In my classes about meat, I make a big deal about the differences between particular cuts. Brisket is tough so you need to cook it for a long time to break down the sinewy bits, while you can roast a fatty part of the chuck in the oven without worrying about it drying out. Blah blah blah, etc etc etc. This goes on forever for each and every part of the animal.

I was reading the longwindedly-named Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages today (you might remember it from our giveaway), and I was being schooled in the art of meat selection. The interesting part was that because you're grinding up the meat when you're making sausage, it doesn't really matter where on the animal the meat comes from. Fat is fat, whether it comes from the belly or the back, sinew is sinew, whether it's from the shoulders or the loin, and so on.

So what you do is, instead of saying "this loin is such-and-such fatty and sinewy," you say "this random pile of meat laying in front of me is such-and-such fatty and sinewy." That way you stop thinking about where it came from and instead get to focus on what it can do.

To help you out, they came up with a grading system! Here's the Polish one for pork, courtesy of Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages.

Class I No bone, lean, no sinews. No more than 15% fat.

Class IIA No bone, medium fat, few sinews. No more than 30% fat.

Class IIB No bone, few sinews. No more than 45% fat.

Class III Lean or medium leat, a lot of sinews. No more than 25% fat.

Class IV No bone, traces of blood, tendons, glands. No more than 36% fat.

Each class is good at different things. If you're looking for something nice and lean, go with Class I. If you needed to contribute pork fat to a chicken sausage, reach for Class IIB. Sure sounds a lot more practical than judging based on cuts, doesn't it?

You might think Class III and IV are pretty unfortunate, but I promise they're not! The sinews contain all sorts of collagen which careful cooking converts into gelatin for dishes like head cheese (Go go meat jello!).

So next time you're presented with a piece of meat that just won't dedicate itself to Being Fatty or Being Tough or Being Lean and seems to be speckled with any number of qualities, you might want to think about breaking it down into smaller pieces with consistent characteristics and making a couple different dishes instead of One Big Meat. Or, as you serve the tough part to your least favorite roommate, rest safely in the knowledge that somewhere out there someone making sausage is doing something with this information.