French meat cuts
Taste of Savoie demystifies the cuts of meat in France
French meat cuts are somewhat different
French meat cuts were a puzzle to me when I arrived in France ten years ago, but I now feel comfortable visiting my Boucher and ordering most cuts of meat. Although there are some British cuts that don’t directly translate as the meat is cut differently.
French Meat Cuts
As I’ve puzzled over the
Pork
Les morceaux du porc
- 01 Échine
- 02-03 Côte première / côte seconde
- 04-05 Filet / côte filet
- 06 Filet mignon
- 07 Pointe filet
- 08-09 Jambon et grillade
- 10 Palette (épaule)
- 11 Jarret arrière
- 12 Jarret avant
- 13-14 Plat de côte / Travers
- 15 Poitrine
- Bacon if thinly sliced is
poitrine , preserved with salt. The French slice theirpoitrine fairly thickly to make lardons, so you need to ask for the slices to be ‘fine’ (pronounced ‘feen’). - Poitrine de pork – belly pork
Echine – is between the neck and the first rib above the shoulder – includes the blade bone and spare ribs.- Épaule is shoulder
- Plat de côtes – where the hand and belly meet
- Filet de porc – pork tenderloin
• If you want your joint with crackling, this should be no problem for your local butcher, but you may need to order it in advance. Ask for the joint ‘avec la couenne’ (pronounced la ‘quwen’).
- Joues – cheeks
- Jarret – ham hock
- Palette –
short cut leg of pork - Travers – ribs
- Porc Effiloché – pulled pork (slow cooked dry roasted) – normally the shoulder
Slow cooked belly pork at L’Observatoire
Lamb:
Les morceaux de l’agneau
01 Collier d’agneau
02 Côtes découvertes
03-04 Côtes secondes / Côtes premières
05-06 Filet / Côtes filets
07-08 Selle / Gigot raccourci
09-10 Poitrine/ Haut-de-côtes
11-12 Épaule / Épaule roulée
- Gigot
d’agneau – leg of lamb - Echine – shoulder
- Côtes – chump
- Collet – scrag (end)
- Poitrine/
poitrail – breast - Côtelette – chop usually from the rack of lamb, where the British cutlet comes from
- Selle
d’agneau – saddle - souris
d’agneau – lamb shank
Beef
Les morceaux du bœuf
01 Collier
02 Basses côtes
03-04 Entrecôte et côte de bœuf
05 Faux-filet
06 Filet de bœuf
07 Rumsteck
08 Queue de bœuf
09-13 Gîte à la noix, rond de gîte
10-11-12 Tende de tranche / Poire / Merlan/Araignée
14-15-16-17 Plat de tranche / Rond de tranche / Mouvant
18 Gîte (Jarret arrière)
19 Aiguillette baronne
20 Onglet de bœuf
21 Hampe de bœuf
22 Bavette d’aloyau
23 Bavette de flanchet
24 Flanchet
25 Plat-de-côtes de bœuf
26-27 Tendron / Milieu de Poitrine
28 Gros bout de Poitrine
29 Macreuse à bifteck
30 Paleron
31 Jumeau à bifteck
32 Macreuse à pot-au-feu
33 Jumeau à pot-au-feu
- Bifteck/ steak – steak
- Bavette – undercut – from the skirt, flank steak textured with long muscle fibres
- Basses-côtes – Chuck Steak more like Silverside
- Filet – fillet
- Faux-filet – more like a sirloin
- Steak à
hacher – used for steak tartare and steak haché. Steak haché looks like a burger, but it is good quality minced steak pressed. It is usually freshly minced, which is why people are happy to eat themrare . Not comparable to a beef hamburger. - Rumsteak – rump steak
- Merlan/ Araignée – spider steak – heavily marbled stea
Osseline and Onglet – Hanger steak- Paleron and Macreuse – Shoulder – good for braising
- Pot
au Feu – think rib/brisket – for braising - Entrecôte – fore rib steak
- Tournedos/ filet mignon – tenderloin steak, a chunk of tender steak, usually served quite rare (Saignant) unless otherwise requested. You can get ‘tournedos’ of lamb, too.
