Bavette vs Flank Steak: What Is the Difference?
They look almost identical on the counter and they are not the same cut. One is sirloin, one is belly, and it shows in the fat.
Put them side by side and most people cannot tell. Both are flat, both have an obvious coarse grain, both take a marinade well. They are not the same cut.
Where each comes from
Flank comes off the belly, at the rear, which on the cut map is the bottom row. Bavette, sold as sirloin flap, comes off the bottom of the sirloin, just above and behind it.
What that does to them
Bavette carries noticeably more intramuscular fat. It eats richer and it forgives a minute of overcooking better. Flank is leaner and more uniformly dense, which makes it the better candidate for a marinade and the worse candidate for being left in the pan.
“We used to just kind of not try to outsmart God, let the animal do what it's supposed to do and stay out of the way.”
Gray Shipley
The grain, which is the whole thing
Both have a very coarse, very obvious grain. Cut along it on either and you get rope. Cut across it and both are tender. This single decision matters more on these two cuts than on anything else in the animal.
“You know, this is one thing that I've never figured out how to crack it to do it really well is meatloaf. If I've got, you know, my grandmother or my mom doing a meatloaf, that's fantastic.”
Gray Shipley
Which to buy
- Bavette for cooking plain and slicing: hot pan, medium rare, sharp sauce. Our chimichurri suits it exactly.
- Flank for marinating, for fajitas, and for anything going into a tortilla.
- Either when you want a lot of steak for the money.
“Yeah, no shortcuts just means, you know, it's a mindset, the mindset of looking for a shortcut. You know, it doesn't mean that we don't look for improvement. It doesn't mean we don't look for ways to do things better.”
Gray Shipley
Loose grain, good marbling, and it wants a sharp sauce.
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- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and kept his own words. Hesitations are trimmed so they read on the page. Nothing else is added or reworded, except where Gray revised his own words in review.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to FoodSafety.gov, and we have linked their page above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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