How to Prepare (and Pair 🍷) Holiday Beef — with Katie Flannery of Flannery Beef

(upbeat music) Well, hello and welcome to The Wide Access Unfiltered Podcast. We are continuing with our journey on all things, holiday, food. I'm bringing in a few friends that I know that I trust to talk about one of my favorite subjects outside of wine, which is what we eat, which hopefully you're doing a little bit of, in addition to drinking the delicious things that we send you over your part of the wine club. So, with that in mind, I couldn't do a mini series like this and not include not only one of my favorite foods, but also one of my favorite people. I think someone who really opened my eyes to what food and good purveyors of food can be. When I first moved to California and I started working at press, I full disclosure, wasn't eating a lot of beef at the time. And I know, so crazy, some of your jaws are on the floor right now. Make them back up. The situation has been rectified, but I sat at the bar and I started eating the food at press and they put beef in front of me and I was like, "Oh, I'm not really like, I'm not really eating a lot of beef right now." And I took a bite and my eyes just went completely wide because I had never tasted beef like this. And I will tell you, prior to this weird little stint in my life where I didn't eat beef, I ate a lot of beef. I was a beef girl, I was a protein queen, I was in it for the long haul. I don't know what happened. I just kind of stopped eating it. And from that point on, I was like, "Wait a minute, this beef doesn't taste like other beef that I had. What is happening here?" The moral of this story is it turns out if you eat really good beef and the beef is coming from someone that you know, someone that you trust and someone who's doing incredible things like the people at Flannery Beef, your mind can be changed. You can come back from a beef hiatus, which is what I did and I've never looked back. In fact, the person that we got on here today from Flannery Beef, she's been a friend, she's been a great person who's educated me on the subject. And I thought, you know what? I feel like all of you need a little education on beef like I did because it will change your mind. It will change your life. If you are a beef eater and if you're not, you might want to hop on that bandwagon because these guys are a bit of a, if you know, you know, although I guess less so now than they used to be, they're quite famous now. When I first met them, I think press was like one of the only clients that they had. But now they're quite famous and world renowned for doing something really special in the beef world. So we're gonna be talking with none other than Katie Flannery, third generation. - That's right. - Flannery Beef in California. Hello Katie, how are you? - Good, good. It's always good to chat with you. And it's funny, you mentioned press 'cause that was the first restaurant we were ever selling to. And I think it's been long enough now, I don't feel bad saying we were selling to press before it was legal for us to sell to press. So wait, I didn't know that that's awesome. (laughing) In order to sell for resale, so not just to somebody who walks in and buys a steak and takes it home to sell to a restaurant, who's then going to cook it and resell it. You have to be under federal inspection, not state county inspection. So, you know, dad had some set up with less where plausible deniability, but no, looking backwards, we definitely weren't allowed to do that. - Was that, was that the connection? Is that how Flannery Beef came to be at press? Was it through Leslie's? - It's through actually honest to God, you know who it was through Robert Parker, which is hilarious. - Of course it was. - Yeah. - Of course it was through Robert, of course it was. All right, let's dive in. - God loves this story. We, and this is, gosh, probably like 15 years ago, 18 years ago, much smaller than we were now, we'll just have this little tiny retail store front and we were slowly brilliant out like a website e-commerce way before e-commerce in the food realm was like popular, people were still a little bit hesitant to, you know, ship meat across the country. But somehow our product got in the hands of Robert Parker and he started posting about it on wine forums, you know, the Heedness Gile, Gazette, all that kind of stuff. And I guess he was doing a charity dinner at press and part of his deal with less, with less bread was, you know, I'll do this, but you have to serve Flannery Beef. And for a less, who was running, you know, one of the top steak houses in Napa Valley, for somebody to tell him, we're not gonna use your beef, you have to use somebody else. Like he was kinda, you know, so done jokes. He just got this phone call one day out of the blue, you know, he says, "I'm his bride." And he just says, "Well, who are you?" And it was Ruben Katz, it was Lesley's partner. He was just grilling dad, you know, who are you and why does Robert Parker want us to cook your steaks in press? And the dinner went great and then press, put us on the menu and the rest of the street. - The rest is history, that's crazy. I did not know that Robert Parker was the entry point. I just, when I got there, Trevor Conqu was the chef and he spoke so highly of it. And Spencer, why is he was the GM at the time? He also was like, you know what, we, I think we all need to like take a field trip and they would, we would have so many meetings about flanery beef and making sure that people knew what it was and what you guys were doing and why it was different because it was different. It did taste different, I think for some people, they kind of raised an eyebrow, especially when you told them, which we'll get into, that it was Holstein cattle, which was not the norm, especially for a steakhouse. So, you know, that was the first time that I really took a little divergent path into the land of beef. And, you know, I give all credit to you and your dad because you guys welcomed us into your facility. You showed us around, you showed us what you're doing. You gave, it was full transparency. Any questions that we had, you answered. And I just, it was such a great way to learn about a topic that I didn't know that I was gonna be interested in. And I, I just love that so much. And I, it's what I love about wine, but I love your passion and energy and enthusiasm. And now, I mean, you've been doing this now for how long? - You're over 18 years, which is crazy to say, I'm allowed, I mean, that's insane. - And that's just just you, 'cause, yeah. - Just you, I mean, Plenary Beef has been around since when? - The official, like, transition to Plenary Beef, I think was only in like 2011 and now, no, 2008. We needed to become thoroughly inspected in order to continue selling depressed and take on new customers. So when we were a little retail store, we were called Brian's Fine Foods because it was like a whole foods, right? Like a really high end market, Delhi. We were doing the beef that we had fish, we had cheese, we had pasta, prepared goods, all that stuff. So then when we decided to kind of move 100% into beef, being, you know, as creative as we are with memes, we said, "Plenary Beef" sounds really good. So. - It does sound good. And there's no confusion. - Yeah, no, I probably should have done like a listener