One thing that I found strange when I first visited the local boucherie was that the only meat that they will mince is beef. I was once told lamb couldn’t be mince! (but that may have been my ‘malentendu’ (misunderstanding). I was also told it was interdit! but I believe this was for hygiene and food standard reasons. However having befriended my local boucher he told me that if I ask in advance they will mince other meats but they need notice as they only have one mincer and need to clean it down before using for other meats.
Other beef cuts:
- Tête de veau – head of veal
- Langue de bœuf – beef tongue
- Gîte (à la noix) – topside
- Queue – oxtail
- Cou – neck
- Tranche – meaning ‘slice’, implies a steak of any meat other than beef
- Filet/ longue/ aloyau – all words for loin. Loin chop is ‘côte première’
In
Tartare de Boeuf a great French speciality and when done right is delicious! This is high quality raw beef normally hand-chopped and cut from the tenderloin/filet mignon. It is traditionally served with a raw egg yolk, chopped onion and chive, herbs, capers and mustard, although every recipe is different!
Ordering a steak in a restaurant in France
- Bleu – Done on a very hot grill for one minute on each side.
- Saignant – Meaning bloody. Very rare, but cooked slightly longer on the second side than a bleu steak.
- À point – rare to medium rare. Meaning the steak is cooked a little longer than a saignant (very rare) one.
- Bien cuit – ‘well cooked’. This level will still often have some pinkness in the middle of the meat. A ‘steak bien cuit’ is cooked until the juices run brown on the surface of the steak.
- Très bien cuit – should get you a steak that is totally cooked through! if you can find a French chef that will cook a steak this much!
When ordering lamb or duck you can ask for rosé which means a medium rare.
Poulet/Chicken
- Poitrine – the Breast
- Pilon – the lower part of the thigh
- Haut de cuisse – the upper part of the thigh
- Aile – the wing
- Dos – the
back Cou – the neck
Chicken, duck, goose and others:
- Poulet – chicken
- Poulette/Poussin – young chicken
- Coq – cockerel
- Pintade – guinea fowl
- Dinde – turkey
- Volaille – fowl/ poultry
- Cuisses – thighs
- Magret – breast
- Carcasse – carcasse for making stocks and soups.
- Confit de canard – normally a leg that it is salted and then submerged in its own rendered fat
This post has taken quite some research and I am sure there are many anomalies of meats and cuts I’ve left out. I’ll update this post as I continue on my culinary adventure in France!
Have meat cuts in France left you puzzled? Please leave a comment below if you’ve found this a helpful guide or have anything that you think I can add.
CAUTION: This blog post does not contain cheese!
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Taste of Savoie and Caro Blackwell-Sights of Savoie
Oh my… I just showed your blog post to my French boyfriend! As he is the chef in our home, he found your post very, very interesting! You certainly know your meat! Being a carnivore myself, my favourites is the filet mignon / Tournedos (Rossini, please)
Thank you for sharing
Louise X
Wow thank you – that’s great praise!
I think this is great and long overdue. All British butchers should be made to study it and learn it. Butchery in Britain is terrible and leaves a lot of meat uneatable. And a lot of the animal is not used for human consumption. .Congratulations.
LOL, I wish I could transport this onto my phone for next time I am in France – so comprehensive and it makes a huge difference which bit of meat you are buying
I found it very useful when I was researching this post. I hope it helps next time you are in France
I wish I had this info when I first arrived in 2010, I learnt some of these cut the hard way. It is very strange to me how you can buy Pork fillet, buy never lamb. ? When I asked at LeClerc they told the lamb does not grow big enough! but we see many les muttons roaming the forest in the Summer. Any other answers?
This is so useful Caro. Thank you! Xo
Thank you so much for a very comprehensive and useful guide which will be well used now we are living tous les jours on Nouvelle Aquitaine.
Pleasure, I’m delighted you will find it useful now you are living in France – I love the Nouvelle Aquitaine area
Hi,
Your post is very interesting to me and my girlfriend because we are planning to buy a restaurant in December in Grenoble and we are really getting into french and american beef cuts and we are finding a lot of problems when using american recipes that use beef, because of the different cuts…
I would be very happy if you can help us maybe? if you can help us I would really appreciated it because there are not a lot of info about this stuff online
Tony and Marie Joe
Thank you so much for the info. I am an American living in the south west of France. Yes meat cuts have been a mystery for me too. I wanted to make a beef stroganoff recipe from an american web site but of course I had to figure out what sirloin tip was in France. I guess I’ll try bavette. Hope you enjoy the french food adventure as much as I do.
