What Causes Marbling In Beef
The presence of marbling has an extremely positive effect on the eating quality of beef in terms of tenderness juiciness moisture and flavour.
What causes marbling in beef. Shock is a serious and life threatening condition. Marbling is fat so it is largely determined by the diet of the animal and to a certain degree the breed of cattle. Marbling scores are combined with maturity scores the age of the animal to determine those quality grades. Marbling is the main component used to divide beef cuts in to usda quality grades like choice and prime.
But beef marbling is not always a good gauge of tenderness in grass fed beef cattle. Marbling intramuscular fat is the intermingling or dispersion of fat within the lean. The following factors affect marbling in beef. Grades are used to assign value to cuts of 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. The white fat streaks in beef are simply a convenient gauge of whether those all important microscopic fat cells within the meat fibers are present in sufficient amounts. More marbling results in a juicier and more tender eating experience. Certain breeds have higher marbling scores on average due to the way they metabolize food.
Feed and finishing may also impact marbling with grass finished cattle offering a leaner beefier flavor whereas grain finished beef are much milder. The fat makes the meat softer and easier to chew as there is simply less muscle fibre and collagen per unit volume of meat. Marbling is a measure of quality and as such the meat industry is always using meat science to make production more predictable and uniform to boost profits. Blood circulation problems and blood vessel spasms are two common causes.
Beef carcass quality grading is based on 1 degree of marbling and 2 degree of maturity. Cattle that are raised on grain will have more marbling than grass fed beef this is fairly intuitive since you can imagine how difficult it would be to get fat by eating grass. Wagyu beef for example can be extremely marbled due to its genetics so much so that it s prized for that marbling.