Cuts · UK butchery
Pork belly
Layered fat and muscle from the underside. The cut Korean gogi-gui is built on, sliced thin, and a long-cook joint when left whole.
Known as
The same muscle carries different names in different butchery systems, and some of those names mean different cuts elsewhere. Where a name is ambiguous, BBQHQ says so rather than picking one.
- United Kingdom
- Pork belly
- South Korea
- Samgyeopsal
The Korean name for the cut and for the dish made from it.
- Samgyeopsal
- United States
- Side pork
What to ask a butcher for
- South Korea: Pork belly, sliced thin and without the rind.
Where it comes from on the animal
Pork belly and rib cage
Belly · moderate use · connective tissue: moderate
Layered fat and muscle over the lower rib cage. Both spareribs and pork belly come from here, which is why 'ribs' means one thing to somebody who bought spareribs and another to somebody who bought back ribs off the loin.
Muscles: Rectus abdominis, Obliquus, Intercostales
Asking a butcher for it
Named the way uk butchery names it. If the counter does not recognise the name, the anatomy is the fallback: ask for the cut by where it comes from.
- What to say
- Pork belly.
- If that draws a blank
- Ask for belly — the muscle is Rectus abdominis, Obliquus, Intercostales.
- What to specify
- Thickness, which governs the timing more than weight does — the usual range is 30–50 mm. Typical weight is 1.0–2.5 kg.
What it is suited to
Derived from how hard the muscle works and how much connective tissue it carries, which is the pairing that decides whether a cut wants a fire under it or beside it. BBQHQ does not rank cuts and does not name a best one.
- Moderate connective tissue: it will take either approach, and the two give genuinely different results rather than one being a compromise.
BBQHQ holds cooking evidence for this cut as pork belly slices.
What to use instead
A substitute is not the same as an equivalent. These are graded, because “yes, use that instead” is the answer that ruins dinners: most real substitutions work only once something about the cook changes.
No cut in US butchery corresponds
Not a substitute for this
US retail pork belly is largely destined for bacon and is not consistently available as a fresh cut in the way it is in the UK and across East Asia. BBQHQ has read no US specification and does not assert a mapping.
Asking for it in another country
US butchery: No direct equivalent
US retail pork belly is largely destined for bacon and is not consistently available as a fresh cut in the way it is in the UK and across East Asia. BBQHQ has read no US specification and does not assert a mapping.
The UK side of these mappings rests on AHDB’s published cutting specifications, which BBQHQ has read. The US side does not: USDA’s Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications and the Beef Checkoff cut pages both refuse automated access, so no mapping here reaches “same cut” across two butchery systems. See the open question.
Typical size
1.0–2.5 kg