Seven countries · One animal

The Beef Atlas

Verified cut names across the US, UK, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil & Slovenia

Round — click to filter Sirloin — click to filter Loin — click to filter Rib — click to filter Chuck — click to filter Flank — click to filter Plate — click to filter Brisket — click to filter Shank — click to filter Head — click to filter
Two layers: each cut is anchored to a muscle (anatomy — universal) and shown as a cut (how each country butchers it). Open any cut to see its muscle, how it's cut, and which other cuts share the same muscle.

The rule of thumb: muscles that do little work stay tender — cook them hot & fast (tenderloin, ribeye). Hard-working muscles near the legs, shoulder, and neck are tougher — cook them low & slow so the collagen melts (brisket, shank, chuck). Each cut below carries a 5-dot muscle-work meter.

Both. The anatomy is universal, but where the knife falls, the thickness, whether the bone stays, and how fat is trimmed all differ by tradition. "Sirloin" in a UK shop and "sirloin" in a US shop are genuinely different pieces of meat.

🇺🇸 United States
Standardised by USDA IMPS specifications. Favours thick individual steaks sawn across the muscle. US "sirloin" = British rump; US "brisket" covers a broader chest area than the UK cut of the same name.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Traditional seam butchery follows natural muscle seams rather than sawing straight through, producing differently shaped pieces and more roasting joints. British "sirloin" ≈ US short loin. Scotland uses yet another distinct system.
🇪🇸 Spain
Its own despiece: the hind leg splits into tapa, contra, babilla and redondo; ribeye is entrecot (from the lomo alto), the loin end is lomo bajo, tenderloin is solomillo. Spanish tradition prizes the long-aged chuletón from old dairy cattle (vaca vieja / buey).
🇦🇷 Argentina
Asado culture demands thin cuts that cook fast over coals. Tira de asado is sawn across the ribs — a different geometry from US short ribs. Entraña and vacío are essentially Argentine inventions.
🇨🇴 Colombia
Names vary city to city: Medellín's solomito is lomito in Bogotá and lomo viche in Cali. Sobrebarriga is a distinctly Colombian cut with no single US/UK equivalent.
🇧🇷 Brazil
Churrasco skewer culture and zebu cattle shaped unique cuts: picanha, fraldinha, maminha (a flank/bottom-sirloin crossover that doesn't map to any US cut), and cupim — the zebu hump, which exists in no other tradition.
🇸🇮 Slovenia
Central European tradition. Picanha (tafelspitz) is traditionally boiled for soup — the opposite of Brazil. Skirt (prepona) is usually removed at the slaughterhouse and rarely sold retail.

Bottom line: treat this atlas as a translation guide, not an exact map — some cuts simply don't exist in some countries, and we say so rather than forcing an equivalent.

Names in:
All cuts

The muscle-vs-cut model. Each of the 33 entries is anchored to one anatomical muscle — the objective, universal unit — and then shows how each country turns that muscle into a named cut: fat cap on or off, bone in or out, sliced across or with the grain, sold whole or as steaks. That is why picanha and a trimmed coulotte are the same muscle but separate entries, and why Argentina's vacío and Brazil's fraldinha sit in their own “flap” entry rather than being lumped under flank or skirt.

The confidence badges. Each name table carries a rating. ✓ Well-verified — multiple independent sources agree the same muscle is meant across all seven countries. ⚠ Names vary — at least one country's term is a known naming trap or approximation (e.g. UK “sirloin” is the US strip, not the US sirloin). ⚠ Contested equivalence — the underlying cut is genuinely debated, as with the Austrian/Slovenian Tafelspitz, described variously as the rump cap (picanha), tri-tip, or top round; rather than force one muscle, we flag it.

How it was verified. Every muscle → country-name mapping was cross-checked over three research rounds against country-specific butcher sources and authoritative meat science. Muscle anatomy was confirmed against the UK's AHDB, the US Beef Checkoff, Texas A&M meat science, Brazil's Embrapa, Argentina's IPCVA, and peer-reviewed muscle-profiling studies. Where a cut has no genuine equivalent in a country we say so in italics rather than invent a translation — tri-tip has no native Slovenian name, and hanger is rarely sold in Slovenia because the diaphragm is removed at slaughter. Regional variation is real: Colombian names differ across Medellín, Bogotá, Cali and the coast, so we list the most widely recognised term first.

Photos. Every cut photograph is Creative-Commons licensed (or public domain), with the photographer, licence and source credited beneath the image. A few show the cut cooked where no freely-licensed raw photo exists.

Muscle anatomy & meat science
Butchery systems & primals
Argentina
United Kingdom
Colombia
Brazil
Slovenia
Specific cuts
  • Tri-tip vs picanha — different muscles (tensor fasciae latae vs biceps femoris cap)
  • Tafelspitz — the contested cut behind the Austrian/Slovenian dish

A fuller provenance log — every mapping cross-checked across three research rounds against ~150 sources — backs this atlas; the sources above are the primary authorities. Individual cards link their own country-specific sources.