If you’re looking for a way to impress customers by serving the highest quality beef menu items with the best flavor and most tender texture to the tongue, you probably need to choose your beef quite meticulously. So, let’s learn about marbling and how to grade beef.

It is the white fat that intersperse in the beef muscles and can be seen with the naked eye. They appear like small strands scattered throughout the muscles and look like marble. The fat inside the muscles makes the beef tenderer, as it offers lubrication while chewing and swallowing. It also promotes salivation, which produces a watery feeling in the mouth. Beef that has fat in the muscles produces a good juicy feeling, and high-grade beef has a lot of fat in the muscles.

Due to market competition, people have created  artificial marbling in beef by injecting animal fat or vegetable oil into lean meat in order to make the meat carry a more attractive and appetizing pattern. This method is not harmful to consumption, and the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) assessed that beef containing injected fat is not different to non-injected beef. At the same time, research by West Texas A&M University reported that beef injected with pig fat produces greater consumer satisfaction than un-injected beef. Thus, the conclusion is that there is no harm in this practice.

So, in addition to serving quality and premium ingredients, you probably need to impress customers by getting creative and making outstanding beef menu items meat lovers are sure to want to try.

In grading beef, the Beef Marbling Standard or BMS is used by inspecting the marbling that is visible to the naked eye such that will produce tenderness and lubrication while chewing and swallowing. Japan has create up to 12 grades for Wagyu beef, from fat-free at 1 to thorough and attractive interspersing of fat in the steak at 12. Premium grade beef is rated A5 or beef with fatty beef on level 8 and above. As for Australia, they use the Meat Standard of Australia, which has 10 standard levels for measuring the amount of fat in beef, from 1 to 9+. Australian premium-grade beef is rated 9. For the United States, beef is divided into three different grades as determined by the USDA as follows:

This is the most widely accepted beef and offers robust flavor. The cuts are derived from young and well-attended cattle, so the beef quality is premium. Because fat is interspersed throughout, the beef is tender, juicy and flavorful.

2. Choice or Good

This is in high demand by consumers because of the high quality and less fat content than prime beef. Most beef that is produced is placed in this grade. Choice-grade beef is often used to in baking and steaks, especially loin, rib, hind-quarter, neck and shoulder cuts, which are also frequently stewed and roasted.

3.Select or Medium or Regular

This grade of beef has very low fat and medium quality. Largely made up of red beef, it is reasonably tender, but the flavor is rather mild and not juicy. Beef of this grade is in demand by people who only enjoy eating red beef or low-fat beef.

In addition to looking at marbling, you also have to consider other factors such as the age of the animal, which impacts the tenderness and toughness of the beef, the firmness of the flank or the firmness of the surface of the red beef, the color of the beef, the muscle-to-bone ratio and fat in each cut, all of which must be appropriate.