What should dairy veal taste like?

Amaso: Guaranteed quality meat

Amaso works alongside Czech breeders of Přeštice Black-Pied pigs and Czech Fleckvieh cattle. At their plant in Jenč, just outside Prague, butchers process the meat, curing it using both wet and dry methods. They also craft sausage products following recipes from the first republic. You'll find all of this at the Naše maso butchers' shop, or at Kantýna.

"Czechs purchase veal all year round, but at Christmas the demand is huge. For many years we have been buying meat from our supplier in Poděbrady. However, the quality varied and the meat did not have the characteristics we would expect from veal. It did not have the short fibre and therefore the desired tenderness, and its colour was closer to that of beef," Radek says in retrospect. After a while, a new supplier was found in Lhota pod Libčany.

He slaughtered seven-month-old calves for Naše maso once a month. The quality of the meat was better, but still teetered on the edge. In a period of increased demand the butcher's shop replenished its stocks with veal from Holland. "At that time, we were impressed that when we offered both Czech and Dutch meat to our customers, they always reached for domestic product first," Radek says.

The last straw was feedback from Tomáš Karpíšek. And it was very negative. "At Christmas, he had a steak on his plate made with Dutch veal from us, which he didn't like at all. He used to work in Austria and was used to the perfect delicate taste of veal there". Radek explains why his next trip to Austria was to find veal.

100 steaks and four butchers

Although a supplier from Austria was found, the butchers from Amaso and Naše maso still wanted to offer their customers 100% Czech veal of the highest quality. And so they approached a regular supplier in Zbiroh. "We had several calves bred by him and then bought them all at once. The most important criteria for us were age at slaughter and a strictly dairy diet. We figured we needed to taste and compare the meat from differently aged calves at the same time," Radek describes the beginning of the experiment, in which they had calves from Zbiroh slaughtered at the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 months.

"We broke them down at Amaso, and carefully recorded everything so that we had an idea of the yield (ed. note: yield is the maximum weight of clean meat that can be used from the animal for further production) of each cut. We cut steaks and used the trimmings to make delicate veal sausages," recalls Radek. Butcher František Kšána, Roman Frencl from Amaso and Amaso boss Vlasta Lacina Jiroš also took part in the testing.

All the batches for the steaks were transported to UM, where they embarked on a big experiment. At one point, they fried steaks from all categories of meat to find out at which age the veal tastes best. "At one point we had about a hundred steaks on the table. I've never seen so many in my life, let alone tasted so many," laughs Radek.

The best meat is from a four-month-old calf

After a few hours of steak gluttony, the butchers came to a final decision: the best steaks are from four-month-old calves. Their meat has a beautiful light colour, the desired leanness and tenderness. The texture of the meat can be seen charging every month. Too young an animal does not have as much muscle and a calf approaching 7-8 months has meat that is too dark. In addition, they found that more parts than expected were suitable for cutlets, such as the top blade.

"After the experiment, we agreed with the supplier from Zbiroh to take four-month-old calves regularly. We made a commitment to ourselves that we would not compromise on the calf quality criteria we had just set, and that we will work to popularise it among chefs," concludes Radek.

Milk veal from Naše maso can be bought at the butcher's shop in Dlouhá Street and at the nasemaso.cz e-shop. You can also taste it directly on a plate at the Čestr restaurant.