How Well Do You Know Your Beef?

There’s nothing quite like a perfect steak is there? But where can you get one in Shanghai? And how do you even know what to look for?? Luckily for us, CHAR offers a beef master class to help visitors become red meat experts. Here’s the low down…

Today is training day, we are going to tell you everything about beef breeds, cuts, grass fed and grain fed, beef grade, marbling and whatever else you’ll need to know. 

Beef Cattle Breeds

Let’s start with the animal, alive. There are a lot of beef cattle around the world; Black Angus, Wagyu, Herefordshire, limousine, Charolaise...  The breed of the animal is often a good indicator of what sort of beef quality you can expect.  

A. Black Angus 

Angus cattle are a large British breed consumed worldwide. As this breed has number of advantages (fast growing, reliably tender, well marbled) it quickly became popular. 

B. Herefordshire

British breed, less expensive than Angus, the compact, short-legged Herefords are more efficient than most breeds at converting pasture to prime beef. They are one of the most widely spread breeds in the world and produce a reasonably well-marbled meat.

C. Piedmontese

Piedmonteses are the Arnold Schwarzenegger of beef. Coming from the North of Italy, this breed has a distinguishing genetic anomaly called “double muscling”. The result of an inactive myostatin gene, the controller of muscle development, double muscling gives Piedmontese cattle less marbling and chemical fat (3.8% vs. 5.6% for Angus) and a higher protein content — essentially a healthier choice for beef lovers. 

D. Wagyu Beef 

Wagyu,  "Japanese cow" is any of several breeds of cattle, which are genetically predisposed to intense marbling and to producing a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat. Couched in the mystique borne of rarity, Wagyu is the most oft-misunderstood beef. Language barriers and restrictions on exporting  have made this a moderately mysterious choice. Wagyuor Japanese Style Cattle consist of four breeds: Japanese Black (Kryoshi),Japanese Brown, Japanese Poll and Japanese short horn.

Kobe beef, is one of the most expensive beef in the world, it is produced on the Region of Kobe - Japan. 

USDA Prime, Choice, Select Steaks

USA beef grades: Prime, Choice and Select are different grades of beef, which indicate the amount, regularity, and quality of marbling, or fat interlaced within the beef. Prime is the best and most abundantly marbled beef. Rarely available in stores, restaurants buy it s at wholesale. Choice is commonly available at stores. Select is still good but leaner and with less flavor and juiciness. Standard and Commercial grade beef is even leaner and is often sold without a specific label.

Cuts

There exist dozens of ways to delimitate cuts, depending where you are or the kind of cuisine you deliver. Hence we are going to talk about the most common and well know cuts 

A. Beef tender loin/ Beef filet / eye filet

Tender loin, as indicated from its name, is tender. The whole piece has a head and a tail, which means the muscle is larger on one side (the head) and become smaller towards the end (the tail), normally cut into thick cuts or slices that got an easy to recognize round shape. The whole muscle piece is usually between 1.500-4.000 gr and the normal cuts on the market are between 180 – 250g 

B. Strip loin/ sirloin

Large muscle with an easy to recognize cap of fat around one side of the cut, this is one of the most well know of American cuts, the normal size for a strip loin steak is around 250g to 350g or about one inch thick. 

C. Rib eye / rib of beef / cube roll / prime rib

The Rib eye has an eye of fat in its middle. It is a very fatty and considered one of the most tasty pieces of meat, when marbling grade is being reviewed on a cattle, the cut that is use to determine the grade of the whole animal will be the rib eye. 

D. Porterhouse / T-bone steak / Tomahawk

The T-bone steak: Another very easy to recognize cut as it is T-shaped, on one side is the tenderloin and on the other is the sirloin divided by the T-shaped bone. When the bone is removed, the result is two distinctly different steaks. 

The Porterhouse: comes from the same cut but where the tenderloin is at is larges. The recommended size for a Porterhouse will be at least 900g to 1Kg other wise it will be too thin to cook properly 

Tomahawk: premium cut that normally weight about 1.2kg and is easily recognized because the bone lengths is at least 30cm and the shape will be like a tomahawk axe. 

Grass Fed And Grain Fed 

The ways cows are fed have a major effect on the nutrient composition of their meat. You are what you eat, same for the cow. Grass-fed usually contain less total fat than grain-fed beef, which means that gram for gram, grass-fed beef contains fewer calories. Furthermore the composition of the fatty acids differs vastly. Grass feed contain up to 5 times as much Omega-3 than grain fed. For the Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) the ratio might be twice more for the grass fed. 

Beef Grade And Marbling

Marbling is the visible form of intramuscular fat (IMF) which appears as fine flecks within the muscle. The presence of marbling has a very positive effect on the eating quality of beef in terms of tenderness, juiciness and flavor. As you can guess, the better marbling it is, the tastier will be the meat. The Wagyu’s beef got a different marbling, hence it got it s own completely different scale than other breeds, Japanese Wagyu marbling grade start from MS4 up to MS12+ with a quality grade of A1 to A5, with A5 the highest — based on marbling intensity, fat distribution, fat color, muscle color and muscle shape, In Australia Wagyu marbling grade goes from 4 to 9+.

Temperature

How to get your perfect steak? The best way to do so is to understand the temperatures of your cooking. You want to have a 45 - 49C core temperature for your Rare, 55 / 60 for a Medium to 70 for a well done. 

Want to know more about beef products and how to cook them? CHAR dining is offering a full beef master class where the Head Chef Willmer Colmenares elaborate on all these topics and the whole cooking process to help you achieve a restaurant standard steak in your own home. 

The Contributor

Char Bar & Grill Head Chef---- Willmer Colmenare

Will Colmenares is a Chef with more than 19 years of work experience.

He started his career in his home town in Venezuela, working with the best restaurants chefs in Caracas. At 21, Willmer was already running his own kitchen. Looking for something to learn and to improve himself he opted to move to Spain and had the opportunity to work with such greats as: Andres madrigal at “Balzac” in Madrid and the 3 Michelin stars “El Racó de Can Fabes” by Santi Santamaria in Sant Celoni-Barcelona. He moved to London as a member of the opening team of “Sketch” Restaurant by Pierre Gagnaire. Willmer tried his hand at working in a hotel, the first at “The Langham Hotel”, London where he developed the fine dining restaurant in collaboration with the Michelin star Chef David Collard. Thereafter, he moved to different five start Hotels across London like the “Wyndham Grand Chelsea Harbor” where he was executive head chef, and “St Martin Lane” and “Sanderson” from the Morgan’s hotel group. 

Now he is the Grill Head Chef of CHAR from the Indigo hotel !

Address: 585 Zhongshan Dong Er Lu

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