If you are looking for a way to impress your customers by serving the best quality, most delicious flavors, and the most tender texture, you will need to be very careful about choosing your beef. Let’s get to know Marbling and the grading of beef.
What is Marbling?
White fat is embedded in the muscle bundles that can be seen with the naked eye as small lines distributed within the muscle, resembling marble. The fat embedded in the muscle bundles makes the meat softer, helps lubricate when chewing and swallowing the meat, and stimulates the secretion of saliva, resulting in a moist feeling in the mouth. Meat with fat embedded in the muscle bundles feels moist. High-grade beef will have a high amount of intramuscular fat.
What is Artificial Marbling?
For reasons of market competition, artificial marbling has been created in beef. This is by injecting animal fat or vegetable oil into lean meat to make the meat look more beautiful and appetizing. This method is not harmful to consumption. The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) estimates that fat-injected meat has no different properties from uninjected meat. In addition, research from West Texas A&M University stated that beef injected with pork fat has higher consumer satisfaction scores than uninjected meat. The conclusion is that it is not harmful.
Therefore, in addition to serving the quality and premium quality of the ingredients, you must also create an impression with the creation of a delicious beef menu. I assure you that beef lovers will definitely want to try it.
The grading of beef uses a standard for measuring the marbling in the meat, called BMS or Beef Marbling, which can be seen with the naked eye, making the meat soft when chewed and lubricated when swallowed. In Japan, there are 12 levels of Wagyu beef grading standards, from level 1 which is free of marbling, to level 12 where the steak has fat distributed evenly and beautifully in the piece of meat. Premium grade meat is A5 or meat with marbling level 8 or higher. As for Australian meat, Meat Standard Australia has set 10 levels of marbling standards, from 1 to 9+, with Australian premium grade meat at level 9. As for the United States, the USDA has set standards that divide beef into 3 levels:
- Prime or Excellent It is the meat that consumers accept the most and is very delicious. It is a part that comes from young cows that have been well-raised, resulting in excellent quality meat. The meat has fat spread throughout, making the meat soft, juicy and tasty.
- Choice or best It is in demand by most consumers because it is high quality meat with less fat than premium grade meat. Most of the meat produced when graded is in this grade and is often used for roasts and steaks, especially from the sirloin, ribs, hind leg, neck and shoulder, which are often braised and baked.
- Select or middle and general class It is a meat with little fat and medium quality. It is mostly red meat. It is quite tender but the taste is quite mild and it is not juicy. This grade of meat is desired by consumers who prefer to eat only red meat or meat with little fat.
In addition to looking at the marbling level, other factors are also taken into account, such as the age of the animal, which affects the tenderness and toughness of the meat, the firmness of the flank or the firmness of the surface of the red meat, the color of the meat, and the ratio of muscle, bone and fat in each part of the carcass, which must be appropriate.
