So there are lots of different ways to break down a pig, and because a pig is so young, because it’s generally around a year old, the meat is very tender. It doesn’t matter if it’s from the shoulder, it’s from the ham. I could get steaks that are just about the entire thing aside from the shanks or the hocks and grillete. That’s just the nature of pork. Because of its age, it’s generally very tender.
So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to separate the shoulder region from my loin region. So I’m just going to cut a guide for myself with my knife so you can see where I’m about to make this cut. Ok so this is my pork shoulder.
What I’m going to do is, a lot of people use the two-finger rule. It will vary from animal to animal, like the two-finger rule’s a generic form, but from animal to animal sometimes what you’re trying to do is, you’re trying to leave all the tender loin onto the loin and not have any tender loin left to your onto your hip. That’s the reason for that two-finger rule. This is my ham and this is my loin. I’m just going to remove the kidney. And this is just part of his esophagus.
Ok so now we’ve got our pig broken down into its three major primal parts. So I’ve got my shoulder, I’ve got a loin, and I’ve got the leg or the ham. We can just, just visually I can point out a bunch of muscles from it that we’re used to eating and used to seeing.
The foot of the pork is known as the trotter. Below its knee here and just, so this particular region right, would be known as our hock. And this is the ham.
In the loin region here, if you wanted to have what would be mini T-bones, this would be your pork tenderloin and right here would be the cleanest section of your pork loin. And so within the bone in it, you could cut T-bones out of it. This particular region at the end here would be the pork tops sirloins. This is the belly; otherwise, once it’s brined and smoked, it’s turned into bacon. This set of ribs here, like the top part of these ribs, it would actually be, anatomically it would be the bottom part of these ribs, would be known as your side ribs or your spare ribs. The ribs that are curved here are known as your back ribs, or otherwise known as your baby back ribs. And then this area here is also part of its loin. This entire muscle is quite long. A lot of times it’s referred to as just all-pork loin. And it’s only because of its similarity all the way through, unlike with beef, where this region to this region would be known as your ribay or your prime rib. And this region to this region would be known as your New York or strip loin. With pork, because it’s so similar from one end to the other, it’s all known as prom loin.
When we get over to the shoulder, once again you have another trotter. You have another hock. This particular region here, bone in or bone out, is known as your picnic. It is a collaboration of various muscle groups that’s, in beef it would be known as a cross cut, but with pork, it’s known as a picnic. The top region above your picnic is what’s known as your butt. It’s called a butt because of the old English word butt which means wide end.
So, butt, picnic, hock, trotter. Side ribs, back ribs, pork belly, tender loin, loin. Ham, hock, trotter. That’s our pork.
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