{"id":510905,"date":"2026-03-01T02:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T02:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/510905\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T02:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T02:37:14","slug":"chef-utilises-whole-steer-and-cooks-funny-meat-cuts-to-reduce-food-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/510905\/","title":{"rendered":"Chef utilises whole steer and cooks ‘funny’ meat cuts to reduce food waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

When chef Dom Aboud had to order a dozen Scotch fillets for his restaurant, he started thinking about the other 200 kilograms of meat on the animal.<\/p>\n

So he decided to buy a whole steer.<\/p>\n

“If I just said I wanted 12 Scotch fillets, they’re going to be left with something like 200 kilos of meat to move,” Aboud said.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Dom Aboud says Chianina beef was well received in his restaurant. (ABC Central West: Emily Middleton)<\/p>\n

“From a sustainability and chef’s sense, I don’t want to see great produce go in the bin and as a business owner, we don’t want to see anything go in the bin.”<\/p>\n

Aboud is the executive chef at Sienna Hospitality in Orange, Central West New South Wales, which runs local restaurant Union Bank.<\/p>\n

He said using the whole carcass was a great way to support local producers and significantly reduce food waste.<\/p>\n

“We’re getting to the fun part now where we’re trying to figure out what to do with all these funny cuts and trim.”<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Dom Aboud has been wanting to buy a whole steer from a local grower for some time now.\u00a0 (ABC Central West: Emily Middleton)<\/p>\n

The whole beast\"Whole<\/p>\n

The carcass arrives whole before it is cut up for the restaurant.\u00a0 (Supplied: Dom Aboud)<\/p>\n

High-end restaurants in metropolitan areas have been utilising the whole-animal approach for some time, according to Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), but it is still considered an uncommon practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You’ve got an opportunity to use that whole carcass, you’re not going to buy it to waste it,” MLA’s product and business development manager and corporate chef Sam Burke said.<\/p>\n

“That means more opportunities to get more beef on the menu.”<\/p>\n

Just over 8 per cent of a cow carcass is used for prime cut steaks such as Scotch fillets and sirloins, according to the MLA.<\/p>\n

\"Close<\/p>\n

Even the fat was used to make tallow and other sauces. (ABC Central West: Emily Middleton)<\/p>\n

The rest can be used for secondary offcuts, which are far less popular on supermarket shelves, and can sometimes be put into pet food.<\/p>\n

Burke said the trend of restaurants opting to purchase an entire carcass was slowly growing.<\/p>\n

He said using a whole carcass made financial sense, as chefs could utilise 59 per cent more meat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It provides an efficiency dividend on cost, you’re getting a lower per kilo price.<\/p>\n

“It encourages the chef to be more creative, which is very exciting with Australian beef on the menu, and it lends itself to sustainable eating.”\"A<\/p>\n

Tilda Chianina provided the restaurant with its first steer. (Supplied: Jason Ryan)<\/p>\n

What’s on the menu?<\/p>\n

Among the dishes Aboud is now cooking are a Lebanese-inspired corned beef, veal schnitzel and a chuck roll using meat usually processed into mince.<\/p>\n

He said he also was discovering unusual cuts that customers were loving.<\/p>\n

“Finding things like a Sierra steak in the shoulder muscle,\u00a0which is a really long flank-looking steak that grills up beautifully and would usually get\u00a0trimmed out and tossed to the side.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’ve put all these things on the menu; people have been literally eating it up. It’s been really, really good so far.”<\/p>\n

Aboud said they were ordering a full carcass every four to six weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Recognising that this is the most win-win way for us to do it was the first thing,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Person<\/p>\n

Using the whole beef means exploring different uses for various obscure cuts.\u00a0 (ABC Central West: Emily Middleton)<\/p>\n

The approach is something Aboud hopes other restaurants adopt to reduce food waste.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Australia is such a great place in general for old steak and chips, but levelling it up and really putting that care into using a whole beast and thinking about proactive ways that we can all do it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Instead of just ordering boxes and boxes and boxes of sirloin and getting left with everything else that comes with having to slaughter a steer for 12 sirloins.”Italian-heritage cattle<\/p>\n

The restaurant’s first full steer came from Tilda Chianina, a property at Cudal, west of Orange.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s one of just a handful of farms in Australia that carries the Italian Chianina breed.<\/p>\n

The breed has a distinctive tenderness and leanness according to Jason Ryan, director of Tilda Chianina.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Jason Ryan says the Chianina breed is known for the tenderness of its meat. (Supplied: Jason Ryan)<\/p>\n

“They’re the largest and heaviest cattle in the world \u2026 they’re a very old historic breed, originally designed to pull ploughs.”<\/p>\n

The most famous cut associated with the Chianina is the Bistecca alla Fiorentina, or Florentine steak.<\/p>\n

\"Person<\/p>\n

Chianina beef is most commonly known for the T-bone or Florentine steak. (ABC Central West: Emily Middleton)<\/p>\n

“You could probably just about count the number of Chianina breeders on one hand,” Mr Ryan said.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time a restaurant has purchased a whole steer from him.<\/p>\n

Mr Ryan said while many other high-end restaurants had done it before, it was an approach his business opted for after watching the rise and fall of cattle markets.<\/p>\n

“We don’t have the scale to ride the highs and lows of a normal sort of unpredictable market,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Cow<\/p>\n

The Chianina breed is known for being quite large, sometimes standing 2 metres tall.\u00a0 (Supplied: Jason Ryan)<\/p>\n

“We want to look after and use the whole beast in our operation.<\/p>\n

“We can’t just look at primal cuts and things like that \u2026 it’s great when the likes of Dom and restaurants get behind that type of approach and really showcase how you can use a whole beast.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When chef Dom Aboud had to order a dozen Scotch fillets for his restaurant, he started thinking about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,8962,99,13331,41841,256026,256027,55010,14751,6676,256028],"class_list":["post-510905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beef","tag-business","tag-cattle","tag-chef","tag-chianina","tag-cuts-of-meat","tag-food-waste","tag-meat","tag-restaurant","tag-whole-carcass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}