discretion at the top of this episode, which is, if you're not fed at present and you're feeling like you might be hungry in the next hour, you may want to just like hit pause in this episode and circle back, go get yourself a snack, - Right. - 'Cause we're gonna be talking about very delicious things including beef and some other things. We'll also be drinking a little wine in this episode, which we normally do. This is a normal adventure for us. So if you are a part of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast, Wine Club, the wine that you should have in your hand today, if you're drinking with us is, it looks like this, if you're watching, it's got a little flower on the front label. Then the back, it's gonna say Arno Roberts, 2023, Sarah from Sonoma Coast in Sonoma County. These are only 26 barrels of this wine produced. I would venture to call this, you know, one of the darlings of California, a producer that is beloved by critics, beloved by some liais, it's got great cold following. And when we got the opportunity to include it in the Wine Club, I was like, it was a no questions asked, like say less, absolutely, how much can we get? Like, you know, what wine can we get? So I'm just thrilled to have this. And of course, if you're talking about some liais, there's one of two grapes that are probably part of the conversation, one of which is reasling in the second is gonna be Sarah. And so, you know, Sarah, Arno Roberts Sonoma County, I think this is a great entry point to the grape if you're sort of unfamiliar with it as is. But if you love Sarah, this is definitely a producer that you should know about. So we'll dive in a little bit into what the wine tastes like. But I really want to start the conversation on beef because, you know, like I said, back when I was in my press days, beef was such an important part of the conversation. And in a lot of ways, it steered me into the idea between food and wine pairing. And I really think it's important as you guys are potentially navigating the holidays and what's up ahead for you to kind of understand what's on the table, not only from how it's tasting, but also from what you're choosing in the store. Now, I will mention that you can order flinary beef online. You can get all the delicious things that we're gonna be talking about. And in fact, this is something that my family regularly does. We always have flinary beef somewhere. And someone's freezer, there is flinary beef somewhere. And we always have it at the holidays. So, and we live in the East Coast. So it is possible. But I kind of first want to start with what you guys are doing differently, Gady. And sort of how you built your business. 'Cause I hinted at this whole steam thing. And I think it's so interesting because when people think of steak, don't think of holes. Dairy cattle, they think of Angus. So can we start there? - Yeah, it's actually, it's all tied to kind of like the family legacy, if you will, because we're not ranchers. We're not raising cattle ourselves, and that's because my grandfather, his first job in San Francisco in, and what was it like, the 1930s, was sweeping the floors of a butcher shop, and he eventually rose the ranks where he was running the entire show, and then opened up his own butcher shop in San Francisco, which is actually still run by my uncle to this day in Pacific Heights, which is kind of fun. But so we've always been in that kind of landscape, if you will. We are considered a further processor. We are buying from slaughterhouses, and then we're trying to do something to make it better, so that when we sell it to our customers, we can say this is going to be the best in show. And for the longest time, my grandfather, my father when he was younger, my uncles to this day, sourced Angus, because that's what was believed to be, one of the top quality animals available in the United States, and it was about 20 years ago or so, that just by chance, Dom received a case of Holstein, and he jokes, he's very upfront. Had he known it was Holstein when he received it, he would have rejected it. Just on the basis, we do not use this breed. You know, that's because what's interesting, if anybody has like traveled outside of the United States, in Europe, almost all of the beef is coming from Holstein cattle, because Holstein are considered a dual purpose breed. In the United States, we have so much land that the two industries can kind of like be siloed. The dairy industry operates completely outside of the beef industry. And so the beef industry, their mindset is, I want my guess, that's the breed. The dairy industry says, I need a Holstein, that's the breed. I think nowadays, it's something like 85% of dairy produced in the United States is coming from Holstein. So we have a ton of Holstein. And if the beef industry doesn't want the Holstein, because we can hear the other crazy part, and it's kind of funny, like maybe 10 years ago or so, I would pitch the restaurants to chefs. This is Holstein and a lot of people would just kind of shut the door in my face and say, nope, I'm not interested in using old dairy females. I kind of had to say, that's great, but you do know that males exist too, right? Like just because you say that we're Holstein, and people just think, oh, female, female, female. There's two sides to the right. I mean, and so in a weird way, the male Holstein's are a byproduct of the dairy industry, because the females need to keep calving in order to keep producing milk. But if you're a dairy farm and you get a male calf, there's no use for it. So for the longest time, Holstein's were kind of like shoved over into the beef industry, but it was like this dirty little secret where people sold it, but don't ever say it's Holstein. Don't say that word out loud. And so I think we were probably one of the first on this coast to on the west coast to really kind of loud and proud, say, this is Holstein beef. You know, let me educate on why it's different and why we should take a chance on it before just going with this like historical, no, that's not what we use. - Right. So your dad gets this case of Holstein accidentally, and what is he notice about it? - He said, you know, he opens it up, and there were, you know, four pieces in a case, and he said three were gorgeous. The fourth was like a holy moly. The marbling. The marbling pattern on Holstein will be, and so marbling is when you're talking about beef, the small specks of fat within the muscle itself. So it's intramuscular fat. That's what we mean when we say marbling. And so the marbling pattern on Holstein will tend to be smaller and more diffuse than you will sometimes see in an angus. Everybody can probably think of wagyu, right? We've all seen pictures of wagyu. Wagyu is another breed, and it's characterized by heavy marbling. So think of the big streaks of fat running through that steak. Holstein has tiny, tiny, tiny little pinfrix. And so it's a very different marbling pattern. - So you notice the marbling, right? And obviously this looks different than, I guess you were getting angus previously. And so when you look at that, are you immediately like, all right, is this something that is a regularity? Is it a fluke? Is it something that I should be digging into? I mean, what next to, and do you cook it up? I mean, what next steps do you take from there? - The