Welcome to Eatymology’s Meat Beat where I help myself (and like-minded dummies) build our meat vocabulary, beginning with the 8 (or 9, depending on who’s asking) basic US primal cutsfor beef. That’s butcher parlance for the slabs of bloody, lard-marbled, pre-delicious protein stripped from a cowrcas. Note that UK primal cuts and pork primal cuts are different.
Today’s edition: short loin.
Who knows what's good? The King knows what's good.
I’ve been remiss – and at a particularly salivating juncture – the one sandwiched between the fat-rich rib and the lusty love handle region (more on that in time): the short loin. This cut picks up at the thirteenth rib, and extends through the spinal region. The backbone’s intrusion into this succulent protein quarry bequeaths identity unto two popular and beloved steak-shaped steaks: the Portherhouse, and the T-bone.
'T' stands for Tasty, Tasty proTein.
It’s worth noting here that cuts of steak are fairly loosely defined. The only delineation between the Porterhouse and the T-bone, for instance, is that the former contains “more” tenderloin. Stripped of bone, these cuts become the thus-named “strip” steak.
I’ll conclude with an exert on Eatmedaily.com, on the etymological origins of the Porterhouse:
The Porterhouse’s name came a New York tradition from the 1840′s. Restaurants would advertise specials on a beef steak served with a flagon of porter, which sounds like my kind of party. The cut houses an excellent amount of top sirloin, and a bigger amount of the aforementioned tenderloin.
