There is a saying that says, "If you have hair, you can eat brown strawberries; if you don't have hair, you can eat scales. Two feet to eat to the stairs, four feet to eat to the table cabinet. There is meat to eat to the meat dry, no meat to eat to the garbage." It describes a person who eats everything, and a pig can be used to eat almost any part of the pig except its hair. But do you know which part of the pig's body the pork you eat every day comes from? And what are the differences between different parts of the pork?

The seven most commonly eaten parts

A: Shoulder meatShoulder

The upper part of the breast is the plum blossom meat, and the lower part is the scapula heart meat. It is taken from the front of the backbone of the pig to the shoulder blade, which is the part of the pig that has more movement. Shoulder blade meat is rich in flavor and has an appealing aroma, plus it has tendons and fat, so it can be used in a variety of cooking variations. In the past, it was also the most expensive meat in the world, and most people don't like meat with too much fat, so most meat stalls remove the skin and thick layer of lard fat before selling it to consumers.

Cooking style: Suitable for long time stewing, braising and baking, such as barbecued pork, stewed pork, white cuts of pork, the longer the cooking time, the more the flavor can be boiled into the meat, and also can be cut into thin slices for hot pot, barbecue meat slices.

Scapular meat: Scapular meat is the lower shoulder blade, which is often referred to as "ㄍㄚ?心" in Taiwanese in traditional markets. It is considered to be the best part of the meat because of its lack of fat, and a little bit of fat can be added to make it smoother and more flavorful for dishes such as dumplings and buns.

B: Front Legs

Some brokers will include the neighboring breast meat and plum blossom meat in the front legs, but in most cases, the front legs are more purely the leg part. The front leg is thicker and shorter than the back leg, and the knee bends forward. The commonly eaten Wanluan pig's foot and German pig's foot both use the front leg part, but the slight difference is that the Wanluan pig's foot uses the whole front leg, while the German pig's foot mainly takes the upper part of the front leg where there is a lot of meat, and doesn't include the hoof.

This part of the leg has very little fat and a lot of gelatin, so people who are afraid of eating oil often choose this part of the leg; the meat is a little bit firmer than the plum blossom meat, but it is not as lean as the hind leg, so it has a more moderate taste.

Cooking: Because the meat is more Q than the thighs, it is suitable for braising, stewing, frying, baking, stir-frying, or chopping into minced meat for stuffing.

C: Pork Lion

Located in the center of the backbone of the pig, it is a good part of the pork because of its low fat, good bite, and neat shape and texture. Because of the integrity of the meat, a large piece is especially good for pork chops, and is also commonly used in dishes such as Chinese spare ribs, where it has a stronger meaty flavor.

Cooking style: Because of its fine fiber and tightness, it is not suitable for long time cooking; however, short time cooking, such as thick cuts to make pork chops, or shredded and quickly stir-fried taste is very good, and you can eat the bite of the meat.

During processing, in order to make the meat can be more fluffy, the meat hammer can be used to beat the meat, this action will be the meat fiber and some tissue pat broken, when cooking the meat contraction will be more limited, to maintain the texture, and will not be too dry and hard.

D: Pork Tenderloin

It is the lean meat underneath the backbone that is connected to the large ribs, and it is the part of the pig that has the least movement, and it is also the most tender piece of meat in the whole pig. It is characterized by a light flavor, boneless and gluten-free, and low fat content. The tip of the loin muscle near the ribs is particularly tender and is also known as the "loin".

Cooking: This meat has fine fibers, so it is suitable for quick and short cooking to avoid loss of meat juice. Pan-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying are all suitable ways to cook the small loin muscle, or simply make it into deep-fried pork chops for consumption.

E: abdominal coercive meat (pork) Pork Belly

refers to the belly part of the pig's lower backbone, commonly known as "pork", skin, lard, and meat layered clearly, so it is also known as the "three layers of meat". It contains a lot of fat, so the flavor of the meat is particularly strong, and you can taste a variety of flavors in a whole piece of pork knuckle. When you buy pork, choose a thicker cut, with the first half of the cut having the best flavor.

