Pork Cuts
Here is a very basic (and a bit crude) drawing of the various cuts of pork and where they come from:
1: Blade roast, shoulder roll, blade steak.
2: Picnic roast (ham), arm picnic (ham), hocks.
3: ribs, center loin roast, rib chops (extra thick chops).
4: Sirloin roast, tenderloin, loin chops.
5: Loin blade roast, back ribs, country style ribs, rib chops.
6: Canadian bacon, boneless top loin roast, loin butterfly chops.
7: Spareribs, salt pork, bacon.
8: Ham, shank portion, rump portion.
9: Hams, shanks.
Hams, of course, come from the upper legs of the hog. A whole ham includes the upper leg and a portion of the foreleg. The remainder of the foreleg would be the shank portion. Bacon, of course, comes from the belly. Of course, we didn't do any really fancy cuts like crown roast, etc., but we sure did get ribs, pork chops, and roasts, along with our hams and bacon slabs. After the bacon is cured, then we slice the slabs of bacon with our meat slicer.
Extra bits and pieces of meat are cut from the bones and thrown into a large stainless steel bowl, which we then cut into pieces which are the right side to run through the meat grinder to make sausage with. We ended up with 40-50 pounds of this, and made 4 different kinds of sausage.
Counter placed 1/13/2001