Angela
So pleased that you find my post useful. I love SW France. For beef stroganoff I’d try bavette or a sirloin. I’m loving the French food adventure too! Caro
Excellent cuts of meat guide. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. Been living in France 2 months. All expats so far complain about “the meat” having no flavour as they dont hang. I have tried different ways with beef cuts and so far a steak isn’t hitting the spot for flavour. Living in Charente, surrounded by gorgeous Limousin cattle. Any tips on cooking a great steak?
Thank you – I put this guide together our of necessity when I moved here 11 years ago. How lucky you are living in the Charente region. Can you get good beef directly from the farmers? I sometimes buy a whole Fillet of beef from Grand Frais and freeze it in portions to use for steaks. I would pan fry in a griddle pan hot and quickly! Or on the bbq. I normally add a herb butter at the end of the cooking.
What’s the cut for beef back ribs ? Or baby back ribs
Hi – I would say beef short ribs would be côte courte – baby back ribs I associate with pork and would call travers du porc – but then no reason why you couldn’t ask a French butcher for travers de boeuf I guess!
Instead of a roll of fillet I have bought pieces de fondue. How should I differ the cooking times? (I am doing a boeuf en croute). Thank you
Hi Vivienne, I believe the piece de fondue is normally slow cooked or sous vide or cut into pieces and cooked in a fondue chinoise. It is sometimes top rump or a paleron cut, so it is lean. I’m not sure on the cooking times, but I would say to brown it in the pan first and cook in a hot oven as you will only be able to cook for as long as it takes the puff pastry to cook. Or cook it sous vide and then wrap in pastry for a boeuf en croute. hope this helps
As a French person living in Canada, I understand the struggle when the cuts you have known for years are just different and there is no exact equivalence ^^.
Great job about the article, and the “Couenne” prononciation was just amazing ^^
Thank you very much for taking the time to let me know that you enjoyed this article – working out the meat cuts when I first came to live in France was a really steep learning! and then pronouncing them right was even harder!!
Do you happen to have the French equivalents to beef short rib and rib finger for braising, please ?
I would suggest they would be bouts de côtes de boeuf and the word for braising is braisé – I often explain to my butcher how I want to cook the meat as well as asking for the cut of meat – hope this helps.
Thank you for your brilliant posts,……. only just discovered, I used to reside in Evian les Bains, but could never find a boucher who could comprehend “Brisket of Bouf” even with diagrams ….understood “point du portrine” was closest but no success.
Additionally your thoughts regarding the apparent lack of “Beef” as from accredited steer & not “cow meat” you will know some cuts are just labeled “bovine” which is I understand to be (feminine) as opposed to bovine (m), I comprehend why in dairy areas this would be the case.
A average whole fill et of beet weighs 1.8- 2.25 ish kg, so to see whole fillet weighing perhaps 2x this weight suggests quite old dairy girls at the end of productive cycle??
Any fuller knowledge ????
Hhhhmm interesting thoughts here, the brisket doesn’t seem to exist as you say in France, the closest I guess would be poitrine or maybe the bavette which is the skirt area. I think that bovine can just refer to meats as in the VBF (Viande Bovine Francaise) label. As to the size of the fillet and it’s origin I don’t know!
A good article with some appealing photographs. I came here after just having had a bas côte steak and not being sure what cut that was. I’m also used to buying neck of lamb in the UK for stewing. It’s usually off the bone, but I don’t see an equivalent in France, just on the bone. Lamb is in general hard to find. I do just shop in supermarkets, rather than butchers, though.
Thank you for taking the time for your comments – for neck of lamb, I’m not sure I’ve seen it much but it is known as collier here. My guess would be a butcher would prepare a boneless collier for you – I find the butchers counter in our local supermarket to be very helpful and have often ordered and had meat prepared by the butcher at the supermarket.