Everything about Marbled Meat totally explained
Marbled meat is meat, especially
red meat, which contains various amounts of
intramuscular fat, giving it an appearance similar to a marble pattern. Meat with a high marbling content has a taste and texture American consumers have come to like. However, meat with high intramuscular fat contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than the meat of animals fed with grass. The USDA's grading system, which has been designed to reward marbling, has eight different grades; Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter and Canner. Prime has the highest marbling content when compared to other grades and is capable of fetching a premium at
restaurants and
supermarkets. Choice is the grade most commonly sold in retail outlets and Select is sold as a cheaper but still nutritious option in many stores. Prime, Choice, Select and Standard are commonly used in the younger cattle (under 42 months of age) and Commercial, Utility, Canner and Cutter are used in older cattle carcasses which are not marketed as wholesale beef "block" meat but as material used in ground products and cheaper steaks for family restaurants.
Marbling can be influenced by
selective breeding.
Cattle breeds such as
Angus,
Shorthorns, and
Wagyu type cattle and
dairy breeds such as the
Jersey,
Holstein-Friesian, and
Braunvieh have higher marbling scores on average versus other cattle such as
Simmentals,
Charolais, or
Chianina.
Marbling can also be influenced by time on feed and type of
feed. The longer that a pen of beef cattle are on feed on the
feedlot the higher the chance that that'll grade higher on quality scores but have much lower yield grades (percentage of carcass lean to fat ratio) Feeding a high amount of
cereal grains such as
corn or
barley will change the color of the carcass fat from a yellowish to a white, plus increase the chance of obtaining a higher quality grade according to the USDA. It can be risky to feed a cow too much grain to increase marbling, because it can make the cows sick. Cows are ruminants and have stomachs which are best at digesting grass, not grain. In order to increase marbling and rapidly increase a cow's weight for sale, "the contemporary beef cow is being selected for the ability to eat large quantities of corn and efficiently convert it to protein without getting too sick."
Veal has little to no marbling since young cattle develop
subcutaneous fat first, KPH (kidney, pelvic and heart fat) second, intermuscular (between the muscle, or "seam fat") third and then intramuscular fat - "marbling" - last. Sheep and goats do the same.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Marbled Meat'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://marbled_meat.totallyexplained.com">Marbled meat Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
