Meat Cuts 101: The Basic Pork, Beef, Lamb, Chicken And Fish Cuts

There are actually 5 main meats that you could cut with your knives and cook into different kinds of meals. These meats are pork, beef, chicken, lamb, and fish.

It is important for you to note that every part of these animals have specific cooking recommendations.

Every part of each of these animals have unique features which contribute to the specific type of cooking techniques.

See Also: Ultimate Printable Kitchen Conversion Cheat Sheet

Meat Cooking Techniques

There are 5 unique ways you could do to cook meats. In each meat cooking techniques, the cuts are included.

Roasting

Roasting is a very common technique of cooking meats. Aside from the health benefits of roasting meats, this way of cooking is largely prominent as it reduces the fats and brings out the flavor of the meats.

For pork cuts, this is very common as it can accommodate almost all cuts of pork meats. The only cuts that are not recommended for roasting are rip chops, center cuts, baby back ribs, and rib cuts.

For beef, the only cuts you could deal when roasting are ribs and chuck and blade.

As for lambs, cuts are somewhat similar as to pork cuts. This is mainly why almost all of the lamb cuts are good for roasting. The only exceptions are fillet, shank, center loin, diced, and leg steaks.

When dealing with chicken meats, you could actually roast the whole chicken. However, when you are dealing with part per part basis alone, the only cuts that are not recommendable to be roasted are feet, tenderloin, and internal parts.

Grilling

Grilling or smoking is also a very famous technique of cooking meats. Aside from it brings out as well flavors of the meats, grilling with a good grill can also add unique tastes of sweet to bitter.

All pork cuts can apparently be grilled except for the sirloin half, tenderloin, crown roast, and country ham. Chicken cuts are likened to pork cuts in this technique as almost all parts are enabled to grill. The only cut that are not recommended to grill are neck, cockscomb, and liver

For beef, only sirloin, flank, short plate, and short loin cuts are advisable to be grilled. The same is true for lambs as there are only certain parts that you could use when grilling. These are the center loin, leg steaks, leg canons, and shoulder racks.

BBQ

Although barbeque is very much prominent in cooking technique of different meats there are only four pork cuts that you could use in this. These cuts are pork butt, pork shoulder, baby back ribs, and St. Louis Style Spareribs.

In the aspect of cooking beef, the only beef cut you could subject for BBQ is the sirloin.

As for lambs, the only parts you could deal in this process are diced, gigot chops, leg steaks, striploin, and boneless rack. check out how to bbq your lamb here.

For chicken cuts, the only parts you could use for BBQ are cuts from thigh to feet. check out this recipe.

Braising

Braise is somewhere in the middle of average to low class of popularity.

The only pork cuts you could do for this kind of cooking process are the pork butt, pork shoulder, rip chop, and country style ribs. Lambs do also have certain parts only that you could use for a braise. Lamb cuts such as gigot chops, diced, and shanks.

When you braising with beef cuts, the process is quite usual for beef meats. Hence, almost all parts and cuts of beef meats are subjected to braising. The only parts and cuts that are not recommendable for this cooking session are short plate, sirloin, short loin, tongue, and liver.

As for chicken cuts, the only parts and cuts that are not seen to be included in this kind of cooking process are the internal organs such as heart, liver, and intestines, and also the parts from thigh to feet.

Sear

Sear is considered to be the most unpopular cooking process. Only a few people are actually seen to apply this kind of cooking. Nevertheless, the pork cuts intended for searing are center cuts, rip chops, tenderloins, and country style ribs.

As for beef, the only cuts that are recommended for searing are short plates and short loins.

Another reason why searing is very unpopular – it is because there are actually no recommended parts of chicken and lamb that can be subjected for this kind of cooking process.

When Dealing With Fish Meats

Of all the meats in the market today, fish meats is considered to be the most unique of all. One factor that attests to this statement is that almost all cooking processes and steps (such as the given above) are actually inapplicable for fish meats.There are quite different cooking processes for fish meats.

These processes are known to be baking, frying, and grilling. Moreover, all parts and cuts of fishes are subjected to all of the given cooking processes.

The parts and cuts of fish meats are whole fish, small fish, fillet, and steak.