Spanish Translation On Beef Cuts

October 17, 2008 6:40 AM

Spanish Translation Filter: We are living in Southern Spain, please could somebody provide me with a few names of good meat for example, fillet steak, rib-eye, sirloin, tender meat for putting in a casserole etc. Thanks in advance...

Having trouble finding out what to ask for in Spanish when getting to the butchers as there is so much choice.

posted by spinko to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

This dictionary is technically for Mexican cooking, but should be a fairly good guide.
posted by googly at 7:13 AM on October 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Here is a PDF of the "Meat Cuts Made Easy" chart, in English and Spanish, from the US Beef Retail Marketing Board.

It shows all common cuts in picture form with both English and Spanish terms.

If that doesn't cover it, it ain't meat. ;)
posted by rokusan at 7:28 AM on October 17, 2008

I'm no expert on beef, but as a native Spaniard I must issue a word of warning: Rokusan's PDF is impressive indeed, but the translations contained within sound distinctly Latin American to me, and the vocabulary for foodstuffs is different enough across the ocean that your local Andalusian butcher may have never heard those names.

For what it's worth, I've never heard a lot of those in my whole life. I can only contribute a couple data points, though — I'm pretty sure that in Spain we use "solomillo" instead of "aguayón" for sirloin, and "filete" rather than "bistec" for steak. As I said, I'm no expert.

I came up with this glossary after Googling for a bit. It only covers beef, but it's a start.
posted by doctorpiorno at 10:05 AM on October 17, 2008

This glossary (pdf file) from the Argentine government seems to have what you need.
posted by Iosephus at 11:09 AM on October 17, 2008

(Ok, that was amusing. After properly cleaning up doctorpiorno's link, which should be this, turns out it's the same pdf file I found somewhere else!)
posted by Iosephus at 11:27 AM on October 17, 2008

Response by poster: Hey there, thanks for all the info. It gives me somewhere to start and I will look into it when I next go the butchers.
posted by spinko at 3:20 AM on October 18, 2008

I agree that Latin American Spanish and Castillian Spanish is different enough that I wouldn't use the above-referenced charts. I'm an American woman who lived in Madrid (married to a Spaniard) and one thing I found that made shopping for meat difficult is that they cut the meat differently in Spain than in the US. I shopped for meat (at least at first) in the bigger supermarkets where self-service was available. I could pick up a package, peer at it, open my pocket dictionary and try to puzzle out what it was. Most Spaniards are helpful by nature and respond well to any attempt to speak the language. In your shoes, I would ask the butcher for beef (or chicken or whatever) along with what method you wish to use to cook it and take it from there. The most common steak I ordered was filetes, which are very thin cuts of beef. Solomillo is more a chunk of meat, like a roast.

The cookbook I used to learn to cook Spanish food is Penelope Casas's The Foods and Wines of Spain, which is very comprehensive and produces food that my Spanish relatives agree tastes like Spanish food.

Good luck!
posted by daneflute at 9:57 PM on October 18, 2008