The Quest for Flavorful Beef

We’ve done our best on our website and journal posts to share our commitment to ecosystem health at Rancho Largo.  We know that our management is beyond sustainable; it is regenerative.  We measure that regeneration by diversity of species: plant, animal, avian, invertebrate, fungal and bacterial.  Hopefully, our efforts at raising wild beef provide you a guilt free healthy eating experience.  But our job can’t end there.  We want you to experience what Mark Schatzker described this way in his book called “Steak”:

“…we lack an adequate meat vocabulary.  The flavor that burst over my tongue with each chew was comparable to a symphony, but any attempt to describe the individual notes would sound pretentious and be meaningless, I fear.”

We sample beef from each animal that leaves here and we are happy with the results.  But we remain on the steep part of the learning curve for producing steak to match Schatzker’s description.  Having spent 25 years figuring out the ecological piece, my goal here is to explain where we are, and where we intend to go with regards to quality.

In the U.S. our general view is this: more corn equals more marbling, and more marbling equals quality. The U.S. grading system measures more marbling from select, to choice, to prime.  But, the correlation between marbling and eating quality in taste tests is weaker than one might expect. A graph of Eating Quality versus Marbling Score clearly has a positive slope but there is a lot of scatter in the data points.  That scatter reflects factors of tenderness, juiciness, and flavor that vary with an animal’s genetics, age, feed, and processing. 

I’m convinced that tenderness correlates more closely with marbling than juiciness or flavor. 

For instance, have you ever eaten a steak that seems very tender on the initial chews, but turns into a mushy sensation because it lacks juiciness and flavor?  That’s what I experience with choice or prime store bought beef compared to ours.  How about the steak bursting with flavor and juice early on, but you had to chew 3 extra times after you first wanted to swallow?  That experience can fit some of our animals.  Your reviews correlate pretty well with my analysis; we always get great remarks on flavor but occasionally get remarks on toughness as well. We appreciate your critical reviews, as well as the positive ones, as, since criticism drives our improvement.

FLAVOR

Let’s take a closer look at flavor. You know when a steak tastes good, but why?

“Umami” is the 5th basic taste along with sweet, salty, bitter, and sour.  There is no English equivalent and it translates directly from Japanese as “deliciousness”, but a better description is “meatiness”.  The flavor derives from amino acids in meat. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) flavoring contains similar amino acids.  Umami is the overall savory flavor of meat that can be lost in an overcooked steak or in overly lean grass-finished steak. But, Schatzker argues that the flavor equation goes beyond umami.  The more delicate flavors in great beef may reside in fat, but not the fat in the marbling.  Rather fat found in cell walls, fat stored as energy inside the muscle cells. British meat scientist, Don Mottram, agrees that flavor resides in these structural fats in the muscle cells.  Specifically, in the omega 3 fatty acids (anti-oxidants) found in grass and more abundant in beef finished on grass. Mottram argues that the omega 3 fatty acids react to form complex aromatic compounds (flavor) during the Maillard reactions that occur during cooking. 

Another theory on flavor involves a family of aromatic compounds produced by plants called terpenes. Pitch from trees, THC in cannabis, and the molecules that create complex flavors in wine are several examples. Harold McGee, a respected author on food chemistry, argues that complex flavor in steak derives from the terpenoids eaten directly from plants or synthesized from chlorophyll in a bovine rumen.  Animals finished on pasture have more variety and much higher levels of terpenes in their fat and muscle to the point where these molecules can be used to verify claims that beef is pasture finished (Serrano et al 2011).  

So far it appears that finishing our beef on pasture is a key component of flavor. Our grain supplemented animals likely have less omega 3 fatty acids than our grass-finished since grain lowers the PH of the rumen and decreases the population of Omega-3 producing bacteria.  But all our animals have constant access to a wide variety of terpenoid producing plants including Winterfat, Yucca, Globemallow, Snakeweed, Verbina et cetera. 

Does genetics play a roll in flavor?  

There’s lots of evidence that genetics relates to marbling, but I’m pretty convinced that marbling drives tenderness more than flavor. The role of genetics in flavor likely ties back to the point made by Schatzker and Mottram that flavor resides structurally in the muscle cells rather than in fine layers of fat disseminated through the muscle (marbling). The work of Kin –Chow Chang, a veterinarian in Scotland who studies muscle growth, supports the idea that flavor resides in the muscle. Chang showed that slow twitch muscle fibers designed for endurance have more taste than fast twitch muscle fibers designed for explosive strength.  The more coarse-grained fast twitch muscles burn sugar whereas the finer-grained slow twitch fibers store and burn structural fat within the muscle.  These fatty molecules (including omega 3’s) within muscle cells are precisely the molecules that Schatzker and Mottram attribute to taste.

