United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service
USDA Table of Cooking Yields for Meat and Poultry, Release 2 (Nutrient Data Laboratory, September 2014)
What this source is
- Authority
- Official guidance
- Territories
- US
- Primacy
- primary
- Commercial interest
- none
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-15
- State
- Read and citable
THE INSTRUMENT NINE SPRINTS OF YIELD SEARCHING WERE LOOKING FOR, and its shape is better than anything hoped for. Every row is a MEASURED cooking yield with the preparation method named, a sample size, a standard deviation and an observed minimum and maximum — so BBQHQ can record not just 'about three quarters' but 74% across twelve samples ranging 70 to 78. It is a nutrient-composition instrument rather than a cookery one, which is exactly why it is trustworthy here: the yields exist because somebody had to weigh the meat to compute nutrients per 100 g, and nobody had an editorial interest in the number. ITS LIMIT IS METHOD. The table's long-cook rows are all BRAISED — wet heat, covered, 325 °F — and barbecue is none of those things, so the rows BBQHQ may use are the ones labelled Grilled, Broiled or Grilled, and Baked or Roasted. That line is drawn in the observations rather than here.
What it may be cited for
Technical, Culinary practice
- Explicitly not safety: A nutrient-composition instrument. It measures what a cut weighs after cooking; the endpoints it cooked to are research protocol, not consumer safety guidance, and USDA FSIS is the body that publishes those.