Portion cut steaks
vs whole primal
It’s your choice, we can supply it all! While it’s hard to
surrender control over the preparation of steak, it is hard to
look past the many advantages of portion control:
• Cost control – tighter control on plated costs as each
steak is individually priced.
• Ease of use – just open and use.
As can be seen, there is a lot of residual waste with little or
no value. Typical yield for sirloin is 75% (loss is about 25%)
and 65% for the OP rib and Flintstone portioning (loss is
about 35%).
The following table shows indicative yields. Yields will vary
according to weight range/size, fat cover, age of cuts used
and quality of the finished product required.
• Labour savings – no in house prep is required.
• Inventory – easy to count the number of portions used or
on hand.
• Consistency – the same every time.
• Ageing – you can control your own ageing.
• Waste – no left over pieces or trimmings.
These points may be obvious but many people look past
the higher price “per kilo” for the portion controlled product.
There are several factors to be considered:
• Yield loss from trimming, off-cuts, end pieces, ‘out of
weight’ steaks and ‘purge’, a - red solution of proteins
that is also known as drip or weep that oozes from the
cut surfaces.
• Labour and overhead costs. Time spent cutting meat
could have been used doing other work.
• Packaging – vacuum bags, cartons, labels.
Why does portion control
cost more than the
whole steak primals?
Portion Cut 200gm
Cutting Yield
Eye Fillet Sirloin
75%
75%
Scotch
90%
Rump
70%
What this table shows, is that a whole primal or muscle of
meat, converts into significantly smaller quantity of portion
controlled meat, with the difference being made up of
trimmings, offcuts and waste (fat, silverskin etc).
Putting this into practice
If a piece of eye fillet, for example costing $30.00/kg, is
portion cut and a yield of 75% is attained, the yielded cost
price of the finished product is $40.00/kg, before any of
the labour processing costs have been added in. Therefore
if you are basing your menu cost on $30.00/kg, you will
rapidly start to lose money! Buying portion cut steaks
allows you to factor these costs in already.
(Costs shown are not accurate and are used to demonstrate the
example only.)
Sirloin preparation
waste
Whole Primal
trimmed primal
Processing
trimmings
Flintstone preparation
Finished Product
trimmed primal
waste
waste
trimmings
trimmed primal
Whole Primal
10 |
MEAT & POULTRY SOLUTIONS
final
portion
cut
trimmings
Processing
Finished Product
Products may not be available at all branches. Images are serving suggestions only.