Cooking: You can choose the ratio of fat and lean according to your cooking needs. Fat-rich pork has a mild taste and is suitable for braising, brining, and stewing, and the meat will not become hard because of long time stewing, but will become more and more flavorful as it cooks, for example, pork with dried plums and pork with Dongpo meat. If you want to stir-fry or blanch after the white cut dipping sauce, you can choose the fat and lean ratio of about the same.

F: Pork Ham

Pork Ham is particularly strong, more lean on the buttocks because the meat fiber is thicker, less fat with only a little fat, the taste of the meat is more astringent.

Buttock:

It belongs to the uppermost part of the hind leg, with more lean meat, less fat, and relatively astringent taste; however, because of less sinew, it is easier to handle, and is often used to make minced meat, meat soup, or stir-fry, and is also very commonly used to make processed meats, especially sausage, ham, and so on.

Cooking: The meat is coarse and suitable for stir-frying and meat grilling, in fact, the meat of the hind leg is often used for processing products such as meatballs, ham and meat floss.

If you want to use the buttocks for barbecue cooking, you can slice and flatten them first to change the structure of the meat, which will be more delicious after processing.

Hoof:

The lower part of the thigh between the knee and the hoof is called the "hoof", or "leg bank", and it has a lot of meat, which is fat and thin skinned, and is usually suitable for stewing for a long time with the skin on.

Cooking: It is usually suitable for long time stewing with the skin on, and can be cut into pieces and braised, or fried and baked.

G: Pig's feet and hooves

Pigs belong to the group of even-toed ungulates, each foot has two big and two small *** four hooves, usually remove the toenails before cooking, also known as hooves, hooves thick skin and tendons, and the center of the palm is also full of collagen, soft and flexible.

Cooking style: suitable for a long time brining, braising.

Tendons:

Although there are tendons in both the front and back hooves, it is not easy to take them out of the front hooves, so most of them are extracted from the back hooves on the market, and because of the small quantity, it is best to book them from vendors beforehand, or you can buy dried tendons that need to be foamed in the dry goods store. The most common cooking method is to add the Buddha's jumping over the wall, which is often eaten in the table dishes, or to slightly fry it before brining it to the table, and the QQ texture and rich gelatin are favored by many people.

Favorite! Special Parts

1 - Pork Neck

It is commonly known as "Matsusaka pork", which is a very popular ingredient in recent years because some people found that the taste of this part of the pork is not inferior to that of Matsusaka beef, so they named it to attract buyers. Pork neck meat accounts for a very small proportion of the whole pig, and there are only six taels in a pig, so it is also known as "golden six taels of meat".

This part of the meat is crispy, grease is enough, cooking should grasp the fast cooking, thin slices of the two principles, is not suitable for a long time or with the stewing way of cooking, otherwise the meat will be more and more hard cooking.

2 - Liver meat

As the name suggests, it is a piece of meat located above the liver, a piece of diaphragm separating the thoracic and abdominal cavities of the pig's internal organs, connecting to the liver, so it is called liver meat, which is the only piece of lean meat in the internal organs, and it is also known as the "Matsusaka meat of the internal organs", which is precious. It is not easy to buy liver meat in the traditional market because most of it has already been reserved by noodle stall owners.

3 - Pork Cheek Meat

The meat on the sides of the pig's chin and cheeks, also known as "mouth meat" and "chrysanthemum meat," is not very fatty, and has soft tendons and a tender texture, and is soft and chewy because of the constant movement of the meat on the sides of the pig's mouth as it eats and chews, and so is delicious when boiled and cut into slices, or barbecued.

4 - Bone Meat

That is, pork head meat, pork bone on the thin meat taken off the cut peeled, that is, a delicious bone meat.

5 - Tiger's Paw

It is the ligament and cartilage tissue at the knee of the pig. Because the tiger's paw is smaller in the front leg, the tiger's paw in the back leg is mostly used, and it is white in color, soft and gelatinous in texture, and it is usually sold with the big bone, which is rich in gelatinous. It is usually sold with the big bone, which is very gelatinous. As there are not many of these, it is recommended to make reservations with the vendor in advance. In addition to the commonly heard dish of "braised tiger's paw with ginseng", it is also very suitable for heavy dishes such as braised or three cups.

