Picanha vs Top Sirloin: What Is the Difference?
They come off the same primal, one directly on top of the other. The fat cap is on one of them and not the other.
These two are stacked on the animal. Picanha is the cap that sits on top of the top sirloin, and in most American butchery it simply gets cut off and absorbed into the sirloin rather than being sold separately.
What that means for the fat
Picanha keeps a thick fat cap. Top sirloin, sitting underneath, is lean. Same region of the animal, completely different fat situation, and that single fact decides how each one is cooked.
“Well, growing a great carrot has an awful lot that goes into it. And so specialization just allows you to get really good at parts of things, especially on a small scale.”
Gray Shipley
How to cook each
- Picanha. Score the cap, render it fat side down, finish hot. Full method in how to cook picanha.
- Top sirloin. Treat it as a lean steak. Hot and fast, pull early, and give it a sharp sauce; it has no fat cap to baste itself with.
Which to buy
Picanha when you want the richer result and are happy to manage the rendering. Top sirloin when you want a clean, lean steak that slices neatly, or when you are feeding people who trim fat off anyway.
“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
“Instead of asking, is this organic? I would ask either where did this come from? If you don't know who grew it, then you don't know what the chain is.”
Gray Shipley
How picanha differs from the cut it gets confused with most is in picanha against tri-tip.
Cap on, which is the entire point of the cut.
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What is the difference between picanha and top sirloin?
Picanha is the cap muscle sitting on top of the sirloin; top sirloin is what is underneath it.
- Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature, FoodSafety.gov
- Grades and Standards: Beef, USDA AMS
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 pages above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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