Know your cuts of meat.
Which Part Of The Pig Does “Boston Butt” Come From?
A Boston butt has nothing to do with a pig’s backsidethat’s the ham.
Credit:Morgan Hunt Glaze; Food Stylist: Chelsea Zimmer; Prop Stylist: Josh Hoggle
The butt, counterintuitively, comes from the front end.
Where Did The Name “Boston Butt” Originate?
So, that’s the proper location for these meats.
Mix Plate of sliced pork and ribs with white bread at Archibald’s BBQ.Credit: Robbie Caponetto
But how to explain the name?
If you believe the internet, it came from shipping practices.
“The barrels the pork went into were called butts,” the author explains.
Can you think of any other food named for its shipping container?
There are plenty of historical problems with this explanation too.
Butchers in different parts of the country had slightly different ways of carving up pigs and cows.
Other states and cities lent their names to various cuts as national packers standardized butchering.
Thus we have New York strip steaks andSt.
Louis-style ribsanother favorite of Southern barbecue cooks.
The pork shoulder originally had several other geographically named cuts.
Consider the butt of a rifle or a cigar.
Boston didn’t have a monopoly on butts either.
There’s no need to giggle about the name, even while rubbing them down with yoursecret spice blend.
