The Churrasco Cut: What to Actually Ask Your Butcher For
Walk up to a butcher counter and ask for "churrasco" and you'll get a different answer depending on which country that butcher grew up in. Some will hand you picanha without blinking. Others will reach for a thin, quick-cooking steak that looks nothing like it. A few, depending on where you are, might even point you toward something closer to skirt steak. Neither one is wrong, but neither one is universal either, which makes the churrasco cut one of the more confusing things to actually shop for if nobody's told you what you're really asking.
Knowing what the churrasco cut refers to in different contexts, and where each version sits on the spectrum from thin and fast to thick and slow, means walking into that conversation already speaking the right language instead of hoping the butcher guesses correctly.
Picanha: The Churrasco Cut Brazil Made Famous
In a Brazilian context, the churrasco cut usually means picanha, also known outside Brazil as the rump cap, top sirloin cap, or coulotte steak. It's the terminal, triangular part of the biceps femoris muscle, taken from the rump, with its fat cap left intact. The cut became popular first in Brazil and later spread to Portugal, and it's now standard across Latin America in churrascarias and rodízio-style restaurants. The traditional preparation skewers the meat and cooks it over a charcoal grill with seasoning limited to coarse sea salt, keeping the fat on until the steak has finished cooking.
Ask for picanha specifically, by name, rather than "churrasco," and you'll have a much better chance of getting the right thing handed over the counter, fat cap and all. American butchers unfamiliar with the term will sometimes divide this same cut into other, more familiar categories like the rump, round, or loin, and unlike the Brazilian approach, tend to trim the fat cap rather than leave it on.
Outside Brazil, the Churrasco Cut Gets Thinner: Arrachera and Entraña
In Mexico, the closest equivalent isn't called churrasco at all — it's arrachera, a cut that comes specifically from the diaphragm, a long, quite scarce muscle. In other countries, this same general cut goes by entraña, inside skirt, or palomilla. It's a very fibrous cut that's tough when raw, which is exactly why different culinary traditions developed marinating processes to make it tender and flavorful before it ever touches the grill. The name itself has a specific origin worth knowing: a Monterrey restaurateur named José Inés Cantú Venegas is credited with coining "arrachera," naming it after the cincho, the girth strap used to tie a horse's belly, after encountering the cut, then considered low-value in the United States, on a business trip.
In English, the closest equivalent is hanger steak, sometimes referred to or compared with flank steak. It comes from the plate, the upper belly of the animal, and is anatomically the crura, or legs, of the diaphragm — the steak is said to "hang" from the diaphragm, which is where the name comes from. It's related to but distinct from skirt steak, which comes from the tougher outer dome of the same diaphragm muscle, and it's also sometimes confused with flap steak, a completely different cut from the bottom sirloin.
That difference in thickness and muscle structure changes everything about how these cuts are cooked. A thin, diaphragm-based cut like arrachera, entraña, or hanger steak needs high heat and a short window on the grill, since anything longer turns it tough rather than tender. A thick cut like picanha needs the opposite: lower, more sustained heat and real patience, letting the fat render gradually instead of rushing it.
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The Other End of the Spectrum: Bife de Chorizo and Entrecôte
Churrasco and its regional cousins don't stop at thin cuts. On the thicker end of the spectrum sits bife de chorizo, the Argentine cut taken from the anterior dorsal region of the animal, well-marbled and typically cut about 3 to 4 centimeters thick, cooked over coals, on a plancha, or in a pan. This cut corresponds closely to what's known in French cuisine as entrecôte, a premium boneless cut from the rib area that lines up with what English speakers would call rib eye, Scotch fillet, club steak, or Delmonico.
That's the real shape of the churrasco cut conversation once you zoom out: it's not one specific cut at all, but a spectrum running from thin, fast-cooking diaphragm cuts like arrachera, entraña, and hanger steak, all the way to thick, marbled cuts like bife de chorizo and entrecôte, with picanha's thick, fat-capped rump sitting somewhere in its own category entirely. Different countries picked different points along that spectrum and built their version of "churrasco" around it.
How to Actually Ask for It
Given how much this varies, the most reliable approach at any butcher counter is naming the cut directly instead of the word "churrasco" itself. Ask for picanha if you want the Brazilian version, fat cap included. Ask for arrachera, entraña, or hanger steak if you're after the thin, marinated, diaphragm-based version. Ask for bife de chorizo or a thick-cut strip steak if you want something closer to the Argentine or entrecôte end of the spectrum. Most butchers, especially ones familiar with Latin American cuts, will know exactly what you mean once you specify thickness and intended cooking method rather than relying on a word that means different things depending on where they trained.
If a butcher counter doesn't carry picanha specifically, top sirloin cap or rump cap are the closest substitutes, since they refer to the exact same cut under a different regional name. For the thinner versions, flank steak or skirt steak both work as reasonable stand-ins, since they come from the same general area of the animal even when the exact muscle differs slightly.
Why This Confusion Is Worth Untangling
None of this is really about one version being more correct than the other. It's about knowing which conversation you're actually having before you get to the counter, so you're not left holding a cut that's completely wrong for what you had planned to cook. A thin, fast diaphragm cut and a thick, slow-rendering rump or rib cut require different fires, different timing, and different expectations entirely, and mixing them up usually means dinner doesn't turn out the way it was supposed to.
If you're trying to figure out whether you're after the plated dish or the churrasco cut itself, our breakdown of churrasco steak covers how it shows up once it's actually served. And for the fire and technique that turns any of these cuts into something worth eating, our guide to the churrasco grill covers the setup itself.