Hello class, and welcome back to another cooking 101 lesson. Today I would like to take the time to talk about one of my favorite cuts of meat, the boneless pork loin.
So what is a pork loin?
Well for starters it looks like this
- A pork loin is one of the four primal cuts of meat a butcher will get out of a pig, along with the shoulder, belly, and ham. For those of you who don’t work in the butchering industry, a primal cut describes any piece of meat from which all other cuts are made out of.
- It comes from the back part of the pig between the shoulder and the ham.
- Except for the rib section, the pork loin is typically the leanest and most tender of the primal cuts of pork.
- It comes in both the bone-in and boneless types.
- From this primal cut, we get two types of chops, the rib, and loin, along with two types of roasts, the rib roast, and the sirloin roast.
- This is also part of the pig in which back bacon or Canadian bacon is made from
Why buy a pork loin?
Two words: It’s cheap
Two more words: It’s tasty
Seriously, what else needs to be said!?
Ok, so to make the first point a little clearer, let’s do a little bit of math on the pork loin I have.
It cost $14.75, and weighs 7.8 LBs, which comes out to $1.89 per LB of meat.
Not too bad!
Now since you typically would need about ½ a pound of meat per person per meal, that means that with this pork loin you could easily feed a little over 15 people for about 94 cents a pop.
But the reality is even better. You see in the end I was able to get 13 individual pork chops, and two pork roasts out of this particular pork loin. The chops can feed one person each, while the pork roasts are big enough to feed anywhere from 4 to 6 people. That means that I am capable of feeding 21 people out of this particular pork loin, costing roughly 70 cents a person.
70 CENTS PER PERSON!
Yes, 70 cents per person.
I also want to make sure that you folks understand that these are good sized portions, so if you wanted to be even more economical then you could easily spread this pork loin out even further.
How to cut up a pork loin
Ok, so unless you have a group of 20 + people you are going to want to cut this loin up and use it for multiple meals. And while the whole pork loin might look like a lot to handle, trust me when I say that cutting it up is actually fairly easy.
For starters you will need a good knife, I recommend either a chef’s knife or a carving knife.
Next, you are going to need a large cutting board to lay the pork loin out on.
Finally, we need to take a minute and decide how we want to cut up this pork loin. You see, there are actually a lot of different ways that you can cut up a pork loin, and it all really depends on what you plan to use it for. For example, I prefer to get both roasts, and chops out of my pork loin, however, if I was planning on making some pork stir fry, or a stew, then I could easily cut a few of the chops into strips, or one of the roasts into chunks. Either way, I just going to show you, folks, the way I cut up my pork roast, so let’s get to it!
The first thing we are going to do is cut off about 6 to 8 inches on the sirloin end, which is the end that is more cylindrical, than flat. 
And boom, we have our first roast, the sirloin, which easily feeds anywhere from 4 to 6 people. Now while other people sometimes cut this up into chops or stew meat, I think this is best as a whole roast, as it’s fairly even in size and not too lean, nor too fatty.
Next, we are going to be cutting up chops out of the middle section of the pork loin. Start from the side where you cut off the sirloin roast, and simply start cutting the rest of the loin into chops. Now it’s important to note that for this part you have the option to cut the chops as big or as small as you wish. I generally try to shoot for chops that are roughly ¾ of an inch, but if you want them thicker or thinner then go for it.
In the end, no matter how big the pork loin is, or how large you cut your chops, you will end up with a lot of pork chops. For example, I was able to get 13 pork chops out of this section. Now, this is also the section of the pork that you can slice into strips if you want some pre-made stir fry meat. Either way, keep chopping until you have about 6 to 8 inches left on the pork loin
After the first two steps are completed we should be left with the other roast, this time it’s the rib roast. 
As I stated above my family prefers to leave this cut as a whole roast, however, this is also a great cut to make stew meat out of, as it has a higher fat content.
And that’s it, the pork loin it chopped up into a number of meals. I told you folks it was easy.
Now all that’s left to do is freeze the chops, and one of the roasts. The other one we’re going to be using for tonight’s dinner.
