Q&A: French Roast

Please can you tell me what a California/shell/French roast would be in Israel? Thank you. I looked at your chart but can’t seem to figure it out.


The quick answer to your question is a #2. The more complicated answer is that these come from the #2. Except for the shell roast, which comes from #11.

Butchers and supermarkets use a variety of names to describe different cuts of meat. This is a Good Thing, because otherwise we’d have to know the names of a bunch of different muscles with names that sound much less prettier than “French roast” or “brisket”. The problem with this approach is that with everyone calling things by different names, you can never be sure if what you’re holding in your hand in the store is what you actually want.

A whole #2 chuck/shoulder clod is a 10kg. or more huge piece of meat, with muscles running in all directions, connective tissue and so on. It contains muscles that have been worked throughout the life of the cow, so they’re tough. Accordingly, it’s a cheap piece of meat. But a consumer isn’t going to pay for all that meat at once, so a butcher will take the time to create different marketable portions from this piece, including chuck roasts, chuck steaks, and more commonly stew meat and ground beef.

Because of American attitudes towards not koshering the back half of the cow (a practice that I have come to abhor greatly, as it is not only wasteful, it has the great potential to cause the sin of causing the forgetting of Torah), kosher butchers had to be creative in how they marketed cheaper/tougher cuts of meat from the permitted parts of the cow. And since France is considered francy schmancy, calling something “French” meant you could add on a few pennies to the price. In this country, you can buy French Roasts from Fleish and from Basar Basar.

A California roast seems to refer both to a cut and to a method of preparation, but both recipes and butcher cuts refer to chuck roasts, which all come from #2.

A shell steak comes from the top loin section. They’re uncommon, but ask your local butcher to get you one.

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