Butcher "rock star" has star app all about meat

Each week, Apple names it's "App of the Week," and one pick in 2011 was an app for all-things-meat.

Why was it chosen?

Perhaps it's because the app -- Pat LaFrieda's Big Meat App -- comes from Pat LaFrieda, a butcher who's considered a rock star on the New York City meat scene.

CNET.com senior editor Bridget Carey met with the butcher himself at Porter House restaurant in New York, for a look at why the app has taken off.

LaFrieda supplies some 600 restaurants in New York City alone. Now, he's opened his butcher shop to the digital world with a prime-grade iPad app.

"We wanted to make it user-friendly, so that the public can see all the different options, cuts and all the different types of meat," LaFrieda explained

The app reads like a book and has more than 50 minutes of video packed in.

Users can learn about more than 400 cuts of beef, lamb, poultry and pork. There are even lessons about how to grind meat and sharpen knives.

The app even shares what the butcher calls a "sucker steak."

What's that?!?

"In the app, I call the porterhouse steak the 'sucker steak' because, on the porter house side, there's a huge vein that goes through," LaFrieda said. "We call it a vein; it's really a nerve."

While it's often the priciest cut on the menu, LaFrieda suggests skipping the porterhouse and ordering the strip.

But the piece de resistance of the app is a look at LaFrieda's dry age room, stocked with nearly $1 million worth of flavor. LaFrieda's app offers descriptions and photographs of every cut of meat he has -- more than 200 cuts -- many shot from multiple angles.

But, Carey noted, like all good cuts of meat, LaFrieda's meat app isn't cheap. It costs $6.99.

LaFrieda defended the app's pricing, saying, "There's so much information -- much more than any text book can offer, and textbooks on this subject cost about $60 to $70."

Carey remarked, "So you made a $7 interactive text book."

"Yes." LaFrieda added, "Without cutting any trees down."