Beef Meat Marbling

We have been taught to think that beef tenderness is caused by marbling the visible fat streaks in beef.

Beef meat marbling.

Cattle that are raised on grain will have more marbling than grass fed beef. It sometimes looks like fine white lines running through your steak. Beef carcass quality grading is based on 1 degree of marbling and 2 degree of maturity. 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.

These fine flecks melt during cooking adding juiciness and tenderness throughout the meat. 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 what gives beef its flavor juiciness and tenderness.

What does it do to the beef. It impacts the tenderness moistness and overall flavor and has become one of the most well known elements of steak evaluation. Marbling adds a lot of flavor and can be one indicator of how good the beef is. The fat makes the meat softer and easier to chew as there is simply less muscle fibre and collagen per unit volume of meat.

The lean muscle has a high frequency of thin evenly distributed flecks of fat. You ve likely seen it in a raw steak before. 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.

These two factors are indicators of the beef s tenderness. Marbling intramuscular fat is the intermingling or dispersion of fat within the lean. In the restaurant world the most desirable types like kobe and wagyu beef have a high frequency and even distribution of fine marbling. Well marbling refers to the white flecks of intramuscular fat in each cut of meat.

This is fairly intuitive since you can imagine how difficult it would be to get fat by eating grass. 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. Beef marbling is the small flecks of fat interspersed within beef between the muscle fibers.

Beef carcass quality grading is based on 1 degree of marbling and 2 degree of maturity.