The Cuts Of Steak You're Eating At Chipotle

There are few pleasures in life as satisfying as biting into a baby-hippo-sized, pillowy burrito stuffed with meat, cheese, beans, and rice. Fast-casual Mexican chain Chipotle has been delivering on America's burrito cravings since 1993, rarely straying from its offering of freshly made burritos, tacos, bowls, and salads. Chipotle prides itself on using "fresh, high-quality raw ingredients, prepared using classic cooking methods," but we wanted to dig in further into which cuts of steak, exactly, are used in their dishes.

Chipotle makes it no secret that they're big on round cuts. For the uninitiated, round cuts come from the backend of the cow, and there are all sorts of different types depending on which part of the hindquarters the cut comes from. Chipotle mainly uses rounds for their steak because the meat in the leg tends to be more muscle, therefore leaner and easier to cook, not to mention a little better for you. It's smart to use leaner meat when having less control of your cooking time — like if you're running a grill at a busy fast-food restaurant — because it's less temperamental, making it harder to overcook or undercook.

When it comes to specifics, Chipotle uses a total of nine different cuts of steak: bottom rounds, top rounds, eye of rounds, inside rounds, outside rounds, sirloin, knuckle, ball tip, and sirloin top. Even though most of Chipotle's cuts are from the round part of a cow, as you can see, they do sirloin cuts as well.

So what's the difference between round and sirloin cuts? The biggest difference is where they're located. As we mentioned, round cuts come from the back legs and can be divided into six sections. The only round Chipotle doesn't mention on its website is the heel of the round, which can be found immediately above the hindshank. We're guessing they avoid this cut because it's not as tender as its other meaty counterparts, making it more difficult to cook. Sirloin cuts of steak are found between the short loin and the round. Unlike the round cuts, sirloin is known for being a little juicier, crisping up to a nice char on the grill while keeping the inside tender. The way Chipotle freshly grills their mixture of beef cuts is what gives their steak dishes that signature rich, smoky flavor.