Ingredient: Pork Cuts
Category: Meat - Butchery, Pork
Season: All
There are different systems of naming for cuts in America, Britain and France.
Pork may be cooked from fresh meat or cured over time. Cured meat products include ham and bacon.
The carcass may be utilized in many different ways for fresh meat cuts, with the popularity of certain cuts and certain carcass proportions varying worldwide.
Fresh Meat:
Most of the carcass can be used to produce fresh meat and in the case of a suckling pig the whole body of a young pig ranging in age from two to six weeks is roasted.
Processed pork:
Pork is particularly common as an ingredient of sausages.
Many traditional European sausages are made with pork, including chorizo, fuet, and salami.
Most brands of American hot dogs and breakfast sausage are made from pork.
Ham and bacon are made from fresh pork by curing with salt (pickling) and/or smoking. Shoulders and legs are most commonly cured in this manner for ham whereas streaky and round bacon usually comes from the loin, although it may also come from the side and belly.
Roasted pork knuckle, Ham and bacon are popular foods in the west, and their consumption has increased with industrialisation.
Non-western cuisines also use preserved meat products. For example, salted preserved pork or red roasted pork is used in Chinese and Asian cuisine.
Bacon is defined as any of certain cuts of meat taken from the sides, belly or back that have been cured and/or smoked. In continental Europe, it is used primarily in cubes (lardons) as a cooking ingredient valued both as a source of fat and for its flavour.
In Italy, besides being used in cooking, bacon (pancetta) is also served uncooked and thinly sliced as part of an antipasto.
Bacon is also used for barding and larding roasts, especially game birds.
Many people prefer to have their bacon smoked, using various types of wood. This process can take up to ten hours depending on the intensity of the flavour desired.
Bacon may be eaten fried, baked, or grilled.
A side of unsliced bacon is a flitch or slab bacon, while an individual slice of bacon is a rasher (United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) or simply a slice or strip (North America).
Slices of bacon are also known as collops.
Traditionally, the skin is left on the cut and is known as bacon rind.
Rindless bacon, however, is quite common. In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, bacon comes in a wide variety of cuts and flavours whereas bacon in the United States and is predominantly what is known as "streaky bacon", or "streaky rashers".
Bacon made from the meat on the back of the pig is referred to as back bacon and is part of traditional British and Irish breakfasts.
In the United States, back bacon may also be referred to as Canadian-style Bacon or Canadian Bacon.
The USDA defines bacon as "the cured belly of a swine carcass", while other cuts and characteristics must be separately qualified (e.g. "smoked pork loin bacon"). "USDA Certified" bacon means that it has been treated for trichinella.
The canned meat Spam is made of chopped pork shoulder meat and ham.
Cuts:
There are different systems of naming for cuts in America, Britain and France.
Head
This can be used to make brawn, stocks and soups. After boiling the ears can be fried or baked and eaten separately.
Spare Rib Roast/Spare Rib Joint/Blade Shoulder/Shoulder Butt
This is the shoulder and contains the shoulder blade. It can be boned out and rolled up as a roasting joint, or cured as "collar bacon". Not to be confused with the rack of spare ribs from the front belly.
Pork butt, despite its name, is from the upper part of the shoulder. Boston Butt, or Boston-Style Shoulder, cut comes from this area, and may contain the shoulder blade.
Hand/Arm Shoulder/Arm Picnic
This can be cured on the bone to make a ham, or used in sausages.
Loin
This can be cured to give back bacon or Canadian-style bacon. The loin and belly can be cured together to give a side of bacon.
The loin can also be divided up into roasts (blade loin roasts, center loin roasts, and sirloin roasts come from the front, center, or rear of the loin), back ribs (also called baby back ribs, or riblets), pork cutlets, and pork chops.
A pork loin crown roast is arranged into a circle, either boneless or with rib bones protruding upward as points in a crown.
Pork tenderloin, removed from the loin, should be practically free of fat.
Belly/Side/Side Pork
The belly, although a fattier meat, can be used for steaks or diced stir-fry meat.
Belly pork may be rolled for roasting or cut for streaky bacon.
Legs/Hams
Although any cut of pork can be cured, technically speaking only the back leg is entitled to be called a ham.
Legs and shoulders, when used fresh, are usually cut bone-in for roasting, or leg steaks can be cut from the bone.
Three common cuts of the leg include the rump (upper portion), centre, and shank (lower portion).
Trotters
Both the front and hind trotters can be cooked and eaten, as can the tail.
Spare ribs, or spareribs, are taken from the pig's ribs and the meat surrounding the bones.
St. Louis-style spareribs have the sternum, cartilage, and skirt meat removed.
Use of the whole carcass:
In order to utilise the whole carcass ("everything but the oink"), parts of the pig such as knuckle, pig's feet ("trotters"), chitterlings (pork intestines), and hog jowls may be eaten.
In earlier centuries in the United States some of these products figured prominently in the traditional diets of poor Southerners (soul food). Scrapple and McRib are other examples of aggregate pork products.
Feijoada, the national dish of Brazil, is prepared with pork trimmings: ears, tail and feet
Throughout the Islamic world, as well as in Israel many countries severely restrict the importation or consumption of pork products.
Examples are Iran, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Pork is one of the best-known of a category of foods that are forbidden under traditional Jewish dietary law.
The biblical basis for the Jewish prohibition of pork is in Leviticus 11:7. Seventh-day Adventists likewise eat no pork |