6 - Mouse Meat

There is a piece of mouse meat in the athletic thigh area, commonly known as "mouse meat", which is part of the pork tendon, mostly referred to as the hind leg tendon, and can only be taken out of each pig in four pieces. The meat is chewy, chewy without being too hard, and it looks like an olive with a fleshy membrane covering the meat and a soft tendon hidden inside.

Where is the tendon?

There are tendons in both the front and back legs of the pig, and the olive-shaped tendons are located in the muscle bundles of the thighs. The tendons are smaller in the front legs and larger in the back legs, which is why some brokers call them small tendons and large tendons. It's a good place to start, but it's also a good place to start, so it's a good place to start, so it's a good place to start, so it's a good place to start, so it's a good place to start, so it's a good place to start, so it's a good place to start.

7 - Second Layer Meat

The thin layer of meat in the middle of the pork skin and loin muscle is soft and tender, and is rare and expensive. It is recommended to cut it into thin slices against the grain and then blanch it for dipping in the sauce, similar to the way you eat thin slices of garlic paste, to best savor the special taste.

Getting to know pork chops and bones

Scapula heart chops:

The bones attached to the meat of the scapula heart are called scapula heart chops, and the bones are thicker and more resistant to cooking, and are more commonly used in soups, such as stewed pork chops with medicine.

Ribs:

The last layer of pancake meat and bone connected to the lean meat part, is the so-called ribs, this part of the meat is juicy, and more to be used in barbecue to make barbecue ribs, and meat stalls are often picked out of the ribs to become a thin bone, the meat part of the meat to be sold to sell the three layers of meat, and the branch bone to be used to make soup.

Ribs:

The bones attached to the ribs are called ribs, also known as "small ribs", which are the thicker and shorter bones in the middle after removing the backbone and the branch bones, a small section of the meat is considered to be a lot of meat, which is suitable for long time cooking and flavoring, such as sweet and sour and braised is a common practice, and the texture is similar to that of the large ribs and is chewy.

Backbone:

Commonly known as the keel, is the spine of the pig, if and the large muscle connected to the pork ribs, but if you take out the two sides of the large muscle, basically only the bones, almost no meat, but because of the spinal cord contains gelatinous, and is often used to stew, boiled soup.

Leg bone:

Often heard in the snack bar soup noodle or soup soup soup with big bone soup, the front leg bone and the back leg bone of the pig's leg is mainly used to make soup with. You can ask the vendors to help you cut the bones into pieces, which not only makes it easier to handle, but also allows the bone marrow to mix with the broth, so that the soup can absorb the aroma of the leg bones better.

Pig's blood and lard is also a great delicacy

How to cook pig's blood?

It's not easy to buy pig's blood at pork stalls, because there are businesses that specialize in collecting pig's blood at slaughterhouses, so it's easier for people to buy pig's blood or rice blood cake in supermarkets. Because pig blood is rich in iron, so the fishy taste is heavy, no matter with Chinese and Western practices to deal with pig blood, it is recommended to add some garlic, chives or cumin and other flavors heavier ingredients, or like outside vendors in the rice blood cake sprinkled with peanut powder and coriander, can also reduce the fishy taste.

What is the use of lard?

The subcutaneous fat of the pig is developed, and the fat is the pork stalls a piece of white lard, traditional families are accustomed to cut the lard into small pieces and thrown into the pot to deep-frying, refining can be used for stir-frying or mixing fresh lard, or supermarkets can buy refrigerated ready-made lard, melted in the heat, can also be used to stir-frying, mixing rice, noodles.

Lard is also found in sausages and some processed products to add flavor and smoothness to foods. Usually use lard for pig back oil, in addition to the area of larger and complete, processing impurities generated by less, there is also a pig abdominal cavity of the oil, because of more impurities in the cooking, will make the food taste bad, so the most will only be used to deep frying food, frying that is thrown away. In addition to this block of oil, there is also a "mesh oil", in addition to this block of oil, there is also a mesh oil is located under the pancreas, wrapped around the waist of the network of fat oil, more commonly used to fix the snacks "dragon and phoenix legs" of the filling.