Beef

Appears in

Published 2004

About

The French cut meat differently than you and I.

Actually, they cut meat differently than you do. At Les Halles, we have a French butcher and a French charcutier who do it the old-school way, cutting and preparing it in the fiendishly creative French style. (Unlike the French, we also have the luxury of American beef, which is, generally speaking, far superior.)

So as not to drive your butcher to despair, however, I have done my very best to include recipes for only those French cuts that you are likely to find or be able to have prepared for you. Though there are all sorts of tiny, wonderful boutique cuts available from genuine French butchers, I’ll describe only those for which there are analogous terms in English. If your butcher says he can’t get any of these, he’s either lying or lazy.