Pork Coppa: What the Cut Is and How to Cook It

Coppa is three muscles running together at the top of a pig's shoulder, from the base of the head back toward the fourth rib. It is the front end of the same muscle run that becomes the loin further down the back, and it eats closer to a ribeye than anything else on a pig.

There are two on every animal. Most American butchers never separate it out. It stays buried inside the Boston butt and gets sold as pork shoulder.

Why it is fatter than a chop

A chop is one muscle. A coppa is several, stacked, with fat and connective tissue in the seams between them. Decades of breeding for lean pork have also pulled fat out of the loin, which is the cut that carries the price.

That fat sits in the seams rather than in a cap along one edge, so it renders into the meat instead of off it.

Coppa, capocollo, pork collar

Same cut. Italian butchers say coppa or capocollo. British and Australian butchers say pork collar or pork neck. American barbecue calls the tapered cylinder at one end the money muscle, which is part of the coppa and not all of it.

If a butcher looks blank at coppa, ask for the collar. If they still look blank, ask them to take it out of a whole bone-in shoulder. It is in there.

How to buy one

A whole one runs three to four pounds. Go by the cut face, not the shape: several muscle bellies meeting at different angles, with fat running in the lines between them. One clean eye with a fat cap along one edge is loin, not coppa.

Do not judge it on how marbled it looks. A heritage pig shows more fat in the face than a supermarket one, and both are the right cut.

Both recipes below use about a pound, in one piece. Ask the butcher to cut that off the whole coppa for you.

Three ways to cook it

Pink and fast. Sear it, take it to 145°F, slice it like a steak. This works on a supermarket pig too. Use a thermometer and pull at the bottom of the range rather than the top, because a leaner animal has less rendered fat to carry an overshoot.

Porchetta-Spiced Pork Coppa with Green Tomato Mostarda Sauce is this one: dry-brined on a rack, rubbed with porchetta spice, seared in cast iron, then into the oven to 145°F and sliced against the grain.

Pink and slow. The same 145°F, held for hours instead of minutes. Collagen turns to gelatin on a clock as well as a thermometer, so a long enough hold at 145°F gets you sliceable and gelatinous at once. In a home kitchen that means a water bath.

Past pink. Take it until it gives. Char siu and al pastor both go well past 145°F and neither one is dry. Salt and sugar it overnight first and it holds its water at that heat. Then either slice it thin across the grain, which does the work the heat would have done, or chill it and cut it thick.

Pork Coppa Steak with Erbe di Sicilia Marinade & Sherry Pan Sauce is the second one, with no liquid added at all. The coppa renders into itself under a lid until it is fork tender, and the steam it makes is what cooks it. Then it is chilled, sliced thick and seared hard.

The place not to stop is in the middle. Around 160 to 175°F the fibers have tightened and the collagen has not given up yet.

Where the grain turns

Slice against the grain. But the tapered end runs its own direction, so a cut that is across the grain at the wide end is with the grain at the narrow one. Look at the seams before the knife goes in, and turn the meat when they turn.

Common questions

Is coppa pork or beef?
Pork. If you have seen coppa sliced thin on a charcuterie board, that is this same cut, cured and air-dried instead of cooked.

Is coppa the same as capicola?
Yes. Capicola and gabagool are the same word as capocollo, traveling through different dialects. A deli counter is where you meet those spellings. A butcher counter is where you meet coppa and collar.

Can I use pork shoulder steak instead?
Often you already are. A supermarket pork shoulder steak or blade steak is cut straight through the butt, and plenty of them carry coppa with the blade bone still in. Look at the cut face for the seams.

Why can't I find it at the supermarket?
Separating it out costs a butcher time and loses them the weight from a shoulder they were going to sell anyway. Whole-animal butchers do it. Most supermarket meat counters do not.