Beef Meat Marbling

It impacts the tenderness moistness and overall flavor and has become one of the most well known elements of steak evaluation.

Beef meat marbling.

You ve likely seen it in a raw steak before. It sometimes looks like fine white lines running through your steak. Marbling adds a lot of flavor and can be one indicator of how good the beef is. Usda s agricultural marketing service ams employs 200 highly skilled beef graders who sometimes with the help of electronic monitoring evaluate several factors that determine the grade including the amount and distribution of marbling.

This is fairly intuitive since you can imagine how difficult it would be to get fat by eating grass. Graders evaluate the amount and distribution of marbling in the ribeye muscle at the cut surface after the carcass has been ribbed between the 12th and 13th ribs. Beef that is given a higher grade is usually from younger cattle and has more fat marbling. Marbling is fat so it is largely determined by the diet of the animal and to a certain degree the breed of cattle.

Cattle that are raised on grain will have more marbling than grass fed beef. Marbling intramuscular fat is the intermingling or dispersion of fat within the lean. We have been taught to think that beef tenderness is caused by marbling the visible fat streaks in beef. Graders evaluate the amount and distribution of marbling in the ribeye muscle at the cut surface after the carcass has been ribbed between the 12th and 13th ribs.

Well marbling refers to the white flecks of intramuscular fat in each cut of meat. What does it do to the beef. Marbling is what gives beef its flavor juiciness and tenderness. The lean muscle has a high frequency of thin evenly distributed flecks of fat.

Beef carcass quality grading is based on 1 degree of marbling and 2 degree of maturity. In the restaurant world the most desirable types like kobe and wagyu beef have a high frequency and even distribution of fine marbling. These fine flecks melt during cooking adding juiciness and tenderness throughout the meat. These two factors are indicators of the beef s tenderness.

I know you may be thinking that fat is bad and you want a lean steak not fatty. An inferior form of marbling it features larger less evenly distributed flecks of fat which can negatively affect the cooking and eating experiences. Marbling intramuscular fat is the intermingling or dispersion of fat within the lean. The presence of marbling has an extremely positive effect on the eating quality of beef in terms of tenderness juiciness moisture and flavour.

The beef grading system developed by the united states department of agriculture is a voluntary grading system based on the meat s maturity and level of fat marbling.