How to cook pork
Information for pork in our free cooking ingredients collection.
Pork
Pork was popular early in American history because pigs offered large litters of offspring and meat that could be preserved by smoking and pickling for long winter months. Pigs also would eat anything available. A typical farmer owned four or five hogs. An early governor of Virginia was one of the first to introduce swine to the New World. The state is famous for the quality of hams and other pork products produced there.
Although pork generally refers to swine younger than 1 year, most pork today is slaughtered at a younger age (6 to 9 months) to produce meat that is more tender and mildflavored. The diet of a hog before slaughter has changed. What the colonists once thought was a positive, that a pig would eat anything, caused trichinosis, a foodborne disease that was once acquired almost exclusively from undercooked pork. Today’s hogs are fed a diet of grain, proteins, vitamins, and minerals, and trichinosis is thus rare.
Until recently, pigs were bred to be hefty and fat, but pork has been gradually transformed by concerted breeding efforts to produce leaner meat. In general, today’s hogs provide meat that is lower in calories and higher in protein than just 10 years ago. On average, pork is 31 percent lower in fat and 14 percent lower in calories than it was in 1983. However, not all pork cuts are lean, depending on the part of the pig used. For example, bacon still has 14 grams of fat per ounce (about 4 slices), but extra-lean cured ham may have less than 2 grams of fat per ounce.
Pork is an extraordinarily versatile meat. Pork comes to market in two basic forms: fresh and smoked. Only about a third of all pork is sold as fresh pork. The majority is cured, smoked, or processed into items such as bologna and hot dogs. The rump and hind legs of the pig are usually cured and smoked as hams. The same is true of the belly, or what becomes bacon after curing and smoking.
Most fresh pork comes from the pork loin and the shoulder, an area of the animal that is also known as “Boston butt”. This is cut into chops, steaks, roasts, cubes, and strips. The loin section has been so popular, hogs have been bred with one more rib (compared with lamb, beef, or veal) to increase the loin’s length.
Pork is a good source of thiamin, a B vitamin humans need to convert carbohydrates into energy. It is also a good source of zinc. The following pages provide an overview of the different types of pork.
How to cook pork. Pork cuts, where do they come from?
Shoulder butt - Cubed steak, blade steak, boneless and bone-in blade (Boston) roast, ground pork.
Loin - Sirloin, rib chop, loin chop, country-style ribs, back ribs, tenderloin, Canadian bacon, center rib roast.
Leg - Center ham slice, boneless ham, ham shank, leg cutlets.
Side (belly) - Spareribs, slab bacon, sliced bacon.
Picnic shoulder - Arm picnic, arm roast, arm steak, ground pork, pork hocks.
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