Why Is Marbling Important In Meat

What exactly is marbling and why is it so desirable.

Why is marbling important in meat.

Why is marbling important. Marbling keeps the meat moist during cooking so natural juices don t evaporate in the pan. If you want the juiciest most flavourful steak you can cook look for plenty of fat throughout the meat. In the culinary arts the word marbling refers to white flecks and streaks of fat within the lean sections of meat.

In this post i am going to explain why both tenderness and marbling are so important when choosing a piece of meat. These cuts are extremely tender and contain thin threads of fat which is known as marbling. A high quality steak will have a lot of marbling while a lean cut will have very little or no. The best steakhouses around the world serve high quality cuts of meat such as the new york strip and wagyu beef.

The presence and type of marbling in meat is important for several reasons. Overcooking is marbling s worst nightmare since it renders all the fat out of the meat leaving. Serious eat s guide to grilling steak says marbling is a more important quality to look. When you have heavy marbling and it s the right kind of marbling you have a superior steak on.

Also called intramuscular fat marbling adds flavor and is one of the main criteria for judging the quality of cuts of meat. Marbling in uncooked meat looks aesthetically interesting but that is not why it s special. In fact the temperature at which marbling melts is not far above room temperature. Prime beef has the most marbling interspersed throughout the lean meat.

Why do we want marbling. Because marbling is added fat between the muscle not the kind that you cut off the edge it impacts your steak s juicy flavors. Marbling is important to steak because it adds flavor the right kind of flavor juiciness as it melts into the steak when cooking and tenderness because the fat is much more tender than the muscle fiber in the steak. Important terms defined beef quality grades a quality grade is a composite evaluation of factors that affect palatability of meat tenderness juiciness and flavor.

The marbling keeps the meat moist so natural juices don t evaporate in the pan. A well marbled steak is a truly beautiful thing and there s a reason why we re willing to pay top dollar to get it. Because marbling is so important to the positive taste and quality of beef it is one of the critical factors of beef grading scales around the world. When beef graders yes there are people who grade beef for a living are grading beef they specifically look at amount of marbling in the ribeye muscle between the 12 th and 13 th ribs.

Well we ll tell you marbling simply refers to the fat found within a cut of meat and between the muscle fibers themselves. Choice has less marbling than prime and select has the least marbling of all. Marbling melts while the meat cooks carrying flavor throughout the meat and while keeping it tender and juicy.