew for the full width of the sinew. Start skinning the sinew from the roast, but only go a short distance under the skin for now.
Step 12: Now, keeping your knife in place, flip the entire roast upside down, and continue skinning. I find it easier to skin the sinew away from the meat when the sinew is kept flat by being placed flat against the cutting board. (This is the same as skinning a fish).
Step 13: The skin separated from the roast.
Step 14: Now we continue to skin away sinew, this time it is the sinew on the otherside/outside of the roast that is being addressed.
Step 15: And as before, once the skinning has been initiated to your satisfaction, flip the meat over to keep the sinew flat against your cutting board, and continue skinning.
Step 16: With the last big strip of sinew removed, now trim any small lumps of sinew away from the end(s) of the piece of meat.
Step 17: All of the sinew trimmed away.
Step 18: The finished ‘slab’ of beef; denuded of most of the sinew and ready for slowly pot roasting.

Steve Bain