next thing that Dad did was to call the supplier and say, I want to bring in more of this product. To identify just that, was this a fluke, right? Could this have just been one case of fantastic product? What we see in the beef industry a lot is that within a grade, you will have swings of quality. You can try to kind of like mitigate those swings if you know where, what plants to buy from. And so that's kind of like where we fall in this role. Like we are very specific about where we bring the product in because we like, an example, a couple years ago, we brought in some product from a plant in Pasco, Washington, and it was USDA prime. And you know, we bring a couple cases in. It was horrible quality, but it was marked USDA prime. But you pick a piece from that and you put it to our normal product that we're used to bringing in. And I mean, it didn't even look choice. It was that bad. And so you will, you can kind of navigate by knowing where you're getting from. If they have like a high quality baseline, that'll kind of weed out a lot of those lesser quality ones. So the first thing you wanted to do was make sure, okay, can I get more from this plant? And it wasn't, it wasn't for a couple months that he realized it was Holstein. And he jokes, he should have, he says, you know, he should have known because the marbling looked different. The Holstein's also have a smaller eye or diameter to the muscles. So visually there are things that like for me right now, I could pick out most of the time, not all the time, but I could pick out what's Holstein, what's Angus by looking at it. But back then, he didn't think to, you know, is this a different breed? He just fell in love with it. And then it was not going back. - And then I assume like, okay, so if I go to the grocery store today, I go to like a Whole Foods. I assume most of what I'm seeing in grocery stores is still Angus, right? Like you guys are sort of outliers in supplying beef that's Holstein, right? - Yes and no, it's probably, it's Angus. It might be herfered, it could be Holstein. A lot of your supermarket aren't really going to call out the breed. They might, if they're pulling from any local ranchers, they might call out the ranch and then you could go online and look up that ranch and see, you know, what type of breed they're running. The thing with Angus though, is Angus is both a breed and a program. Like have you sort of certified Angus beef? - Yes. - Okay, so certified Angus beef basically means that, you know, if you want to call your product that, you have to like hit these check boxes, right? - Okay. - But you could be raising Angus and bring Angus to market that's not certified Angus beef. It's honest. - Got it, got it, got it. - Right. - Yeah, no, I mean, we see that in wine, right? Like you can have a wine coming from Barolo and it can be from the Nebula grape, but if it's not made according to all of the certifications of video CG, then you cannot call it Barolo. - Yeah. - There's our wine, there's our wine tie-on for the episode. - Well, and I was, it's funny. Whenever we're talking waegu, I'll usually throw in like a similar to the champagne or you know that operation in control, right? You know, waegu is a breed of animal. And so you can have good genetics where it's a high quality genetics or you could take that breed and craft breed it with the Neungus and get, you know, lower quality genetics, but they're still all gonna be called waegu. Kobi, Kobi is a prefecture in Japan. So if a waegu animal comes from Kobi, they can call it Kobi beef. But if a waegu animal comes from America, you can't call it Kobi beef. So that's where like American waegu has kind of a term. I think I hope more people know about it because I don't know if you've seen it. I think that a lot of people are confusing waegu with a quality level. Yes, yes. And it's not a quality, it's a breed. It's a breed. It's a type of cow. And then, but it can be raised anywhere. Like I could have it in my backyard today and I could sell that as waegu, but it wouldn't necessarily be the waegu that we would think of when we think of true Japanese Kobi. What happened is I think it was in the 70s, Japan sent several bowls to the United States. And then the then Japan declared the waegu breed a national treasure. So they don't export the genetics anymore. So if you have waegu within the United States, in order to keep your herd healthy, you're constantly crossbreeding and then you'll have to bring the genetic spec up. And so it's almost like more scientific than any average consumer wants to go into. But if you're buying waegu, you should know what percentage of the animal is waegu and what the other percentage is at 50%. 50% angus is at 75%, you know, all of these, and there's levels, there's memes, there's words for all of this stuff out there. So you can't find it, but a lot of producers aren't going into that level of detail. And I think you've got some bad actors there, 'cause if you have a low quality wagyu, they can put it out with a wagyu on it. And if the consumer thinks it's like quality, okay, you know, a hard dollar for it. - Right, yeah, no, I think that's a great distinction. And again, I think going back to one of those things that was sort of a late-bold moment when I toured and talked with you guys. Like there are so many little things that you just, you think that you know about something that's such a regular occurrence in your life, right? Like so many of us are going to the store and buying beef, or we're going to restaurants and we're ordering beef, we're eating beef on such a regular basis, and you hear these words over and over, and you think you know what they mean, but then all of a sudden some people actually turns out, "Durons, no, reality is a surprising amount of detail." I want to circle back a little bit because one of the things that you mentioned was the grading of like choice versus prime. And I think that was a big aha moment for me too, when you guys were like, "Oh, this is like a human that goes through a facility." And just what their eyeballs looks at it and goes, you know, that to me was such an important life lesson where it's like, "Oh, there's a lot of human and by extension human error associated with these grading processes," and not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think it would be great to sort of illuminate what this process looks like because a lot of us are going into the store going, "Oh, we don't eat choice, but we only want to eat prime beef." So what does that grading process look like? - Well, it's funny, since you were here taking a tour at press technology, how's caught up with us? So, yeah, in the past, what happens, and here's an interesting note, you are not required to grade your animals. So if you've got to heard and you bring into the slaughterhouse, if you want to get a USDA grade and that's prime choice, select, you actually have to pay the government to come in and perform that. And so if you've ever heard people throw out like, what percentage of beef is prime, there's two numbers, around 2%, or around 10%. It's around 10% of graded animals will be graded prime, if you look at all animals, it's around 2%. So that can kind of be tricky because you hear both and you're like, "Well, how can they both be right?" 