prime cut

plural prime cuts

1. cookingA top-quality serving of meat.

   Not sure these old bones of mine are up to slaying any dragons, but if it's a prime cut of meat you want, I'm your guy.

   2013, Gail Oust, chapter 5, in Rosemary and Crime: A Spice Shop Mystery, New York, N.Y.: Minotaur Books; Thomas Dunne Books, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Does he follow his nature, and go into the prime cut like a man; or does he put it away from him and follow the ways of the old prophet out in the desert of Arabia, and content himself with a dinner upon air with a drink of water to wash it down?

   1884, George T. Lowth, The Immortal Schoolmaster, London: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 34

   My husband brings his work home. Had he been a butcher, it might have been a prime cut of steak; a mason, a block of limestone. […] But my husband is an oncologist, so he brings home the dead and dying.

   2009, Sayantani DasGupta, “The Doctor’s Wife”, in Mark D. Tyler-Lloyd, editor, The Real Life of an Internist (Kaplan Voices: Doctors), New York, N.Y.: Kaplan Publishing, →ISBN

2. broadlySomething that represents the best quality in its class.

   I got no idea who he thinks is listening to us, but I register that this is prime cut information.

   2004, Sidney Offit, “No Time for Senior’s”, in Tim McLoughlin, editor, Brooklyn Noir, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.: Akashic Books, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   He graduated magna cum laude from ASU in three years, then promptly earned his MBA from the Wharton School. Corporate recruiters saw him as prime cut.

   2011, John Lutz, chapter 39, in Fear the Night, New York, N.Y.: Pinnacle Books, →ISBN

   The new kid was covered in mud, the thin drizzle doing nothing to clean him off, but it was clear he was a prime cut.

   2013, John Haggerty, “The Meat Forest”, in John [Gregory] Betancourt et al., editors, The Haunts & Horrors Megapack, [Rockville, Md.]: Wildside Press, →ISBN, page 161

   […] with Rolling Stone's John Milward hailing the band's [Lynyrd Skynyrd's] "Southern blues-rock diced with the sharp blade of British hard rock" as "a prime cut of guitar rock" and Ronnie's "world-weary" vocals "barroom-tough on rockers, properly vulnerable on … 'Searching' and 'The Needle and the Spoon'."

   2015, Mark Ribowsky, Whiskey Bottles and Brand-New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Review Press, →ISBN, page 189