Mystery meat is a disparaging term for meat products, typically ground

Ground meat

Ground meat is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife. It is called minced meat or more usually mince outside North America....

 or otherwise processed, such as Spam

Spam (food)

Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, first introduced in 1937. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative...

, Salisbury steak

Salisbury steak

Salisbury steak is a dish made from a blend of minced beef and other ingredients, which is shaped to resemble a steak, and usually is served with gravy / brown sauce. Hamburger steak is a similar product, but differs in ingredients....

s, sausages, or hot dogs, that have an unidentifiable source. Most often the term is used in reference to food served in institutional cafeteria

Cafeteria

A cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or canteen...

s, such as prison food

Prison food

Prison food refers to the meals served to prisoners while incarcerated in correctional institutions. While some prisons prepare their own food, many use staff from on-site catering companies.-United States:...

 or an American public school lunch. It may also be used to refer to any meat of an unknown type sold by an ethnic restaurant or as street food

Street food

Street food is ready-to-eat food or drink sold in a street or other public place, such as a market or fair, by a hawker or vendor, often from a portable stall. While some street foods are regional, many are not, having spread beyond their region of origin. Most street food are both finger and fast...

.

The term is also sometimes applied to meat products where the species from which the meat has come is known (e.g., cow or pig), but the cuts of meat (i.e., the parts of the animal) used are unknown. This is often the case where the cuts of meat used include offal

Offal

Offal , also called, especially in the United States, variety meats or organ meats, refers to the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs other than...

 and mechanically recovered meat, where explicitly stating the type of meat used might diminish the perceived palatability of the product to some consumers. Examples include Spam

Spam (food)

Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, first introduced in 1937. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative...

, hot dogs, bologna sausage

Bologna sausage

Bologna sausage is an American sausage derived from and definitely not similar to the Italian mortadella . It is commonly called boloney, baloney or, more formally, bologna...

, and chorizo

Chorizo

Chorizo is a term encompassing several types of pork sausages originating from the Iberian Peninsula.In English, it is usually pronounced , , or , but sometimes ....

.

See also

• SPAM
  Spam (food)
  Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, first introduced in 1937. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative...
  
  
• School dinner
  School dinner
  A school meal is a meal provided to students at a school. It is usually served at sometime around noon; however, many also serve breakfast before classes begin in the mornings....
  
  
• Deli meat
• Mystery meat navigation
  Mystery meat navigation
  Mystery meat navigation is a disparaging term coined in 1998 by author and web designer Vincent Flanders to describe a visually attractive but concurrently inefficient, confusing, or abstruse user interface, usually one that is Internet-based...