'Cause you're looking at different datasets. But what happens at the slaughterhouse, if you decide to have your animals graded, is they make an incision on the corkest between the rib and the loin, kind of like lower back area, and it will display this eye of the meat, right? This little window into the soul. And the grader would simply walk down the line and from that single slice, make a determination of the quality of the entire animal. - That's crazy. - And to your point, when it was a human doing this, there's always gonna be like human factors, right? Like it could be their first day on the job, right? They could be hungover, they could have just had a bad breakup. You know, sometimes things miss the mark. What a lot of the big plants have transitioned to now is computer systems. And so that same eye of me, a computer takes a picture and it will actually spit out this algorithm of what percentage is marbling, you know, what's the exterior fat and they kind of grade it. And so now the grader is like, sit at a computer and it's like, it's like Tinder, they like swipe left, swipe right, like crime, food. So you, but that said, you still see variances because again, you know, this is just one little piece that we're looking at and making a decision on entire carcass. Like we have run into that where you start cutting at one end of the primal, that's like the whole muscle group, okay? So I'm cutting stakes, beautiful, beautiful. And then they just start getting worse and worse and worse and by the other end, it's just like that's going in the grinder. - So when that happens, does it always go to the grinder or are there other places that you might find it? Like is that how you might find like a discounted cut of beef? You know, it depends on who's producing it because so we kind of do like our own internal grade where we say if we don't think this is deserving of USDA prime, we'll pull it back. A lot of other places won't because in their, you know, mindset, I don't agree with it, but they're like, well, the government said this is prime. I paid prime for it. So I'm gonna sell it as prime. So you know, you can see that happen and I don't think I blame those people. It's, I guess if you're just like, if you are looking at pennies, that makes sense. I just don't agree with it. - Yeah, no, but you guys have sort of an additional secondary, not grading, but inspection, right? When the meat comes in, like you do an additional peak at things and say, yeah, this is up to quality or it's not. And that kind of came about as a result of our dry aging program. So it also is something that's just like really unique. - Great sense. - I know, right, perfect. The dry aging aspect means that, 'cause when beef leaves the slaughterhouse nowadays, every single primal, self-rival, my big muscle group, is cryobach, back in sealed. For us to dry, we have to remove it from the cryobach. So every single piece of meat in our dry aging program, we are basically looking at, as we open it. And we take that time to identify, okay, this piece looks weak, we're gonna segregate it and maybe move it somewhere else. Whereas if you weren't doing that step and you're just kind of rolling through product, things could slip by easier. - And so dry aging is what? - There are two types of aging. There's wet aging and there's dry aging. Honestly, if we could change this, we should call them aerobic aging and anaerobic aging. Because that's the difference, the presence of oxygen. In a vacuum sealed bag, you pretty much have like, hit the pause button on any flavor development, right? It's suspended animation, nothing is really going to happen. When you're dry aging by introducing oxygen, you're basically allowing a couple other chemical things to happen that will increase the depth of flavor. And so like the two main things that happened during dry aging come from moisture loss and microbial growth. So moisture loss, you take the primal and we just put it on a rack in a cooler, okay? So you control the temperature and you're allowing air flow. 360 degrees all the way around the primal. That lets moisture from within the muscle evaporate. Easiest kind of like, weight understanding what's happening when you take a stock and turn it into a demi, right? As the moisture evaporates from that pot of liquid, it gets more and more concentrated, right? Right. Same thing happens with beef. The more moisture that you pull out of the muscle, the more concentrated, the more beefy the flavor gets. So that's the first thing. The second thing and this is going to be very dependent on who is dry aging and where you're dry aging is microbial growth, which is just a fancy way of saying mold. Is there mold present on the product? Different species of mold will have different flavor profiles and you have a lot of people that believe there should be no mold growth, which is absolutely fine. From my perspective, that means you're only relying on that dehydration aspect. So you're kind of only, you know, pushing one lever forward to get flavor development. Whereas for us, we are very pro mold, like super mold. If you follow our Instagram, like I get a lot of mold on the product and I get a lot of pissed off people commenting on how much mold we get, but it's phenomenal for flavor. It really, really is. And are you controlling the type of mold? Is it something that's naturally occurring? Is it, you know, is it like fermentation where you introduce a specific type of yeast strain and that creates a different flavor profile? Yeah. And it's kind of like the sourdough starter concept where, and sometimes you'll get confused with that with beef. It's not that the mold is present on the beef when it comes to us, right? So you could buy a primal from the exact same supplier I am and put it in a dry bedroom. You're not going to get my product. The mold is in our coolers. And so we're introducing it to the meat. When we open it, kind of at the beginning of that process, we've, I guess I, I've gotten geeky enough that about two years ago, I just went into this like scientific deep dive. I got all of the mold genetically sequenced so that we know the exact species that we're working with. And it's actually really interesting. It's a, a lot of people will think, oh, everybody, you've heard blue cheese as a flavor, like kind of descriptor for dry hydrate. There is a certain type of mold, penicillin, rock 40, that really likes to grow on beef. And it also is what's used in blue cheese. So I was thinking, okay, maybe we got something like that. I don't know. Totally different species. And it's funny. I was reading this research paper and it was like 1931, way before science was like this in depth. And it was describing this mold. And it was kind of fuzzy, purplish, like whispers. I was like, that's totally mine. And it was called Thamnidium. I was like, that is the coolest fucking name I've ever heard. If I can tell people that my mold is Thamnidium. So I send it out, I'm like, please God, Thamnidium. The death results come back. It's called Mucor, which sucks. Oh, less sexy. I know, so I gotta come up with a different name or something. But you know, whatever I'm doing with my diligence, like where else is this particular strain found? Yada, yada, yada. It turns out there is a French cheese called Thomas de Sava. I don't know if he's ever had it. - Oh, love Thomas de Sava. - Guess what type of mold is