Meat science: boiled beef
A cut that is misunderstood here. We only know it cooked in broth, with horseradish and potatoes, but it has so much more to offer. But first things first. Meat is easy to understand if you see it for what it is, namely muscles that hold and move a living being! Depending on the position of the muscle on the body, it has to endure a lot or little tension or strain. If it has a lot of work to do, it is laced with tendons and firm to the bite, i.e. braised meat or goulash. But if the muscle has little to do due to its location, it is tender when raw. This means you can cut carpaccio or steaks out of it.
Now the big question: Where does the boiled beef, which we mostly know from broth, belong in terms of tenderness? Steak or braised beef? I'll answer: definitely and unequivocally steak. It is the upper part of the largest muscle in the entire cow, the gluteus maximus. This is located at the back of the thigh. It is fused to the calf at the bottom and runs over the hip at the top. The strange thing about it is that this muscle runs from the back into the back of the thigh. The back is tender meat, but the back of the thigh is not. This means that only part of the gluteus maximus is tender, namely the part above the hip: the boiled beef. The rest of the entire muscle is known as the underside. If the entire gluteus maximus is on the table, you can recognize the boiled beef from the outside by the closed fat cover in a lean cow. It is a little more difficult from the inside. It is actually tender where the back begins. If you cut away all the fascia, you can see 4 blood vessels in the boiled beef. The boiled beef is cut off from the underside between the third and fourth blood vessels. This was explained to me rather straightforwardly: "After the third vein, it gets tough!" In Austria it is called the rump cap and the English name is cap of rump. Evidently, the people who gave it its name in Austria and England had the same idea. I don't know how the name boiled beef came about. Perhaps it has something to do with the pointed shape of the cut. The closed layer of fat that completely covers the outside is striking. If you look at a cow's rear, you will notice a pad of fat to the right and left of the cow's tail. This is the fat cap of the boiled beef under the skin. This can vary greatly depending on the fat content of the carcass. This spot next to the tail is also felt to determine the fat content of the carcass in the live animal. This method is known to livestock traders as the tail grip.
In contrast to roast beef, boiled beef does not have a thick tendon between the aromatic fat and the tender meat. That is what makes boiled beef a brilliant steak for me. Cut into 3 to 4 cm thick slices across the grain, each steak has a strip of fat on one side that you can really crisp up at the end of the cooking process. Beef steak with a crust!
What should not be forgotten at this point is churasco. In South America, boiled beef with a fat cap is known as picanha. A classic churrasco skewer consists of around 10 cm wide pieces of picanha and maminha (mayor's piece), which are cooked low and slow next to the fire. Shortly before serving, the layer of fat is seared and the meat is carved directly from the skewer. Finally, a word about boiled beef in broth. If you do it right, the boiled beef is not thermally raped in boiling water until it is unrecognizable, but rather slowly cooked in 80 to 90 °C hot broth to a core temperature of 58 to 60 °C. In other words, quick frying in water. Regardless of whether you cut your boiled beef raw into steak slices or carve it boiled, the direction of the grain is important. The meat grain runs fan-shaped through the boiled beef. The easiest way for the untrained eye would be to proceed as follows: starting from the tip, cut the narrow part into slices. After about halfway through, turn it by 90°C and cut the thick part into slices. Have fun with a different kind of boiled beef!
1) The abdominal wall (belly flap) is first separated from the hanging hindquarter.
2) After removing the fillet head, the spine with the back muscle (roast beef) can be completely removed by making a cut in one of the intervertebral discs.
3) From the leg lying on the cutting table, I first take out the pelvic bone.
4) Now I lift off the so-called upper shell on the inside of the thigh to expose the femur.
5) The thigh bone (os femoris) is deboned.
6) I now separate all the parts from the remaining part of the leg (nut / calf / hip / mayor's piece / semmer roll / underside with boiled beef) until only the underside and boiled beef (gluteus maximus) remain. Here the fascia are now lifted off
7) The blood vessels are clearly visible in the boiled beef.
8) Cutting the tip of the sirloin from the bottom shell.
9) If you turn the whole thing over, you can clearly see that the Tafelpitz has much more fat covering than the bottom shell.
Now it's time to grill! How about, for example, boiled beef low & slow with coriander-mint relish from Elmar Fetscher? You can find this and other recipes for boiled beef in our recipe database and of course there is even more meat and butcher knowledge from Philipp Sontag in the FIRE&FOOD magazine or in our practical and affordable eDossiers .
