Hi, I am Victor Albisu, Chef de Cuisine here at BLT Steak in Downtown Washington, DC and we are talking about beef basics. More specifically, we are talking about the short plate today. From the short plate or the plate which happens to be the belly of the steer where we get skirt steak and hanger steak. Now hanger steak is a very popular steak especially with butchers. They used to be referred to as the butcher's steak because they wouldn't sell it. You get two hangers per steer. They are very, very flavorful due towards proximity to the kidneys of the steer. It has a really gamy flavor which a lot of chefs and butchers really, really appreciate. In France, it's called the onglet and if you have ever been to France, you will see that, that is on Bistro menus all over. But now it's catching on here in U.S. and it's a very popular and tender piece of meat. We are also talking about skirt steak today. And skirt steak is a fantastic piece of meat. You just have to know how to cook it and slice it. It also comes from the short plate and it is a very fibrous piece of meat and if you have eaten fajitas or if you have eaten -- in Latin restaurants you will see that this is very popular.
Now see how in the meat these fibers go long ways. In order to maximize the tenderness of the meat, once it has been cooked or it has been grilled or slow cooked, you will want to slice it against the grain or perpendicular to the grain because by cutting the grain, it intensifies the tenderness of the skirt steak and if you were to slice it straight down, you will find that it is chewy and it's not as tender as it could be.
So these are moderately fatty pieces of meat. They are not excessively fatty but they have their own distinctive flavor. And flavor in beef is very simple. It comes from how much the animal uses that part of its body and fibers in the meat also refer to that. So in other segments that we will be talking about, we will be talking about the beef tenderloin and other parts which are not used as much as these parts and have less flavor. While they may be more tender, they have less flavor. Next, we will be talking about the rib and the rib eye that we get from that.