Melbourne-born, Texas-based Jess Pryles is a cook, author, television host and founder of Hardcore Carnivore. What began as a fascination with Texas barbecue turned into a career dedicated to understanding meat, from the paddock to the plate. With more than 15 years of hands-on experience and a Graduate Certificate in Meat Science from Iowa State University, Jess combines serious technical knowledge with an uncomplicated approach to cooking.
Her new cookbook, Prime Cuts, is a comprehensive guide to buying, understanding and cooking meat, with more than 100 recipes that you can crack into right now.
I wrote Prime Cuts because I wanted to create the book I wish I’d had when I first started learning about meat. I was obsessed with cooking, but I remember being completely intimidated by the butcher’s counter. There were all these cuts I didn’t recognise, and even when I knew what I wanted to cook, I didn’t necessarily understand why one cut worked better than another. Nearly two decades, countless hours spent with butchers and pitmasters, and a meat science qualification later, I wanted to put all that knowledge in one place. It’s not just a collection of recipes. It’s a practical guide to understanding meat, so you can make better decisions long after you’ve finished reading it.
The main thing I learned writing it was how complicated we’ve made buying meat! One muscle can have a dozen different names depending on the country, the butcher or even the supermarket selling it. The same cut might be sold as a premium steak in one place and turned into mince in another. One of the biggest challenges was making sense of all those different names and cutting styles and turning it into something people could actually use.
If you take one thing from this book, it should be that cooking restaurant-quality meat at home is actually not that hard. A little knowledge can help you discover new favourite cuts and hopefully prevent a few expensive dinner disasters.
The most versatile cuts to stock up on are beef chuck and pork shoulder. They’re hard to beat. They’re both made up of several different muscles, which means there’s a surprising amount of versatility hiding inside them. Chuck can be braised, smoked, shredded or broken down into individual steaks, including the fantastic Denver and flat-iron. Pork shoulder is brilliant for pulled pork, but it’s also versatile for anything from charcoal-grilled skewers to thick-cut pork steaks. I think people often overlook just how many different things they can do with these larger, economical cuts – especially when you slice thinly.
And in my opinion, the most underrated cut is flat-iron steak. It’s one of the most tender muscles on the entire animal, second only to the tenderloin (aka the eye fillet), yet it comes from the shoulder, an area most people associate with tougher cuts. The trick is removing the thick seam of connective tissue that runs through the middle, which transforms it into two beautifully tender, flavourful steaks at amazing value. It’s a brilliant example of how clever butchery can turn an overlooked muscle (the oyster blade) into something completely new.
The most common misconceptions around cooking meat are… where do I start? Searing doesn’t seal in juices, the red liquid in your steak isn’t blood, and more expensive doesn’t automatically mean better. Another big one is the idea that all tough cuts need slow cooking. Some can be absolutely fantastic cooked hot and fast, provided they’re sliced and prepared correctly. There’s an awful lot of meat advice that’s been repeated for generations without anyone stopping to question whether it’s actually true.
I’d also love it if you tried the grilled green curry lamb with coconut and herbs. I think lamb is one of the most underappreciated meats in America, which is almost criminal to an Australian! It’s such a beautiful, flavourful protein, and it works brilliantly with bold ingredients. This recipe leans into the fragrant, punchy flavours of Thai green curry rather than the more traditional rosemary-and-garlic approach. It’s a great reminder that you don’t have to cook a particular cut the same way you’ve always cooked it.
If you’re a relatively new cook, give the Mediterranean chicken with lemon and olives a try. It’s a relatively simple dish that teaches you some really useful fundamentals, like getting a good sear on chicken and building flavour in the pan. It uses chicken thighs, which are wonderfully forgiving, and there’s even a bonus opportunity to turn the skins into crispy salt-and-vinegar chicken chips. I love a recipe that helps you get more out of what you’ve bought, without making things complicated.
If you’re looking to extend yourself a bit more, meanwhile, try making your own bacon. It’s one of those things most people would never think to attempt at home, but it’s a fantastic introduction to curing meat. You’ll learn how salt, time and temperature work together to transform pork belly into bacon, and you get to experiment with your own flavour combinations along the way. There’s something incredibly satisfying about slicing into a slab of bacon you’ve made yourself. Plus, it’s a pretty great bragging right to have!
When you’ve finished reading Prime Cuts, I hope you’ll feel confident enough to walk into a butcher shop and buy something you’ve never cooked before. I don’t want people to feel they need to memorise every recipe or master every technique. I want them to understand meat well enough to experiment, ask questions and make their own decisions. And maybe discover that some of the most delicious cuts aren’t the expensive ones sitting in the display case.
