Intramuscular Fat

[cairnhill]

Hope everyone is keeping well with all the wet weather. First of all thanks for all the advise, I am a regular follower of the posts on this discussion board. We've had an exciting few weeks sending our first few animals to slaughter and selling and trying our beef. We got some very constructive feedback/critisism from a local restauraunt mostly about the quality of the cutting, however we were also interested by the lack of marbling, however the flavour was amazing (in my opinion). To give some background we sent 2 bulls, 18 months and 22 months. They were both grass finished. They were only hung for 2 weeks.

I was reading a few articles, however I came across one that seemed very interesting:

http://www.grassfedbeefontario.com/youshouldknow.htm

However, many experts agree that it is not the marbling that determined a good cut of beef, but rather the intramuscular fat that is contained in the beef and is only visible through a microscope. As such, discriminate consumers look less on marbling to determine the finish of a cut, and more on the lean tender cuts of 100% grass fed beef.

First should we be concerned with the lack of marbling? If so then what are the best ways to improve this?

[Broomcroft]

That's my understanding as well. I think in the UK the industry refers to marbling as any visible fat in the meat.

But there's two types of "marbling". One is inter-muscular and is lines of fat between the sections, and the other is intra-muscular which is actually in the meat. But from the research I've done, the intra-musclar fat starts as invisible to the naked eye and little globules on the strands of meat, but then does become visible as the animal ages or puts on condition or a mixture of the two. Then the intra-muscular fat shows itself as little pockets of fat, speckles, in the meat. To me, for my taste, a piece of beef that has no visible speckling is not quite ready but that's personal.

The other things that I derived from researching it (and 99% of the evidence is outside the UK at the time), was that it's the intra-musclar fat that contains the flavour and without it you just have stringy, tasteless matter. Also, that's where the omega 3 is contained. And the fat containing the omega-3 has a very low melting point.

The fat in the steak below (from a 27 month old Dexter bull) disappeared immediately it hit the frying pan, just the subcut/outside fat remained.

[Rob R]

I'd agree with what Clive says, with the possible exception of all the flavour being in the fat as some of the leanest meats have wonderful strong flavour (vension, for example) whereas meats with plenty of fat (most supermarket chicken) can be pretty tasteless.

I've had steaks with visible marbling and ones that just look like pure muscle and both have tasted divine.

[Broomcroft]

I think the point being made in these various research papers is that even when you can't see marbling, it doesn't mean there isn't any fat. If I read it correctly, in the earlier stages, intra-muscular fat is not visible, but it is still there and it adds succulence and carries flavour. I have also done some lean animals, in fact one that the butcher complained about, but then he phone up to say how well it was eating. I think that was the IM fat at work.

When I looked into this it was 8 years ago, and at the time they had developed a machine in the States that could measure the IM fat using ultra-sound because it was impossible to judge/measure it visually.

[domsmith]

These technical replies are very interesting, but to me the point is you used bulls at 18 and 22 months. unless adlib fed they will have little or no fat in my experience. i have nothing against bull beef and it looks like i will be trying some myself. i have a bull who we cant dna verify.

aslong as the tast is good thats all youneed to know!

well done for some good beef.

i strayed to the dark side today, buying beef from waitrose, i have non just at this minute so was forced to! dont be too hard on me! quality wa very good but lacked flavour.

dom

[clacko]

We have just had a rigg back, he was 20 mth and hung for 3 weeks, the carcase graded at o-3 and he was straight off conservation grazing and went 184 cold, we aired on the side off caution as we sent him in as he was being a pain and didn,t fit in with any other groups of cattle, we didn't have top, silver or brisket, just steaks rib and top rump as we didn,t think he would eat very well, the rest went into braising stewing and mince, not much marbling visable and not to much cover but the flavour and texture was very good and reports I have had back were all positive, which surprised me

[davidw]

I see that a couple of shops are selling what they claim is Wagu beef. As far as I can see, Wagu is just Japanese for beef, so it is probably not as special as they claim. But they quote a scoring system for marbling which just appears to be comparing a steak with a series of photographs - that suggests to me that its all done by eye which doesn't seem very accurate. Has anyone else come across marbling scores?

[Broomcroft]

I might be wrong but as I understand it, originally Wagyu did just mean Japanese-style cattle. It referred to 4 (or is it 5?) Japanese breeds, not one, but they were all fairly similar. There are now Wagyu breed societies and it is therefore, or should be, a distinct breed, i.e. a bit like Hereford doesn't mean it has to be in Hereford; the place name has become a breed name. I'd have though it likely that the beef sold in local shops is Wagyu cross. Some Wagyu crosses went through Shrewsbury Market last year, first time ever in the UK apparently, and the steers went for very good money, better than anything else I've seen go through. I think they were Angus-Wagyu crosses, nice cattle, quite tall and fairly slim.

I was going to do Dexter Wagyu crosses but went off the idea.

Here's Kobe beef steak from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyū cattle, courtesy of Wikipedia…never tried it myself but would like to.

[Rob R]

i strayed to the dark side today, buying beef from waitrose, i have non just at this minute so was forced to! dont be too hard on me! quality wa very good but lacked flavour.

dom

Oh dear, well it's useful to have a point of reference every once in a while, if this period of beef-austerity continues though get in touch and we'll send an emergency food parcel...

[Rob R]

Here's Kobe beef steak from the black Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyū cattle, courtesy of Wikipedia…never tried it myself but would like to.

To quote my wife, looking over my shoulder just now, it "looks ****ing awful, like a slice of an obese brain".

[ann]

I think I will go along with your wife's remarks Rob

give me a good dexter steak any day

[cairnhill]

Thanks very much for the input, I am starting to understand a lot more about the components of high quality beef. Because the bulls were very low fat, I was concerned that the meat might dry out too much, however it was clear that this was not the case and we should be able to safely hang them for 3 weeks. The meat although lacking fat had plenty of flavour and the restaurant was they they were very pleased with the Dexter beef. Clive, I used some of the statistics to give an guide as to what cuts I could expect, which was excellent as I didn't know where to start with this. One thing that I noticed was that I was given significantly larger quantities on mince that you had been given, I suspect this is due to the butcher saving time by putting more into mince, however giving us half the returns so it not so good for us.
Not so sure about the Kobe beef, I will stick to my low fat Dexter meat, what do they feed the Kobe beef to get that result?

[Broomcroft]

I wouldn't knock the fat on looks. What is it they say? If you're selling to a restaurant that wants to serve it's customers high eating quality, high flavour beef, then do a good level of fat because the customer won't see it. But if you're selling raw to the end-user, best not so much fat because they'll see it and everyone's been indoctrinated towards lean meat. Maybe that's why lamb had done better over the years?

That steak of mine, not the Kobe, the other one, was 100% grass fed and the fat had a very low melting point and, apart from the outside fat, it all disappeared within seconds of it hitting the pan. It wasn't at all fatty to eat. I think the fatty taste comes from fats with higher melting points, i.e. where grain and other feeds might have been used too much. Tastes greasy and stays greasy. But the Kobe is produced with grain, but what grain? Doesn't make sense!

We usually get about the same amount of mince cairnhill, except for a bull we did once, then we got masses back. We always ask for plenty of mince ourselves ... best cut if you ask me.

[Broomcroft]

Just had a Dexter veal steak last night and it was marbled, specks 'n all, not many speckles but they were there.

[Rob R]

How had it been reared, Clive?