What's The "right" Kind Of Marbling? — Fuller Consulting

What is marbling?

Marbling is a term used to describe the fat content inside of beef muscle, known as intramuscular fat. Intramuscular fat is the flecks of white fat found within the actual lean muscle. Intermuscular fat is different - this term is used to describe the fat that is found between the different muscles in the beef carcass.

We’ll talk more about fat development later, but it’s important to distinguish that not all beef fat is desirable in large quantities. You may have heard the mantra "fat is flavor" before, especially if you hang out with “foodies” or culinarians. Although this is true, there are different types of fat, and some are more desirable than others. Marbling is the most desirable; but there are various types of marbling as well, and some types are more desirable than others when discussing steak quality.

Good marbling means good quality

You may think that "quality" is a subjective term, used to describe one’s preference of beef steak, whether that be fat content, breed of cattle, grass fed vs. grain fed, etc. But for this discussion we’re using the term “quality” in the scientific, USDA-recognized sense, which indicates the grade of beef. The term “quality grade” is used by meat scientists to describe the level of marbling, along with other factors including fat thickness on the outside of the carcass, age of the cattle, and coloration of the beef.

To make things simple, we’ll focus on marbling and quality grades of Select, Choice, and Prime (moving from lesser to greater quality in that order). That’s not to say that a Choice steak, or even a Select steak won’t eat better than one of a greater quality, but given a large enough sample size, it’s been determined that the higher the quality grade, the better the eating experience.

Good quality means a good eating experience

"Eating experience" is defined through attributes like juiciness, tenderness, flavor, and texture. When all of those factors come together in a high-quality steak, the eating experience is exceptional. That is why steaks such as Ribeye, Tenderloin, and NY Strip dominate the market. All of those steaks combine three of those four attributes in a way that creates a fine eating experience.

Now that we’ve defined quality, and eating experience, and intramuscular fat vs. intermuscular fat; we can move on to what is so great about marbling, why it’s important to the eating experience, and what kind of marbling is the best.

Why is marbling important?

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. When you have heavy marbling, and it’s the right kind of marbling, you have a superior steak on your hands.

What is the right kind of marbling?

Just like all aspects of beef, marbling comes in all shapes and sizes. While perusing images online, on Instagram, or even looking at steaks in your grocer’s meat case, you’ll come across all kinds of marbling - from the spiderweb look you find with a high-end Kobe Beef steak, to the heavy, thick marbling of a USDA Prime Ribeye being served at a NYC steakhouse. You might see steaks that are highly marbled, but don’t assume that high marbling = great steak. In fact, the lighter the fleck the better quality marbling you have.

Types of marbling: Fine, medium and coarse

The most sought after marbling is called “fine” - and it looks like it sounds. Fine marbling is small, thin flecks of fat in the lean muscle, and when you have a high frequency of fine marbling, you’ve got yourself a winner. And that’s why Kobe, or Wagyu is so popular in the restaurant scene. This beef has that type of marbling, and a lot of it, when it’s bred and fed right.

The other types of marbling are medium and coarse. Traditionally, medium and coarse are not as preferable as fine. This has been disputed by some, but I prefer fine marbling. The reason I have that preference is that it takes longer to render the larger pieces of fat in order to become liquid and add those attributes I’ve discussed above. If a customer orders their steak rare, or even medium rare, those fat flecks won’t render enough to add juiciness and tenderness to the steak, and will end up feeling like small gelatinous flecks, which does not enhance the mouthfeel.