- Hey Ben.
- Whatcha' got here?
- I gotta beef leg.
- Yoo, you sure do.
You and I have been talking about things we love about
a beef leg that no one really knows about.
We're gonna show you our favorite cuts on this entire
group of muscles which is generally disregarded
or kind of unknown to most people.
- The bulk of the beef leg is made up of four muscles.
We are goin' straight to the shank.
- [Ben] Yep.
- We love it for two reasons.
Personally, I love the actual beef shank.
Super tough, lots of collagen, tough tendons going through.
Takes a while to cook, but the cheapest muscle you can buy.
It's a fantastic braise and it has a big marrow bone in it.
It looks really cool.
Ben, why do you like the beef shank?
Personally Brent, I like it because buried in these muscles
right here, you can't even see it,
is a small steak that's usually only about a pound
called a Merlot steak.
It's one of my top three steaks on the animal.
The great thing about it is normally kind of shucked
as either ground or braised.
But when you cut out the steak it is, I think,
one of the best bangs for your buck.
Rather then Brent's four hour braise,
it's a four minute steak.
You wanna cook it super rare.
It has zero fat, but that doesn't matter.
There's so much flavor in it and it's so tender.
It's a phenomenal steak and it's super cheap.
Generally people don't think too much about the shank.
No one really gives it that much thought or care.
But, us being a whole animal butcher shop,
we have to care about every single thing.
We try and find value where other people don't.
We usually break the legs first,
which gives us our first opportunity to know
what the flavor is like on the animal.
Brent, why do we want to know?
- One of the most exciting things we think about getting
meat deliveries every week is that,
yah we get it from the same farms.
But different breeds of animal.
Different time of year.
There's gonna be different things.
Different characteristics.
We just want to taste it.
Just to know how tender it is.
There's a lot of factors.
- Yah, like if you and I were born on the same day,
it doesn't mean our musculature
is gonna be exactly the same.
Even if we ate the same things.
I'll just do a little, a little bit.
Don't need very much.
Just do a little taste.
A little dab will do ya'.
We just add a little bit a salt.
This is our first chance to actually get an idea
of all the factors Brent talked about.
Obviously the age, the breed, how the seasons worked out,
how much rain was there, all these things are gonna factor
into this.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
That flavor's fantastic.
- Nice and tender, really clean, very beefy.
- The first thing we do,
I'll stand this up so you can get a better look,
is clip this tendon right here.
For you that would be the achilles tendon.
And what that does, if you look right in there,
it creates a natural seam.
And we're just gonna follow that seam
all the way up to the knee.
And then we're gonna cut it off.
(upbeat music)
That's how you do that in exactly 15 seconds flat.
Now we have Brent's cut.
I want him my cut.
(upbeat music)
- [Brent] Alright, so what are you doing here?
- Gettin' my sweet sweet Merlot bro.
- This is the actual calf muscle, which is pretty wild
that you would take it off.
You can see all of the silver skin
that Ben's gonna trim out.
But inside of that, you can peel it apart and get
a super tender steak.
- You can even see from the color on it.
Look at the richness of the color.
That's flavor.
(upbeat music)
While we were not on camera,
you said that you make this often.
- [Brent] Yah.
- So 16 years we've known each other.
I've never known that you make this often.
Because why?
- Because you don't pay attention to me.
- Okay, I would say because you don't share anything
about your personal life,
but let's agree to disagree.
- Have you ever made this for me?
- Touche.
- Let's do this.
We have the four hour and we have the four minutes.
Both from the shank.
- Yeah, this is I think the perfect way of showing
the diversity of an animal all within essentially
a couple of inches from each other.
- True value that can be found if you go
and talk to your butcher.
- How much did this come out to?
- I think it was around 14 or 15 dollars.
- And Merlot we sell for $15.99.
If I put a value on it,
knowing what I know about it and loving it as much as I do,
it's easily like New York Strip or Ribeye price.
- I'm ready to eat it.
- Okay let's it it.
- Great.
(upbeat music)
- That's all the prep I have to do.
- [Brent] Want a pan?
- Yes please.
I'm not gonna wait for the pan to get all the way hot
before putting this in.
With certain muscles they contract a lot
when you put them in a really really hot pan.
This is one of those muscles
so it'd actually end up being a third smaller,
but a lot thicker.
By putting it in a little bit earlier, we avoid that
and it stays a little bit flatter.
(upbeat music)
- Okay Brent, I finally cooked a Merlot for you.
- It's about time.
Only 10 years in the waiting.
- [Ben] 16 I guess total.
- Okay.
Nice, that is rare.
What I like, pretty much raw in the middle.
You just want that cooked outside like we have
and then really rare on the inside.
- This is an interesting cut that most grass-fed,
grass-finished steaks you do want to cook to medium-rare.
There's only a couple that you wanna eat super-duper rare.
And this is one of them.
- If you cook this too much, it ends up getting too chewy.
But you can actually kind of see the way it's changing
during the cook on the outer edges.
It starts to look almost like cooked brisket or something.
- Right.
- The muscles are starting to break apart.
But if you look in the middle,
it's super smooth and the texture even looks more tender,
it feels more tender than the outside musculature does.
Ready to eat this?
- Yeah.
- [Ben] Don't say I never did anything for you.
- You cooked me a steak on camera that a production company
made you do.
- Cheers.
- Um, good.
Wow. - It's so good.
- It's been a minute since I've had one of these
and I was like, "oh, this is gonna be good."
But wow, this is so much better than I remember it being.
- [Ben] Yeah?
- It tastes like fatty, it's almost like buttery
and herbaceous.
Most super lean steaks, like top-round,
you get that mineral punch that's like livery,
that I really like,
but this is way more round than that.
This is freakin' delicious.
Ton of flavor.
I would put this up against any other steak on the animal.
It's fantastic.
- Brent, what's going on with your beef shank?
Did you sear it off?
- [Brent] Yeah.
- [Ben] Some onions.
- [Brent] Check.
- [Ben] Garlic. - [Brent] Check.
- [Ben] Carrots. - [Brent] Check.
- [Ben] Beef stock. Tomatoes.
Set it and forget it.
- [Brent] Set it and forget it.
- Yep.
But you're still doing a lot of running around,
so what else is happening?
- Well you asked me to make a dish, so I'm making a dish.
You said, "I've never had this before."
That's my version of you.
Uh.
- That's fairly accurate.
- Uhh.
- I'm not gonna say that's not,
that's pretty good.
- [Brent] Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- [Ben] Did you wash your hands?
- [Brent] Nope.
Never have.
- Tough look.
Tough look.
This is a dinner for one in the young house.
- I said it's a winter meal, okay?
Thank you for the steak.
- [Ben] It's no steak on a plate,
but I guess this will do.
- I made you lunch.
- Oh.
- Please, enjoy.
- That is tender.
- So you put four minutes into our friendship,
I put four hours.
- Hmm, that's really good.
Oh that's really good.
I like that it's not falling apart either.
I thought you were going to do it like falling apart tender,
but this is, still you need to cut through it,
but it's so tender.
- Which is nice, I love pot roast.
One of my favorite things.
I feel like this is the best version of it.
- It's really good.
- I think as an under utilized cut, putting a little bit
of time into it, you can make a wonderful family style dish
for very little money.
- We're feeding four people two of the best cuts we know
for under twenty bucks.
- Beef leg.
- [Brent] Boom, what up.
- [Ben] Hey, what up.
- For more episodes of Primetime, click somewhere here.
- Or here.
- But healthy.
- Boys gotta eat.