Korean Short Ribs

Featuring kalbi, a specific cut of beef.

Short Ribs on the Grill by From Argentina With Love, on Flickr

In Western butchering, there’s a cut of beef called the cross rib roast, which makes a very nice roast beef or pot roast. The cross rib roast is cut from the bottom of the chuck primal, at the front of the animal, where the first one to five ribs are located under the shoulder blade.

Ordinarily speaking, when you go to the store to buy short ribs, they’re taken from a handful of different places on the animal; an alternative use of the cross rib roast is to cut the ribs into chuck short ribs. But in Korean cooking, cutting those ribs flanken style–that is, cutting across the ribs, so it makes strips of highly marbled meat with little oval bones in it–makes kalbi, the meat for Korean barbecue.

So by “chuck roast, center only,” I think the author intends for you to ask your butcher for “flanken-cut chuck short ribs.”

From a box sold in Martinez, California.