How to Read a Cut Sheet

The first cut sheet is intimidating because it looks like a menu. It is not. Every box you tick takes beef away from another box.

October 21, 2026 · 4 min read

If you buy a whole animal or a side, somebody hands you a cut sheet. It is the single most consequential form in this whole business and most people fill it in in four minutes.

Filling in a cut sheet

Six rungs, in this order. The order matters more than the choices.

1. Decide how you actually eat first
Before you look at the form, write down how many steak nights, roast nights and ground-beef nights a normal month has in your house.
You will know it worked when: You have three numbers before you have ticked anything.
Most people get this wrong by: Starting at the top of the form and ticking what sounds good. The form is organized by anatomy, not by your week.
2. Set steak thickness before anything else
Pick one thickness and stick to it. An inch and a quarter to an inch and a half suits most home cooking.
You will know it worked when: Every steak on the sheet has the same number next to it.
Most people get this wrong by: Going thin to get more steaks. Thin steaks overcook before they brown and you cannot undo it later.
3. Decide the roasts, knowing they come out of the ground
Choose how many roasts and what size. Everything you do not take as a roast becomes ground beef.
You will know it worked when: You can say how many roasts you are getting and roughly how often you will cook one.
Most people get this wrong by: Taking lots of roasts because they look like value, then finding you cook one a month.
4. Say what you want done with the trim
Decide between ground beef, stew meat, and whether you want any made into sausage or patties.
You will know it worked when: Nothing on the sheet is left for the processor to guess.
Most people get this wrong by: Leaving it blank. Blank means somebody else decides, and ground beef is the largest part of the animal by weight.
5. Claim the bones and the fat
Ask for the marrow bones, the soup bones and the fat for rendering, if you want them.
You will know it worked when: They are on the sheet in writing.
Most people get this wrong by: Forgetting. Unclaimed, they do not come home with you, and tallow and stock are most of the value people did not know they were leaving.
6. Choose package sizes for your household
Ground beef in one-pound packs for most households, two-pound if you cook for six or more.
You will know it worked when: A package is one meal for your house, not half or two.
Most people get this wrong by: Bulk packs that have to be thawed whole and then refrozen in part.

The trade-off nobody explains

Every cut sheet decision takes beef from somewhere else. More roasts means less ground beef. Thicker steaks means fewer of them. Boneless everything means less weight coming home and no bones for stock. There is no configuration that maximizes all of it, and a processor who tells you otherwise is being polite.

“Because it's tough for smaller farmers to, you know, have something available, 200 pounds ready to go. And we don't know whether you're coming or not. Because if you're not coming, then we still have to find a home for it. And if you are, we have to have it ready.”
Gray Shipley

Where the weight goes

You are billed on hanging weight and you take home less, and how much less depends partly on this form. Boneless cuts and heavy trimming both reduce what crosses your threshold. That arithmetic is set out in what a whole beef costs.

“There's a saying that farming isn't rocket science. It's way more complicated than that.”
Gray Shipley

“Yeah, no shortcuts just means, you know, it's a mindset, the mindset of looking for a shortcut. You know, it doesn't mean that we don't look for improvement. It doesn't mean we don't look for ways to do things better.”
Gray Shipley

If none of this appeals, a half beef share is already cut to a standard sheet and needs no decisions at all.

Authoritative sources

Freezing and Food Safety, USDA FSIS

Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.

About this guide

Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.

Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and kept his own words. Hesitations are trimmed so they read on the page. Nothing else is added or reworded, except where Gray revised his own words in review.

Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to USDA FSIS, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.