What is the difference between cooking whole and pieces meat?

Question

I observed that in some parts of the world, they cook meat as whole animals/birds or in big chunks, while in other parts of the world, they cook in pieces.

Why is that?

Answer 1

Personal and cultural preferences, mostly.

However, cooking in a sauce generally uses (smaller) chunks or pieces whilst whole beast (or large chunk thereof) generally implies roasting, baking, or braising. To say nothing of pot roast or similar.

Answer 2

This is difficult to answer, as there’s no single answer.

You often have to look at what heat source, cooking vessels, and amount of time is available, as that greatly affects how you might choose to cook something. The specific type of meat can also have a factor.

Larger chunks of meat requires cooking at a lower temperature for longer, but more total fuel. If you’re limited in how much fuel or time you have, then cutting up the food makes sense (such as for stir-frying).

If you have a vessel, and plenty of time, and cooking with residual heat (such as pots of stew in a cooking bakery oven, or leaving items in a cooling fire to be ready for breakfast), you still might use cut up pieces to ensure it will cook through given the lower heat.

If you’re cooking over an open flame, the type of meat is often more significant, as some types of meat do better when cooked quickly (requires thinner bits of meat, or smaller bits put on skewers or similar), while some do better stewed (smaller bits), or cooked as a large roast (requires longer heat, longer time).

To complicate matters further, what food is available to people has changed over the years. In some countries you can now buy packs of a single part of the chicken (eg, thighs, legs or breasts), when you would have only gotten whole birds. We’re also cooking youngish animals for the most part, as we don’t tend to eat old laying hens or milking cows once they’ve past their prime… but the US also doesn’t tend to eat veal or young roosters, and so it’s possible that historical behavior will differ from the current trends. It’s also likely that home cooking will different from restaurant or institutional (quantity) cooking.