9 Worst Cuts Of Beef If You're Looking For High Protein

Adding fresh beef into your diet is an easy way to get more protein. However, not all cuts have equal amounts. In fact, not all pieces of the same cut have equal amounts. This is because the fat and bone in the piece reduce how much protein it might actually have. Two T-bone steaks that are equal in size, for example, could have larger or smaller bones and more or less fat. One piece could have less actual meat and thus less protein than the other piece, despite both being the same cut and size.

That's not all — the amount of marbling, or intramuscular fat, varies according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grade of the cut. Prime grades have more marbling than choice, which has more marbling than select. You could easily have a prime piece that has less protein than a select piece due to the additional marbling. If someone tells you to look for a cut known as the "deckle," watch out. That name can refer to different cuts or parts of cuts, some of which are fattier and thus lower protein than others. With that in mind, it may seem like an impossible task to determine which cuts have more protein. However, you can get a general idea if you look at which cuts have more or less fat and bone. To help you out, here are the nine worst cuts of beef if you're looking for high protein.

Ribeye routinely gets called out as one of the fattier (if not the fattiest) cuts, and it's supposedly unhealthier. It does have a lot of marbling and non-marbled fat, which is why it's a favorite cut of many. Much of the fat melts during cooking and transforms the steak into juicy, meaty heaven on a plate. The ribeye comes from the rib, which generally has more fat than other sections of a cow (those sections are called primal cuts, while the cuts within each primal are called subprimal cuts). By the way, if you order prime rib, you'll essentially get the same thing — prime rib is a slice of a rib section cooked whole.

The fat content in a ribeye steak does mean that it's considered one of the lower-protein cuts. According to the USDA's FoodData Central database, 100 grams of ribeye steak (choice cut) with the fat trimmed off has only 18.7 grams of protein. You may see other sites assign it slightly higher protein values, but for the purposes of this list, we're going by what the USDA has on record.

Ground beef isn't an actual cut, but people tend to treat it like one. It's often a combination of different cuts, and while some may look specifically for ground beef from a particular subprimal cut, a lot of people just buy what's affordable or what has the fat ratio they want. Many recipes call for "ground beef" with no specific cut in mind, too, and ground beef actually shows up on some lists of fatty meat cuts as a separate entry.

Ground beef is one of the best examples of how fat content can affect protein content. It's available with different ratios of lean meat to fat, including 70/30, 80/20, 90/10, and 96/4 — and each of these has a different amount of protein. For example, per the USDA, you can see that 100 grams of 80/20 ground beef has 17.5 grams of protein. Now look at the data for 100 grams of 90/10 ground beef, which has more lean meat and less fat, and the protein count goes up to 18.2 grams. It doesn't sound like much of a difference, but it does show that adjusting the fat content changes the protein content.

The plate is the primal cut from the abdomen of a cow, and like the rib, it's not one where you'll find any lean cuts. Short ribs can come from four different primals, but it's the ones from the plate that bring with them a lot of fat. Short ribs from the plate are somewhat different from other fatty cuts in that the cooking method causes the fat to drain away after melting instead of tenderizing the meat. However, the melted fat is usually added to the sauce that goes with the ribs, so you're not exactly getting the leanest beef when you order short ribs.

The USDA database doesn't have nutrition information for short ribs from the plate. However, it does have information for short ribs from the chuck, and 100 grams of those ribs have 17.2 grams of protein. Cuts from the chuck primal can be fairly fatty. Given that some can be very lean, though, it's a good bet that short ribs from the plate will have a similar — if not lower — number of grams of protein.

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Brisket is divided into two sections. The thicker end is the point (also called fatty brisket), while the other end that's flatter and leaner is called the flat. Point brisket has a good amount of fat that you can trim away, but it also has more marbling than the flat brisket. It's not always a lot of marbling — brisket has a well-deserved reputation as being a tough cut that you have to cook low and slow. If you can get a hold of prime grade point brisket, that extra marbling will make a difference.

Trimming much of the non-marbled fat away and then cooking 100 grams of point brisket may give you a protein gram count that's similar to flat brisket. Per the USDA, trimmed point-half brisket has 17.6 grams of protein, while the equivalent from the leaner flat has 17.9 grams of protein. In both cases, brisket is still one of the lower-protein cuts. For comparison, the eye of round cut has 21.7 grams of protein, and that's using a cut that still has some fat on it.

