Beef Meat Marbling

You ve likely seen it in a raw steak before.

Beef meat marbling.

I know you may be thinking that fat is bad and you want a lean steak not fatty. This is fairly intuitive since you can imagine how difficult it would be to get fat by eating grass. Beef carcass quality grading is based on 1 degree of marbling and 2 degree of maturity. It sometimes looks like fine white lines running through your steak.

The presence of marbling has an extremely positive effect on the eating quality of beef in terms of tenderness juiciness moisture and flavour. It impacts the tenderness moistness and overall flavor and has become one of the most well known elements of steak evaluation. 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. 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. These two factors are indicators of the beef s tenderness. Marbling intramuscular fat is the intermingling or dispersion of fat within the lean. Cattle that are raised on grain will have more marbling than grass fed beef.

These fine flecks melt during cooking adding juiciness and tenderness throughout the meat. 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. 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.

What does it do to the beef. Marbling is what gives beef its flavor juiciness and tenderness. An inferior form of marbling it features larger less evenly distributed flecks of fat which can negatively affect the cooking and eating experiences. Marbling adds a lot of flavor and can be one indicator of how good the beef is.

Beef that is given a higher grade is usually from younger cattle and has more fat marbling. Beef carcass quality grading is based on 1 degree of marbling and 2 degree of maturity. 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. 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.

Marbling is fat so it is largely determined by the diet of the animal and to a certain degree the breed of cattle.