Sirloin = NY Strip?

A quick question re: the cut labeled sirloin in restaurants. Unless it says top sirloin, is a sirloin steak served in a restaurant assumed to be the same as a NY strip?

I hope not. The NY Strip comes from the short loin while the sirloin would come from the sirloin portion which is just behind the short loin. The short loin section is in between the rib and sirloin section and is mainly composed of the T-Bone and Porterhouse of which you would get the strip loin and the filet. The sirloin section is where the sirloin and tri-tip come from.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the posts; My wikipedia search left me more confused than with answers. Suffice it to say, the sirloin I had this evening at Chez Joel was horrible compared to any NY strip I've ever had - makes sense now.

So from Gleam's illustration, top loin = NY strip?

I'd always understood a porterhouse to essentially be a NY strip (up top) and a tenderloin (down below), true?

Yeah, porterhouses and t-bones are cut from the whole short loin, while boneless filet and ny strips are cut from each side.

A porterhouse is cut from the part of the short loin where the filet is big and thick, and the t-bone is from the tail end of the filet, where it's much smaller.

strip, shell steak, top loin, delmonico (sometimes... the name isn't particularly well defined at this point) etc are all the same, although some might imply boneless or not.

If you look at the diagram, you'll see there's a section of the short loin that's not marked as part of any of the cuts. I'm pretty sure that's flap meat/flap steak, as discussed in another thread.

Ed, the chart you posted is a thing of beauty. I printed it out and plan to study it before going to bed. Once, years ago, I had a huge poster size version of a chart like this that I got from the National Cattleman's Association -- alas, I lost it somethere in time. Would love to get one of those again to frame and keep on the kitchen wall.

Hammond

Gleam,
Delmonico is another name given to rib eye see chart above and not strip steak.
Paulette

Dave,
You might be able to get such a chart from USDA.
Paulette

David Hammond wrote:Ed, the chart you posted is a thing of beauty. I printed it out and plan to study it before going to bed. Once, years ago, I had a huge poster size version of a chart like this that I got from the National Cattleman's Association -- alas, I lost it somethere in time. Would love to get one of those again to frame and keep on the kitchen wall.

Hammond

Here it is in black and white at poster size for $20.75

Here's a smaller full color chart organized a little differently with photos of the various "retail" cuts downloadable from the NCBA. More downloadables (beef, pork, and lamb) from the Virtual Weber Bullet here.

Not posters, but here you can buy stuff from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. A "Beef USA" baseball cap? A tie with the Beef USA logo? Where was all this before the holidays?

If anyone is interested, I have uploaded the USDA Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications for beef as a PDF file. It's everything you want to know about beef. They even have a standardized numbering system for the various cuts.

paulette wrote:Gleam,
Delmonico is another name given to rib eye see chart above and not strip steak.
Paulette

Paulette,

Delmonico these days refers to about 6 different cuts. You and I generally understand it to be ribeye, but to others, it's strip or sirloin.

From Wikipedia:

The original Delmonico steak was a boneless top sirloin, almost two inches thick with delicate marbling and cooked rare to well done (depending on the request of the diner). However, over the years it has come to signify a club steak from the short loin of beef, prepared as a boneless, very rare steak.

Some of the steak cuts now commonly referred to as Delmonico steak include:

1. a bone-in top loin steak (a triangular-shaped, short loin cut, some suggesting the first cut of the top loin next to the rib end) also known as a club steak, country club steak, shell steak, and strip loin steak;
2. a boneless or bone-in rib-eye steak (some insist it is a rib cut closest to the front end of the ribs while others say any rib-eye);
3. a boneless top loin steak (also known as a New York strip steak, Kansas City steak, strip loin, ambassador, boneless club, hotel or veiny steak); or
4. a boneless top sirloin.

Which is why I noted that the term "delmonico" is poorly defined these days.

gleam wrote:Delmonico these days refers to about 6 different cuts. You and I generally understand it to be ribeye, but to others, it's strip or sirloin.

That's why I posted the link to the USDA chart. Cuts can be known by many different names in different parts of the country, but the chart gives you a numerical classification of every cut of beef. You can walk into any butcher shop in the US and order by number and get exactly what you want. The only downside is that this chart is for larger cuts and does not specify the actual steaks cut from the whole roast.

Since we're on the subject of beef cuts, can someone explain what a flat iron steak and a hangar steak are? I didn't see these in Stevez's USDA reference material. These names are becoming more common on restaurant menus and I assume they are secondary cuts that are cheaper than the premium cuts.

Thanks,
Jesper

flatiron steak is a special cut from the shoulder. It's a top blade steak cut so there isn't a streak of connective tissue running down the middle.

hanger steak is a piece of meat that hangs from the steer's diaphragm, near the ribs and kidneys. you only get 1-2 pounds of hanger steak per steer carcass, so almost all of it goes either to butchers or restaurants. it has a pretty strong flavor, a little organy, but it's a good steak.