The larger framed continental breeds such as Charolais and Limousin have more predominantly fast twitch muscle fibers.  However, in the last 30 years we have bred the most common English breeds, Hereford and Angus, for explosive growth and essentially turned them into continental breeds with predominantly fast twitch fibers.  These bigger, faster growing cattle cannot get fat on grass but they do fine in the commodity beef production chain where yearling cattle are fattened on corn. Therein lies the recipe for tender (mushy) beef with less taste. 

Chang’s work answered two long-standing questions for me.  First, why did I like beef from Corriente and Longhorn cattle better than “beef cattle”?  Second, many old timers have told me the best beef on earth is fattened dairy cattle.  The Corriente, Longhorn, and Dairy breeds all fit Chang’s description for predominantly slow twitch muscle.

At Rancho Largo we switched to Corriente and Longhorn cross cows twenty years ago for ecological and economic reasons.  Both breeds originated from the Spanish cattle initially brought to the Americas.  The Corriente was the primary sustenance for small haciendas in the arid mountains of northern Mexico, while the Longhorns went feral on the southern plains during the civil war.  Both are much closer to wild animals than any of the recognized beef breeds.  Their ability to forage on a wide variety of plants, graze in rough terrain, get pregnant every year and protect their offspring from predators made them a fit for our arid wild rangeland.  The unforeseen advantage is slow twitch fibers that produce flavor.

Does animal age play a role in flavor?

Animal age is the last piece of the flavor puzzle, and it turns out this may be a key component.  The US is the only country in the world that eats predominantly yearling beef, younger than 18 months.  Schatzker’s pilgrimage to the perfect steak started in Texas and ended in Montana by way of France, Scotland, Italy, Japan, and Argentina.  In all those countries animals under 2 are considered inferior for flavor although Argentina is headed toward the US model.  Schatzker quotes a Scottish producer named Angus Ruadh Mackay: I think beef can be every bit as distinctive as a glass of single-malt scotch.” Mackay likened younger mass produced beef to three-year-old whiskey, “a substance you simply wouldn’t want to eat.  All the modern technology in the world hasn’t sped up the whiskey-making process.  The same is true with beef.”

Your feedback tells us that flavor is the strong point of our product.  We plan to stay with the current program where slow twitch muscle, older animals, and pasture finishing on wild plants, with or without grain supplement, are hitting the mark.  I’m training my pallet to distinguish beef flavor the way it sorts out a glass of scotch but the process is slow.  Sometimes I think I can delineate our grass-finished from corn supplement, but the individual animal is a confusing variable.  We encourage those of you with a pallet for wine or whiskey to use the same skills on our beef.  Can you distinguish grass finished from corn supplement, or our animals finished in the winter on dormant grass from those in the summer on green plants?

Our issues with tenderness are not pervasive, our best animals hit the mark, but some leave one chewing several times after they want to swallow.  Unfortunately, I can’t identify the tougher animals by sight.  A couple of our fattest animals have tested on the chewy side suggesting that it takes more than feed to create marbling and tenderness.  It appears that genetics also play a role in marbling.  We stepped down the genetic path two years ago when we acquired Wagyu bulls.  Wagyu, literally Japanese cattle, fit the profile for slow twitch muscle, but they have also been selectively bred to marble for nearly a century.  Our first two-year-olds from the Wagyu bulls will be harvested in the next few months.  The connoisseurs among you are welcome to request both Wagyu and non-Wagyu to help us test results. Our Wagyu product will be limited in volume for the short term as we empirically sort out the genetic mix.  

Aldo Leopold’s term “intelligent tinkering”, coined for ecosystem management, describes our genetic approach.  We know that our current mixture of English cattle and Corrientes fatten well on grass and produce flavor. The English genetics provide fleshing ability and volume. The Corriente component is key for flavor. The genetic ratios vary but we’ve found that more English influence fattens better for grass-finished, while more Corriente influence keeps flavor on grain supplement. The question is how much Wagyu do we need and what are the unforeseen advantages/disadvantages of Wagyu genetics.  The initial animals will be ½ Wagyu, ¼ English, and ¼ Corriente. 

My last journal entry focused on the (Arête) version of quality; a pre-rational knowledge that something is right, a peace of mind. I suggested that our relationship is founded on the “peace of mind” that your meat consumption produces a healthy body and environment. But Arête should also describe your eating experience with our meat. Schatzker’s words capture our hopes for that eating experience: “Outstanding meat is the enemy of thought. It causes a single minded focus on the pleasures of the mouth”.