Marbling Meat Tenderness

These factors include carcass maturity firmness texture and color of lean and the amount and distribution of marbling within the lean.

Marbling meat tenderness.

Prime has more marbling than choice and choice has more than select. So this is why marbled beef meat will taste and be much tender juicier and softer rather than an ordinary beef steak. Marbling affects meat s juiciness tenderness texture and flavor attributes that determine eating experience in this case more of all the above is better. Tenderness and marbling don t necessarily go hand in hand so while the beef tenderloin is possibly the most tender cut of beef it doesn t usually have much marbling.

Hence the practice of wrapping tenderloin steaks with strips of bacon without it the steak would lack flavor and moisture. At the point of purchase consumers visually assess meat products for size shape color fat to lean and lean to bone ratio texture and cost perserving mcgill 1981. While cooking marbling adds flavour and much juiciness as the fat melts into the steak. The marbling process keeps the meat moist juicy and has a natural taste.

Marbling is the white flecks of intramuscular fat in meat most notably red meat. It impacts the tenderness moistness and overall flavor and has become one of the most well known elements of steak evaluation. Beef quality grades a quality grade is a composite evaluation of factors that affect palatability of meat tenderness juiciness and flavor. They then base their purchasing decision on a.

Although marbling or the intermingling of fat with lean has been equated with palatability and tenderness for years increasing concerns regarding animal fat in the diet has caused the perceived health benefit from fat reduction to receive greater importance than assurances of tenderness or palatability. Meat with the fat deposited within the steak to create a marbled appearance has always been regarded as more tender than steaks where the fat is in a layer around the outside. Marbling fat has no direct effect on meat tenderness renand et al 2003. As meat is cooked to more advanced degrees of doneness the tougher it will get.

Marbling helps to insure acceptable tenderness at higher levels of doneness. But there is a view that both stress before slaughter in particular and lack of aging of the meat has more to do with toughness than most other factors including. In fact marbling leads to greater palatability in panel scores mcpeake 2001 and lower shear force values dolezal et al 1982. The fat in lean muscle creates a marble pattern hence the name.

However it plays an important role in meat juiciness and overall eating satisfaction.