used in the production of Thomas de Sava? - Tommy, it's mucore. - mucore. How cool is that? - Amazing, we love that, that's so cool. - Yeah, and so that's why like, and it was cool. It was kind of like a light bulb moment for me because I've always had our product and wondered, you know, why does everybody say blue cheese when they eat dried beef? Like mine doesn't taste like blue cheese. It's kind of nutty. It's got some of that fun, but it's not blue cheese. I have a totally different mold. And it is, it's very much like that Thomas de Sava kind of like a warmer, I think it's a more palatable flavor profile. - It's that perfect cheese for someone that wants, like wants to dabble in the funk, but isn't quite ready to leave the world of like, you know, something less pungent like a brim. Like they're not, they're not quite, they're like, they've, you know, they grew up on maybe Velveeta and some, you know, more American cheeses and like, well, brie sounds interesting, but I'm not quite ready to go to roke for like Thomas de Sava, great. It's the chateau enough to pop of cheese. Like it's a great little bridge and from the new world to the old world. It's a perfect cheese. And I think it's a perfect description of your beef because it does, they're, to me, the flinary beef. And I know you guys at press were doing like somewhere on like an 18 day dry age. It was like the perfect amount of funk where it like, it's there, it's present, but it's not the only thing that you're getting. Like you're still, I think one of the, you know, the commentaries on dry age is like, well, I don't want my beef to taste like cheese. I wanted to taste like beef. And so you guys kind of nailed that 18 day perfection. Is that still kind of the range you guys are in or was that specific for press? - We do that specifically for wholesale. And so on our website, our baseline is about 30 days because for most retail consumers who are familiar with dry age beef, they're looking for that. That's kind of the sweet spot. We do the 14 18 day for our restaurant clients who are kind of in that position where they want to put something on the menu, but they don't know if the diner has ever had dry age beef before. And if you put down something super strong or even like, you know, midway strong, there's not almost like hesitation. And so it's like, when I talk to chefs, I pitch it, I'm like, this is the Goldilocks of dry age. It's just the right amount. - Yeah, no, people loved it. There was always going to be someone that had questions about the whole scene, questions about the dry age. And you know, you kind of guide him through, but it's the nature of working at a steakhouse. But the other thing about a steakhouse is you've got to guide people through the different cuts of beef. We've kind of talked about beef in general, but obviously different cuts are going to give you different things. Obviously, you know, some of the more familiar ones, New York strip, rib eye, filet. Can you kind of break down what some of the more popular cuts are going to give you? And maybe what people should be seeking out based on different preferences? - Yeah. So what you just mentioned there, those are considered middle meats in the industry. So they're coming from basically the middle of the animal. And it's going to be the rib and the loin, right? So kind of like from your neck down to your rump, if you will. That's a very small kind of percentage of the animal, but that's where the top quality pieces are. Starting at the neck, kind of halfway down, that's the rib, all right? And so you can get bone-in rib eye steaks, or you could get bone-less rib eye steaks. That's where your seven rib rib roast will come from. So a whole seven rib. - Big big vanna Christmas. - I know, I eat one. - Okay, here's a quick note though, when we say prime rib, that doesn't mean it's USDA prime. You can have a USDA prime rib, or a USDA choice prime rib. So be careful on that. I swear the mean industry does that just to screw people up, it's not fair. - Yeah, they're very similar to wine. They like to confuse people like that. - Yeah, so prime rib doesn't bind nature, mean that it's prime grade. So you do wanna keep an eye out for that. But then the rib moves into the loin. And so that's where you would get your New York. You can get porterhouses, tea bones, and bone-in New York's, and your filets from there. So that's really the realm that we live in here, 'cause those are your kind of like your top movers. - And what do you think is the best for someone who loves like, I personally, I'm a rib eye girl. I like, I like, you know, a hefty amount of marbleization, but I know that's not necessarily the case for, everyone, what do you think is the best? - I think you have to balance what you want in terms of fat content and in tenderness. All right, so if you're just saying, I want the most tender thing in the entire world, that is what I have to have. You have to go with the filet. That's the most tender muscle there is. The filet doesn't have that much fat to it. It doesn't have that much flavor to it. If we're being very honest, the filet is kind of boring, but it will give you that tenderness. If you flip it on the other side and you say, okay, I want pure flavor. That is the number one thing I'm looking for. You hit the nail on the head. You wanna go with the rib eye. The rib eye's gonna have a lot more flavor. It will have more internal fat. So that's not to say it will have more marbling, the intramuscular fat. The rib eye actually has kind of a seam of fat that runs right through the middle. So that's what I mean by internal fat. Like if you can think of, you've had a slice of prime rib, and there's that little kind of nugget of fat right in the middle, that is present in the rib eye. So if you don't like that, do a filet, or if we're talking roast, I'll say we're just straight into roast now. The New York is an interesting cut because all of the fat on that primal and the steaks runs along one side. So we do something called a club roast. It's like for my grandparents time, the rib roast is like what everybody thinks of as holiday dinner right now, right? Back then it was actually a club roast. People eat New York roasts for their holiday dinner. Yeah, it's kind of like a blast to the past. But the club roast is really nice if you kind of wanna split the difference between the rib eye and the filet because it has more flavor, but all of the fat is on the exterior of the roast itself. So after you cook it, it'll really like benefit from that clapp being present. But then when you slice, when it's on your plate, you can just cut the fat off 'cause I'm assuming somebody in the house wants that, right? I mean, only the sociopaths. Yeah. I proudly consider myself one of them. So okay, so do you order it as a club roast? Like if you're going to a butcher, is that what it's still called or is there another name? Yeah, you know, I don't know. There might be another name. It's based, it's a bonus New York roast. That's, you know, we call it a club roast just because that's what my grandfather called it, you know, decades ago. Makes me a grasshopper and like taking it after the 50s, I'm here for it, that sounds awesome. It's my favorite, actually. It's what I really like 'cause if we're doing steaks, I wanna rib eye, okay? I personally am not a fan of like