Beef shares
Beef shares, cut the way you want them
A beef share lets you plan ahead and fill a freezer with the cuts you actually cook: your steak thickness, your roast size, your pack counts, instead of settling for whatever a pre-packed box happens to contain.
What comes off a side
A side of beef, divided the way a butcher divides it. Your cut sheet works down this diagram one primal at a time.
Every part becomes something
- Chuck
- Pot roasts, chuck steaks, and the best ground beef on the animal.
- Rib
- Ribeyes bone-in or boneless, or kept whole as a standing rib roast.
- Short loin
- T-bones and porterhouse, or split into strip steaks and a whole tenderloin. One or the other, not both.
- Sirloin
- Sirloin steaks and roasts. Leaner than the rib, still good on a grill.
- Round
- Lean roasts for slicing, round steak, and lean ground.
- Brisket & plate
- Brisket whole or split, short ribs, skirt and flank.
- Shank
- Cross-cut shank and soup bones for marrow, stock and osso buco.
Anything you do not assign a cut to goes to ground. That is why ground beef from your own animal tastes better than what you buy: it is trim from the whole carcass, not one lean muscle.
The process
From phone call to full freezer
The beef share cut sheet is a planning tool. Share sizes, pricing, deposits and the cut-sheet deadline are all settled with the shop, on the phone and then in person when you come in with your sheet.
Learn how the share works
Read how a beef share is arranged and what a side actually yields, then call to ask what beef is coming up and roughly when. Say how much freezer space you have; that is the real constraint for most households.
Arrange the share before slaughter
Your ownership interest in the live animal is set up first. Under Maine’s custom exemption this has to happen while the animal is alive. It cannot be arranged after the fact.
Build a mockup on the beef cut sheet
Use the online sheet to explore the cuts and rough out what you want, primal by primal. It is a planning tool: nothing on it is sent to the shop, and nothing is final yet.
Save or print it, then call to come in
Keep your copy and ring the shop to arrange a time. Bring the sheet with you. You and the butcher go through it together, and the real order is settled at the counter.
Cut to the sheet, then collected
Your portion is cut, wrapped and labeled to the selections you confirmed in person, and marked not for sale. Bring coolers and clear the freezer beforehand.