Six countries · One animal

The Beef Atlas

Verified cut names across the US, UK, 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

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.
🇦🇷 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.

Show:
All cuts

Every name in this atlas was checked against at least one country-specific source (linked on each card). Where a cut has no genuine equivalent in a country, we say so in italics instead of inventing a translation — for example, tri-tip has no native Slovenian name, and hanger steak is rarely sold in Slovenia because the diaphragm is removed at slaughter. Regional variation is real: Colombian names differ between Medellín, Bogotá, Cali, and the coast, so we list the most widely recognised term first.

Butchery systems & anatomy
United Kingdom
Colombia
Brazil
Slovenia
Specific cuts