a full traditional rib roast because I think it's hard to get that kind of like internal fat fully cooked. And I don't like undercooked fat. It's just kind of greasy, the texture is like not there for me. When you do it as a steak, you can get it cooked and you get that hearts here on one side. So I'm, you know, I don't know if I can say it out out around bad, but I don't like rib roasts. Well, that's a good question. So okay, so what happens at the holiday table at your house? What do you guys, what do you guys think? Well, the butcher's always eat what doesn't sell. So it's, so you chicken. No, it's just whichever, whatever roasts we have kind of like leftover, they'll usually make it home. So it's usually there will always be a club roast, some size of rib roast, that doesn't really like tenderloin. So it's, and then depending on the people, but it's usually me do both a club roast and a rib roast. So you kind of get the best of those worlds. I'm with dad, I'm not a tenderloin person. I've never understood like the soft meat thing, but that's a person, you know, this is like white. It's like it's just a personal thing. You know, it's, there's, there's a time and a place for it, I think I do like tenderloins, it like, okay, if you're doing a Wellington, you want a tenderloin, right? That's true. If you are gonna be slaving in the kitchen for like this crazy sauce, the tenderloin would work really well with that because it's kind of like a blank palette, right? Like, like you can do it every walk. Yeah, no, if it's just like a steak fry itself, boring. Yeah, I'm not here for it. Or if I am to your point, there better be a really good sauce or like a really good wine, which by the way, I have completely ignored the entire show. If you're drinking with us, to me, Sera is like, it's like a steak and wine dinner and a glass. Like it gives you all the meatiness of a of a steak. There's like, it's like charcuterie and olive and pepper and all of these like really savory things that we think of when we think of meat. But then there's all of this delicious kind of purpley, juicy fruit in here. And because it's coming from California, that purpley fruit is a little more amplified than it would be if you got it from like a cooler climate in like the northern Rome or some of these like cooler climate places and France that they make these kind of very black cracked pepper kind of vibes. This has to me, because it's being made in the new world and it has old world tendencies to it is sort of the best of both worlds. So I would say first and foremost, like if you're drinking with us, stick your nose in the glass because aromaticly, this is one of the most interesting grapes out there. Red grapes don't normally give you this level of aromatic. Normally, it's fruit and maybe a few flowers, but Sarang gives you so much. And that's, I think that's in a lot of ways why Psalms really loves Sarang. It's why reasling is often in the same conversation because aromatically it's just so interesting you can keep going back to it without having to take a sip. But then you take a sip and you notice that, you know, it has all this rich fruit, it has all of these like savory things, but it has this like, to me, it's like very perfect tanin. And it's not soft tanin, like a pino, it's not aggressive tanins, like a capricious ovenon. It's usually just kind of like somewhere in between. Obviously we want tanin for beef. It has to be part of the conversation when you're talking about food and wine pairing 101, your protein of your beef and your tanin. They kind of like, they kind of come together, they do a little dance, they spin each other around and then they're gone, they're off the dance floor, they've exited and gone somewhere that I don't want to know about. And that's kind of how that pairing works. And, you know, when we start, you know, bringing salt into the conversation, that's where fruits really lovely. And this is why red wines work really well. But I think if you're talking about some of my favorite food and wine pairings, you have to talk about Sarah and beef. Everybody loves to talk about carbonate, but Sarah and beef is just one of my favorites. How do you feel about Sarah? - No, first I got to ask you because I don't want to cut this up. I got two wine glasses, which one am I supposed to use? - Which one has come for you? - That's one. - Then use that one. (laughing) - But just don't want to be like, - She's a little brown. (laughing) - So no, there's no, no. I know it. - Oh my God. - I have to tell you, in my older age, I've changed my outlook on a few things in life. And wine glasses are one of them. I think they're incredibly important. I love my stems. This is a Gabrielle glass. It's a universal wine glass. Katie held up both the stemless and a wine glass that has a stem, not that stemless is in a wine glass. You know, she said, "Which one?" I said, "Whichever one is comfy." And I believe that because I think there is this tactile thing that happens with your hands before it hits your mouth, that if it's unpleasant in your hand, you're not going to want to drink it. You know, wine isn't just the juice that exists in the glass. It's everything that's around it. It's the way that the glass hits your mouth. And if it feels like a stem is too cumbersome, if it feels like that's the wrong choice for whatever environment or mood you're in, then it's the wrong choice. It doesn't matter what the wine is. The right choice is the right glass for you at the time. And that's what I mean about changing my mind because I think back in the day, I was like, "No, it has to have a stem." And I'll give you all the reasons why a stem is great. And this style of wine glass is great. But I also know the reality, the situation, you've got three kids in the middle of your day right now. Two kids glasses, they're on a podcast. Like, it's a week before Thanksgiving and business time. Like, when that case, it should be like, "Don't be listing." Exactly, exactly. And I think that is sort of the name of the game with the holidays. It's like, however it can get into your system and make you feel happy, I support that decision for you. But going back to Sarah, do you drink Sarah? Is this a great thing? I don't drink Sarah. I am in a pino phase of my life right now. I love this for you. I do that. I'm actually kind of digging this right now. Well, they say that pino and Sarah are very close cousins. People like in Sarah more to Cabernet, but the genetics of it all is actually it's closer to pino, which makes a lot of sense because they think structurally it resembles pino a bit more. And then, aromatically, like I said, you don't normally get aromatics like this with Cabernet. You do get more interesting aromatics with something like pino nowhere. So I get it. And Arno Roberts is just one of these great producers that's on every major wine list across the country. Psalms love them, critics love them. I love them. And I like them because I think there's a purity of fruit here that doesn't feel empty. And sometimes, by makers are like, oh, I'm a minimalist, minimalist wine maker. And you're like, all right, but it doesn't really taste like anything. But these guys, I feel like they strike a balance of minimal intervention, really letting the grape shine. And then also, just do a little something to make it a little