Picanha (Whole)

In the working-class Italian immigrant neighborhood of Bixiga in São Paulo, sometime in the 1950s, Brazilian butchers began preserving a triangular cut from the top of the rump that American packers had been quietly dismembering for generations. They kept the fat cap on. They kept it whole. In 1973, a restaurant called Dinho's put it over a charcoal fire for the first time and served it with nothing but coarse salt. Within a generation it became the most celebrated cut of beef in Brazil — the centerpiece of churrasco, the first thing carved at every family gathering, the cut that gauchos have been cooking over open fires ever since.

The name almost certainly comes from picana — the long pole Iberian and South American cattle herders used to move their animals, applied to the rump where the prod made contact. The cut is named for where the cowboys touched the cow.

Meanwhile in America, the same cut was being broken apart at the packing house — divided into round, loin, and rump — and sent in three different directions before it ever reached a butcher case. Most Americans still cannot find a whole picanha at a supermarket because it gets dismembered before anyone thinks to preserve it. That is changing slowly, but it remains one of the more quietly extraordinary things you can buy from a farm that knows what it is doing.

Ours comes whole with the fat cap on, minimally trimmed, exactly as it should be. What you do with it is up to you. Slice it into thick steaks along the grain, then sear them hard in a cast iron pan or over a hot grill, fat cap down first to render and baste the meat from above. Or treat it like an upgraded brisket in a more manageable size — low oven, long rest, sliced thin against the grain for a table that will not soon forget it. Either way, season with coarse salt and nothing else the first time. The cut will tell you everything you need to know about what it wants.

Sold whole and priced by weight. Select the size that best suits your needs.

If picanha is new to you, our bavette and skirt steak share the same bold, beefy character and are worth keeping alongside it. And if the whole roast approach appeals to you, our tri-tip and brisket cover similar territory at different scales.