I spent a whole day trying to break down a whole beef shoulder clod the 'right' way
Honestly, I thought I knew my way around a primal cut. This massive shoulder clod came in from a local farm, and I decided to follow this detailed breakdown guide from a big industry magazine. They had all these perfect, clean separations for flat iron, petite tender, and teres major. Ngl, it was a nightmare. The muscle seams on this specific animal were nothing like the pictures. I must have spent 3 hours just trying to find the right angle to free the flat iron without mangling it. My knife kept hitting gristle and weird connective tissue that wasn't in the diagram. What should have been a 90-minute job turned into a full 8-hour shift of careful picking and frustration. I ended up with the muscles, but the yield was way off and I felt like I wasted a ton of time. Has anyone else had a breakdown guide completely fail them on a real, non-textbook piece of meat?