bit. It's like the salt and pepper of it all, which is a great question. I mean, seasoning wise, are you pro like a steak rub? Are you pro sauces, salt pepper? Like, what's your, what's your game plan here? Oh, again, it's going to depend on the cut, right? So if it's a cut that doesn't have a lot of inherent flavor, it's going to be a tenderloin. You need to do something. If it's something like a rib eye, you can go simple with salt and pepper. And then ask yourself about the dryaging, right? Because not everybody is doing a dryage or roast for Christmas. If it's dryaged, then I am adamantly in the camp of you really don't have to do anything. Because that's bringing so much more flavor to the table that you could do some crazy butter-crusted whatever. But it'd be a lot of work for a little bit of game, potentially. Because again, baseline, it's already going to be head and shoulders above what you might be used to with an unaged cut. But not like in our house, and especially for dad, it's only salt and pepper. You can't do anything else. God forbid you do a nerve rub. If it's green, he's not into it. He doesn't like that. Do you do the-- I mean, I've always heard you got to kind of pat it dry, get as much of that external moisture off of it so you can get the myelard effect, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then salt. And but I've heard a few different schools of salt. So the salt thing, I've salted the night before and left it in the fridge. I've salted it just before. I've salted it out. Where do you think salt needs to hit the stick? If it's a rib eye in New York, something like that. For salt, I don't know that it would depend on the cut as much as it would on the age. If it is drenched, you do not need to salt it in advance. If it's not drenched, I would salt it probably the night before. Because the purpose of the salt is to draw moisture out from the muscle itself. So we've already taken care of that for you with the dry aging process, right? Your first point about making sure that the exterior is dry for that myelard, we actually, you do want that. So regardless of what you do before you throw it in the oven or on the grill, pat it dry. But for that concept of how long an advance to salt, again, if it's not drenched day before, if it is, you really don't have to. I think I know the answer to this question. But every now and then, I'm not going to name names. But every now and then, I see family members douse their stakes in olive oil before they grill them. How do we feel about that? Oh, why? I feel like it's the least of olive oil. This is my-- This is my-- I mean, if we're having a rib eye, right? And you can clearly see there's going to be a lot of fast food rendered out of this thing. Like, what are we doing here? You don't need to do that. But I, you know, to your point about the wine glass is like, you can cook your steak however you want, right? I don't have to agree with it. It's funny. I will name names. My husband humbles me every day because I made him-- and I throw him under the bus all the time. I feel so bad. I love you, Nick. He hates darn beef. He just-- and any steak I bring home, you know, the ketchup comes out. The barbecue sauce comes out. I just think-- but it cannot be. Stop it. He does not break out the red sauces. Oh, yeah. I'm working on the kids, right? That's like my line in the sand. Like, I'm not going to say anything about you, but we are not raising the children to eat meat like that. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I mean, I guess like, I will never yuck someone's yum if ketchup and barbecue sauce are your thing. It feels me. It absolutely feels me. It's not the decision for you. But I will die on that hill. It will never hit my table. I'm also just like not it. I'm not a ketchup barbecue sauce fan in general. It has to be really, really, really extenuating circumstances for either those things to be-- I think he's just brought out the-- --the sauce that's just barbed to you, not mistakes. Yeah. And there's a time and place for everything. I agree. Katie, I know we're getting down to our last few minutes. And I just want to make mention again, that all of the delicious steaks that are-- where all the work has been done for you, where the easiest thing that you can do for the holidays is just buy a really good cut of beef and not fuck it up. That's all you have to do. It is a giant-- I will shamelessly plug our product on that. It is nice when you take the plunge and buy something of such a high quality. It's like buying an insurance policy, right? It's hard to mess up. So if you've got this big dinner splurge because then you can rest easy. Right. Yeah, I'm with you. I think, listen, I love my recipes out there. I love trying to do all the fun things. It's to me, the holiday dinners are just about getting through it and trying to make something a little bit delicious, right? Seriously. And the easiest thing you can do is just buy really good quality product. And you guys make the best of me. And I would not have had you on here if I didn't truly believe that steel. Oh my god, how long have we known each other now? I was at press in 2015. So here we go. I genuinely believe that you guys are just, you know, kind of intended it cut above the rest. And I continue buying from you, even here in Pennsylvania, you know, where we, you know, not that we don't have great purveyors of beef out here, but it is different. And I will also, we didn't talk about the Jorge. And I think that I need to at least drop it into the conversation because, and I'll shout out my friend Luke from California. 'Cause it's on story to it. We can keep talking about that. It's got a fun story. Yeah, the, so the hor, you can tell the Jorge story, but I will say that every, every, so I'm part of this fantasy football league and my friend Luke is the commissioner. And we have a side bet for when we play each other. And the winner gets a Jorge. And I have yet to receive a Jorge. I've always sent the Jorge. And every freaking time I do it, I'm like, I want my own. You guys are one. Okay, so, so you have to pull, you have to plug the Jorge. 'Cause the Jorge, you know, when the Jorge is on the line, there is nothing better. So what is the Jorge? It's funny. For all intents and purposes, it's a bonin rib steak. But the backstory on the Jorge, and this goes way back to, you know, our roots when we were a tiny, tiny little company with a butcher shop. And, you know, this guy would call up and he ordered now and then and then one day he calls dad and he says, okay, I need, you know, I want to tell you about a steak that I want you to cut. And this is exactly how I want it done. You know, I want it the full bow and I only want it from the chuck end of the rib, you know, you know, you know, dad's kind of listening and thinking, you know, oh, like this just sounds like a lot of work. And then more he goes, you know, and I need a hundred of them. It's like, oh, okay, you know, 'cause back then, it was like massive for us. That's huge. Yeah, it was fantastic. So it turns out that Jorge would throw parties for his distributors. And so what he wanted was a cut of beef to, you know, cook and serve at this party. And it was the main thing about it is it's full bone from the chuck end of the rib. So we were kind of talking, you know, rib come from