Blade steak

In butchery, the top blade steak (otherwise also known as the flat iron steak) comes from the chuck section of a steer or heifer. The steaks are cross-cut from the top blade subprimal, also known as Infraspinatus. It is becoming more popular and profitable to abstain from cross cutting the top blade and instead produce flat iron steaks which eliminate the connective tissue.

Jamie Oliver has recommended this cut over the fillet, sirloin or rib eye due to the marbling and cost-effective price of the cut.

Flat Iron

Flat Iron was a First Nations lacrosse player who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics for Canada.

In 1904 he was member of the Mohawk Indians Lacrosse Team which won the bronze medal in the lacrosse tournament.

References

Gordon Ramsay

Gordon James Ramsay, OBE (born 8 November 1966) is a Scottish-born British chef and restaurateur. His restaurants have been awarded 16 Michelin stars in total and currently hold 9. His signature restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London, has held 3 Michelin stars since 2001. Ramsay is known for presenting TV programmes about competitive cookery and food, such as the British series Hell's Kitchen, The F Word, and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, along with the American versions of Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, MasterChef, MasterChef Junior and Hotel Hell. In 2015, Forbes listed his earnings at $60 million for the previous 12 months, and ranked him the 21st highest earning celebrity in the world.

Early life

Ramsay was born on 8 November 1966 in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland. From the age of five, he was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. Ramsay is the second of four children. He has an older sister, Diane; a younger brother, Ronnie, who Ramsay revealed had been behind bars for heroin possession as a juvenile; and a younger sister, Yvonne. Ramsay's father, Gordon James Senior (died 1997), was – at various times – a swimming pool manager, a welder, and a shopkeeper; his sister Yvonne and their mother, Helen (maiden name: Cosgrove), have been nurses.

Steak

A steak is a meat generally sliced perpendicular to the muscle fibers, potentially including a bone. Exceptions, in which the meat is sliced parallel to the fibers, include the skirt steak that is cut from the plate, the flank steak that is cut from the abdominal muscles, and the Silverfinger steak that is cut from the loin and includes three rib bones. When the word "steak" is used without qualification, it generally refers to a beef steak. In a larger sense, there are also fish steaks, ground meat steaks, pork steak and many more varieties.

As a "top-quality ingredient", beef steaks "are perfect if properly grilled", but they can be pan-fried, or broiled. Steak is often grilled in an attempt to replicate the flavor of steak cooked over the glowing coals of an open fire. Steak can also be cooked in sauce, such as in steak and kidney pie, or minced and formed into patties, such as hamburgers.

"Steaks" are also cut from grazing animals, usually farmed, other than cattle, including bison, camel, goat, horse, kangaroo,sheep, ostrich, pigs, reindeer, turkey and deer, as well as various types of fish, especially salmon. Some cured meat, such as gammon, is commonly served as steak.

Blade

A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to cut and/or puncture, stab, slash, chop, slice, thrust, or scrape surfaces or materials. A blade may be made from a flaking stone, such as flint, metal (usually steel), ceramic, or other material. Blades are one of humanity's oldest tools, and continue to be used for combat, food preparation, and other purposes.

Uses

During food preparation, knives are mainly used for slicing, chopping, and piercing.

In combat, a blade may be used to slash or puncture, and may also be thrown or otherwise propelled. The function is to sever a nerve, muscle or tendon fibers, or blood vessel to disable or kill the adversary. Severing a major blood vessel typically leads to death due to exsanguination. Shrapnel wounds via the fragments' blade-like nature.

Blades may be used to scrape, moving the blade sideways across a surface, as in an ink eraser, rather than along or through a surface.

Physics

A simple blade intended for cutting has two faces that meet at an edge. Ideally this edge would have no roundness but in practice all edges can be seen to be rounded to some degree under magnification either optically or with an electron microscope. Force is applied to the blade, either from the handle or pressing on the back of the blade. The handle or back of the blade has a large area compared to the fine edge. This concentration of applied force onto the small edge area increases the pressure exerted by the edge. It is this high pressure that allows a blade to cut through a material by breaking the bonds between the molecules/crystals/fibres/etc. in the material. This necessitates the blade being strong enough to resist breaking before the other material gives way.