Part of the Pit Production Cook track. Lesson 8 of 10.
Where in the shift: to order, from the hold.
Prerequisites: Modules 13, 36, 5.
The sequence
Take only what the order needs.
Separate the muscles at the seam.
Slice each across its own grain.
Serve immediately.
The decisions
How much to slice. Only what is ordered. Every slice that waits is drying.
Thickness. Pencil for the flat is the house standard in most rooms and it should be a written one.
Whether to trim the bark off the slice. No — the bark is the product, and a cook trimming it for appearance is discarding what the guest came for.
And what to do with a flat that came out tight. Slice thinner. It does not fix it and it makes it more servable, and the honest version is to say so at pre-shift rather than pretend.
What you are reading
The grain, marked before the cook per Lesson 2 — because the bark hides it and by then it is a guess.
The slice's behavior. It should hold together when lifted by one end with a slight bend before it separates. Falling apart means past; requiring a tug means short.
And the cut face. Moisture visible without the slice being wet.
What goes wrong here
Sliced with the grain on the point, which runs differently from the flat. Correctly cooked meat that eats stringy.
Sliced ahead of the order.
Bark trimmed.
Verification
Watch a slice get lifted. The bend-before-separation test is observable from across the pass.
The boundary
None specific.