your neck about halfway down. This is only from the side that's on the neck of the animal. There's a particular muscle called the Spanalis Dorsey that is got the thickest part of it is kind of about the neck of the animal and then it tapers down as it moves away. So by only cutting from the chuck end, we're guaranteeing a good portion of that Spanalis Dorsey. You might have heard it called like a rib cap. It's God's gift to man, basically. It's the most powerful tender cut on the entire animal. And so that's what a Jorge's steak is. And, you know, we shift them a couple times to see how these parties and we had this tiny little website. I remember the website, we only had, you know, nine items on it. And that also I remember the old website. Oh my God, I mean, I work, but like holy shit. You know, and dad calls out. He always called after to show you. (laughing) Very true, very true. But, you know, dad calls Jorge and he's like, "Hey, Jorge, I really like this cut. "I want to put it on the website "and I want an even after you. "I want to call it the Jorge rib steak." And more like, let me talk to my lawyers. It's like, I just want to name a steak after you. Like, I don't want to be in your will. Like, what is this? But, you know, sure shit, a week later, dad gets a call from more his lawyers. And we're allowed to call it the Jorge rib steak. And then it kind of took off, you know, again, we were really small. So we didn't think, you know, whatever. We'll just name a steak this. But I have been to restaurants in Los Angeles that on the menu, it says Jorge rib steak, which is just so fun. - Can you say why Jorge needed to call his lawyers? Because of who, which Jorge it was? - Jorge Ordonias. - Jorge Ordonias. Yeah, one of the largest importers of Spanish wines. And we have a great relationship with him and his children who are kind of running the show here in the United States. Super super nice people. I think dad and mom went over to visit Jorge in Spain and they said that like they weighed too much food in the course of a week. - Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a great cut. It really kind of how I was talking. The rib eye has more kind of that internal fat. It will have more fat with it. But to your earlier points, like about the tannins and the wines, you kind of pair it where you can cut that fat. And it's just, it can really, really be an amazing experience. - Yeah, especially in, you know, we talked about Seraf this episode, but certainly Spanish wines when we're talking about Temporineo, we're talking about Garnace. And see you even, I mean, if you also, are you a human see a girl? If you love Pino, you should be dabbling about it. - I should. Okay, I'll have to remember that. Text me after I so I don't forget that. - I will, I will, yeah. And for anyone else out there, I mean, I think that's, you know, people often skip over Spain. I think myself included to some degree because the great varieties aren't always as familiar as some of the other ones that we become more familiar with from like Italy and from France, but Spanish wine and steak are just delicious. And I will say that Jorge O'Donia's is one of the great importers of Spanish wine. So, you know, kind of to bring this all full circle, if you're out there in the world looking to see, you know, is this a good wine? The hack that we have talked about at Nausea Wine, this podcast is you turn that wine around and you look for the imported in the back of the label. And if it says Jorge O'Donia's on it, not only do you know that the man has great taste in beef, he's also got great taste in wine and whatever is gonna be in your class is probably gonna be fantastic, fantastic juice. So that's my, that's my spiel for the day. I love that we got to weave in Jorge into that. - I'm good at that. - Yeah, between Jorge and Robert Parker, I feel like that we have more in common with the wine world than we knew. (laughs) - No, we really do. I honestly, I remember you and I had a conversation. A few years ago, I think you were going to like a dinner and Vegas or something. And we were talking about dry aging beef and sort of the parallels and the similarities between aging wine and aging beef. And there, you know, there's a lot of similarities between what you do and what the wine world does. And, you know, many different paths to arrive at very different yet delicious results. And I think it's always fascinating to dive into someone else's world like yours to see what some of those variables are because I think once you understand how many can exist in a particular subject, you know, the world just becomes so much more interesting and so much more delightful. And obviously we're all very busy during the holidays, but if you have one second to take for yourself to like be a little curious and do a little more digging and look on the flannery beef Instagram for fun, mold-related videos. - It's more information than anybody wants to know. - But it's fun. (laughing) - It's fun, right? It is fun. And I think the point of this podcast is to remind everyone that obviously what we drink is delicious and that's important, but also that it doesn't just exist in our glasses, as I've said many times before. It exists in so many different facets in our brains and in our hands and in our lives. And it's, I think it's important to kind of stretch out and enjoy all of it. - I'm just, you know, John, just what we're drinking. And eating, Katie, one last plug for flannery beef, where can people find you and all their products? - Very simple flannerybeaf.com. The socials are at flannerybeaf, so again, we're creative with games. But yeah, follow us, shoot us an email, if you have any questions, we love to talk about beef. - You're very good at it. And I will say the website is much better now. (laughing) - I'm always still glitches, but, you know, well, that, okay, that's favorite line. We are better at beef than we are at technology. - And I think that's the only thing that really matters. All I want is the beef. - Right. - So I've derived delicious, and it always does. Thank you so much. I know you are super, super busy, so I'm gonna let you get back to it. You guys who are joining us that are not members of the Wine Access Unfiltered Podcast Wine Club, now is your cue to rectify that situation. You can do it before the holidays really get going. And you can do that by checking out the description below. You're gonna get four wines in your ship and every other month curated and selected by me and the Wine Access team. It's 120 bucks plus tax, but including shipping and you get 10% off all of your wine access purchases. Also, you can gift this wine club. So if you're thinking about whether or not you are maybe missing a gift for someone in your life. This is a, you know, a great way to have a gift that maybe you can also partake in. That's a selfish idea. - No brainer. - It's a no brainer. - Yeah, so maybe gift the wine club and gift the beef. The beef comes in a lovely gift box. - We do, yeah, we do have great gift boxes. - I have gifted many a beef to friends and family across the years. Thank you guys so much. I hope your holidays go in great, Katie. - Thank you, everybody. - Happy holidays. Nice to see you as always. - It's good to catch up with you. - Likewise. - All right. - See you soon. - Talk later. - Bye. - Cheers.