Porterhouse steaks are from the short loin, which contains a mix of fatty and lean cuts. Porterhouses aren't the worst cut in terms of fat and protein because, if you trim away the fat, you can get a decent amount of protein in 100 grams (if you measured out 100 grams after trimming). However, that's not always how porterhouse steaks are cooked. Plus, the meat also has a good amount of marbling, which you can't trim away. Porterhouses also contain bone, which further limits the amount of protein a serving might have when compared to leaner, boneless cuts.

The shift in how much protein one form of the steak or another might have can seem tiny, but they do make a difference. Per the USDA, a porterhouse steak that's just the meat with much of the non-marbled fat trimmed away has 22.7 grams of protein per 100 grams of meat. That's even better than the eye of round we mentioned in the last section. However, 100 grams of porterhouse steak meat and fat has only 20.4 grams of protein. When you're trying to get that last bit of protein to make your daily goal, those couple of grams become very important.

Hanger steak is another cut off the plate primal, so already you know there's going to be fat involved. It does have marbling, so while you can try to trim some external fat away, you can't get rid of it all. Grade matters here, so if you crave hanger steak but want to try to reduce the fat somewhat, go for choice or select instead of prime.

The USDA doesn't have a lot of information on hanger steak. The few entries it does have give a straight 23.2 grams of protein for each 100 grams of steak. However, the amount of fat is low at 6.25 grams, so it's possible these steaks were heavily trimmed before being weighed. However, the fact that the plate primal is not known for having any lean cuts is a hint that a hanger steak is likely to be among the lower-protein options. Keep in mind, though, that hanger steak (as well as the other beef options on this list) still contain a good amount of protein considering the serving size. Like other cuts, hanger steak has vitamins and minerals that are essential to good health.

T-bones offer both a good amount of protein and a high amount of fat (and decent amount of bone). While they're not the worst cuts, they're not the best for protein depending on what parts of the T-bone steak you're actually cooking. In fact, the USDA gives 100 grams of T-bone steak — lean meat only — a whopping 27.3 grams of protein. When that 100 grams includes trimmable fat, however, that protein count drops to 20 grams. It really matters what's on your plate.

T-bones come from the short loin and are adjacent to the porterhouse steak cut. As you can see from those nutrition numbers, this is a fairly fatty cut, and even trimming away much of the fat still leaves a rather large amount. That lean-only T-bone steak with 27.3 grams of protein still has 11.4 grams of fat. That's a noticeable amount, and one you shouldn't take lightly if you have to watch your fat intake.

Skirt steak is really two cuts called the outside and inside skirt. These both come from the plate primal, and you guessed it — these are both fatty and have lower amounts of protein. The outside skirt is the fattier of the two, with the USDA giving the leaner inside skirt 20.1 grams of protein per 100 grams of steak. The outside skirt steak has only 17.7 grams of protein (and 18.4 grams of fat) per 100 grams of steak.

The fat helps give skirt steak its amazing flavor, however, and the outside skirt steak is sometimes considered the more luxurious of the two cuts. This is a thin cut, so be careful cooking it — don't overcook it in hope of draining away more fat, as that will just make it tough. If you cook something that uses skirt steak, such as carne asada, inside skirt's slightly higher protein count and lower amount of saturated fat makes it a good choice.

Chuck eye steak comes from the chuck primal, as the name suggests. This is a fantastic primal with a mix of fatty and lean subprimal cuts, and chuck eye steak is often more affordable than other fatty cuts like ribeye — but fatty it is. Even trimmed, in 100 grams of steak, the USDA says you're looking at 18.9 grams of protein.

Chuck eye has a lot of marbling, hence the lower protein count, despite trimming away fat. The marbling contributes to the wonderful flavor and texture, but also takes space away from lean meat in each cut. It really is from the chuck, but it's right next to the rib primal and actually contains part of the same muscle that's in rib-eye steak. Both of these cuts are really not the ones you want to choose if optimizing protein intake is your goal. Leave them for special occasions when you're more interested in how luscious and juicy that steak is than how many grams of protein you'll get.