pork Ground
Ground Pork
Trim from across the pig, mostly shoulder, ground to a target fat ratio — 80/20 is standard. It's the base for sausage, meatballs, dumplings and ragù, and it's cheap because it uses what the primal cuts leave behind. Grinding changes the safety math: it wants 160°F, where a whole chop is done at 145°F.
In one line
Not a cut so much as a fat percentage.
Buy it if
You'd rather season it yourself than buy sausage with someone else's fennel in it.
Shoulder dominates because the ratio is already right. Boston butt runs close to 20% fat on its own, so grinding it lands near 80/20 with nothing added back. Loin trim is too lean to hold together, belly too fat to control, and both need blending to be useful. That's why "what cut is this" has no satisfying answer — the grind is specified by fat percentage, and the butcher hits the number with whatever is on the bench.
Why the safe temperature changes. The interior of a whole muscle is effectively sterile; contamination lives on the cut surface, which is why searing a chop and pulling it at 145°F is safe. A grinder takes that surface and distributes it evenly through the entire batch, so there is no longer an inside to be protected. Same meat, different geometry, different number.
Salt is a texture decision, not just seasoning. Salt dissolves myosin, and working the mix after salting develops those proteins into an elastic network that holds fat and water. Springy and cohesive is exactly right in a sausage link and exactly wrong in a taco filling. Salt early and mix hard for the first; season in the pan for the second. If you want a meatball tender rather than bouncy, a panade — bread soaked in milk — physically interrupts the network as it forms.
Leaner is not better here. 90/10 grinds exist and are worth skipping for anything formed. There's little fat to hold a patty or meatball together, nothing to carry seasoning, and the margin between cooked and dry is thin at a temperature you can't cheat.
Where it comes from on the animal
| Species | pork |
|---|---|
| Primal | Ground |
| Subprimal | ground trim, predominantly shoulder (Boston butt), ground to a target fat percentage |
What else it’s called
How to cook Ground Pork
| Best methods | Pan sear Stir fry Braise Oven roast Grill |
|---|---|
| Cook to | 160°F all the way through, no rest needed. That's 15 degrees past where a pork chop is done, and it's the one place the old high-temperature pork advice still holds. |
Get the pan hot before the meat goes in and work in batches. Crowded ground pork releases water faster than the pan can boil it off, and it turns grey and steams instead of browning — the fond you're after never forms.
Leave it alone until a crust sets, then break it up. Breaking it apart immediately gives you fine crumbles with no browned surface at all, which is right for a stir-fry and wrong for a ragù.
If Ground Pork is sold out
Cooks like
Ground Wild Boar
Ground boar swaps into anything ground pork does, with more game flavor.
Common questions
Can I make burgers out of it?
You can, with one real constraint: it has to be cooked through, and a pork patty at that point is well past where a beef burger stops being juicy. Fat is what saves it, so use 80/20 or fattier, keep the patty thick, and handle it as little as possible. Most people get a better result treating it as a seasoned sausage patty rather than an attempt at a medium-rare burger.
Why do meatball and meatloaf recipes add pork to beef?
Pork fat melts at a noticeably lower temperature than beef fat. It softens and spreads through the mix while it cooks instead of staying waxy, which is why an all-beef meatball reads drier than the same recipe with a third pork in it. The mild flavor helps too — it adds richness without competing.
What's the difference between this and bulk sausage?
Sausage is ground pork that's been seasoned and, critically, salted in advance and mixed until it binds. That mixing step is what gives a link its snap. Plain ground pork is the version before any of that, so you decide the salt, the fennel, the sage, the chile. Going one direction is easy; you can't un-season sausage.
How long does it keep in the fridge?
One to two days, against three to five for chops or a roast. Grinding multiplies the surface area enormously and works air through the whole batch, so spoilage organisms get far more to work with. Freeze it the day you buy it if you're not cooking it, and freeze it flat — it thaws in minutes instead of hours.
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