Picanha: does size matter? – 07/18/2023 – Gross Kitchen

Back in the last century, a friend invited me to a barbecue and called, all excited, saying he had bought a five-kilogram sirloin steak.

I thought he was joking.

Was not.

He had bought, at the price of rump steak, an enormous piece of hard coxón. Let me explain: picanha is the tip of the hard coxão, the narrowest part of the same muscle.

Anyone who ate the least amount of meat knew that sirloin steak weighed a kilo, a maximum of 1.2 kg. It went beyond that, it was bad meat to chew.

Cut to the present.

On Sunday (16), I found sirloin steak for R$40/kg in the supermarket on my block. Excellent news. We can go back to eating picanha without breaking the finances.

I posted the photo on Twitter.

Several people came to tell me that it wasn’t picanha because it weighed 1.6 kg. I didn’t buy or eat that meat, but I can safely say: it was sirloin steak, yes.

What has changed in that time? Simple answer: the ox grew.

Twenty years ago, the Brazilian herd consisted mainly of Zebu animals, smaller than European breeds.

Since then, other breeds have been introduced, crossings have been made, and even the zebu have become sturdier due to genetic and management improvements.

Muscles increase proportionately. That’s why a 1.5 kg picanha is normal. If you take a giant wagyu animal, it can reach up to 2.5 kg.

If weight is no longer a reference for identifying sirloin steak, what is it?

Easier to say what probably isn’t picanha: sliced ​​meat. That’s a lottery, because sliced ​​hard drumstick looks identical.

There are a lot of videos on the internet showing where to cut the meat to separate the picanha. They say it’s on the third vein from the tip of the piece, but frankly: are you going to buy the whole piece and be hunting vein?

I may be being naive, but I believe that packaged parts from large slaughterhouses have a low possibility of fraud. Guys will lose a lot of money and reputation if they get caught in the crime.

Another possibility is to become a customer of a good butcher. Like any trust relationship, it can be difficult and time-consuming to reach satisfactory terms. But it’s so worth it.

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