The Hill I Will Die On: Pork Is a Wonderful, Magical Animal

The hill I will die on pork is one I have been quietly astonished by my entire adult life: ham, bacon, pork chops, sausage, BBQ pulled pork, and ribs all come from the SAME animal. Say that out loud and really hear it. Six completely different foods. Six different aisles of the grocery store. Six things nobody would ever guess were related if you lined them up on a table. Breakfast, lunch, supper, and the whole church potluck, all out of one pig. As Homer Simpson once put it — a wonderful, magical animal. 🐷🐷🐷

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Now, y’all know by now that I do not plant a flag without going looking for backup first, and this time the backup was hiding somewhere I did not expect. The Homer line comes from an episode called “Lisa the Vegetarian,” which aired on Fox in October of 1995 — the one where Paul and Linda McCartney show up. Lisa announces she is done with meat, Homer starts listing things at her, bacon, ham, pork chops, and Lisa says the words that have lived in my head ever since: those all come from the same animal.

Here is the part that got me. That joke was not written as a joke. According to the people who made it, the writer based Homer’s side of that exchange on a speech another Simpsons writer had given about the wonders of the pig — the man was not pitching a punchline, he simply could not get over how many different cuts of meat come out of one animal. So a professional comedy writer sat in a room in the 1990s and had the exact reaction I have every single time I unload a grocery cart, and it turned into one of the most quoted lines in television. I have never felt so seen by a cartoon.

And then I found out the meat industry agrees with me, which I did not expect either. Back in 2013 the National Pork Board and the beef folks, with the blessing of the USDA, rewrote the names of more than 350 cuts of meat because two years of research told them shoppers were standing at the meat case genuinely confused about what they were looking at. Two years. Of research. To establish that nobody knows what part of the pig they are buying. I could have told them that for free and so could you.

Hill I Will Die On Pork — Where Every One of These Actually Comes From

So I went and learned the map, and honestly it made me love the whole thing more instead of less. A pig gets broken down into just a handful of big sections — the shoulder, the loin down the back, the belly underneath, and the hind leg. That is basically it. Every single thing on my list comes out of one of those four places.

The hind leg is ham. That is the whole answer. The long muscle running down the back is the loin, and that is where pork chops and pork loin come from, along with the tenderloin that Jason’s Iowa pork tenderloin sandwich is built on. The shoulder is the tough, marbled, forgiving one that turns into crockpot BBQ pulled pork if you leave it alone long enough, and it is also where an awful lot of sausage begins its life. And the belly — the fatty underside — gets cured and smoked and becomes bacon.

Which brings me to the fact I cannot stop telling people. Spare ribs come off the belly too. They are cut away from it before the rest of it gets turned into bacon. So a rack of spare ribs and a package of bacon are next-door neighbors on the same pig, and I had eaten both of them in the same week for thirty years without ever once connecting them. Baby back ribs are the other kind, and they come off the loin up by the backbone — they are not from baby pigs, they are just shorter than spare ribs, which is a thing I also did not know and am now slightly embarrassed about.

Then there is the pork butt, which is not the butt. It is the top of the shoulder, up near the neck, about as far from the actual rear end as you can get and still be on the same animal. That is the cut sitting in your slow cooker every time you make pulled pork. When the industry did that big renaming in 2013, “pork butt” was one of the ones they tried to retire — the new official name is Boston roast. I have never once heard a single person in Florida call it that and I do not expect to start.

This is the whole argument, really. No other animal on my grocery list does this. A cow gives you steak and roast and ground beef, and every one of those words still tells you it is beef. Chicken gives you breasts and thighs and wings and they all still sound like chicken. Pork is the only one where the words themselves hide the connection — where sausage gravy on a Saturday morning and a rack of ribs on a Sunday afternoon and a Christmas ham in December are the same creature wearing three completely different outfits. That is not a grocery item. That is a magic trick.

Hill I Will Die On — Pork FAQ

Is the hill I will die on pork just an excuse to talk about bacon?

Partly, and I am not going to insult you by pretending otherwise. But the actual argument is bigger than bacon. It is that one animal quietly feeds my family at breakfast, at lunch, at supper, at every cookout, and at every holiday table, in six forms that do not look or taste anything alike. I would still be impressed by that if I never ate another slice.

Hold on. Pork butt is not the butt?

It is not, and I need you to know I took this personally when I found out. Pork butt — also called Boston butt — comes off the upper part of the front shoulder, right behind the neck. Nowhere near the tail. It is the cut you want for pulled pork because all that fat and connective tissue breaks down beautifully over a long, slow cook.

Are baby back ribs from baby pigs?

No, thank goodness, and I am glad somebody finally asked out loud. Baby back ribs come off the loin, right up against the backbone, and they are called baby because they are shorter than spare ribs. That is the entire reason. Spare ribs come from lower down on the side of the pig, right off the belly.

Don’t beef and chicken have a bunch of different cuts too?

They absolutely do, and I am not going to pretend the pig invented butchery. My argument is about the names. Beef cuts still sound like beef and chicken cuts still sound like chicken, so nobody is ever surprised. Pork is the only one where the words work like a disguise — bacon, ham, and ribs give you no clue at all that they used to be the same animal.

Fine — what should I actually buy if I am feeding a houseful?

Shoulder, every time. A pork butt is one of the cheapest cuts at the store, it is nearly impossible to ruin, and it will feed a crowd out of one slow cooker with almost no work from you. If you would rather have something you can slice, a whole pork loin is the other great deal — I got four dinners out of one $19 Costco loin and wrote the whole thing down.

So that is the hill I will die on pork, and I am standing on it with a comedy writer, a trade board, and the United States Department of Agriculture all somewhere behind me. Tell me in the comments — did you already know all of this and think everybody did? Or are you like me, standing in your kitchen slightly stunned that the Christmas ham and the Saturday bacon and the Fourth of July ribs have been the same animal this entire time? And what is your cut? Because somebody in the comments is about to fight me about Chicago-style ribs and I am ready.

More Hills Worth Dying On — Strong Food Opinions from Stephanie

• The Hill I Will Die On: A Bologna Sandwich Is the Best Beach Lunch — another slice off the same magical animal, and the USDA files it right alongside the frankfurter.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Hot Dogs Only Want Ketchup and Mustard — the first time an official council told me I was wrong about pork, and the first time I ignored one.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Breakfast for Dinner Beats Breakfast at Breakfast Time — which is really just an argument for eating bacon and sausage twice as often.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Bread Is Life and Life Without Bread Is No Life — because a pulled pork sandwich is only half a pig, and the other half is a bun.
• Browse every Hill I Will Die On — the full archive of my strongest food opinions, all in one place.

The Hill I Will Die On — About Stephanie Longstreth

Stephanie Longstreth is the home cook, mom, and storyteller behind StephanieCooksForACrowd.com. She cooks for a family of seven in Florida — five kids, two cats, and one husband who appreciates a good meal. Four of her children came home through adoption, and family stories are woven into everything she makes and shares. Find her crowd-friendly recipes, weekly meal plans, and real family life on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest @stephaniecooksforacrowd.