Beef is versatile

A good steak - "bloody", medium or fried? Roulades or a juicy pot roast? There are many ways to prepare beef. For the respective preparation different cuts of beef are more or less suitable. And beef is not just beef. Delicacy and taste of the meat are influenced by the sex, husbandry and age of the animal at the time of slaughter.

Young bull meat is coarser-fibrous than, for example, ox or heifer meat, but has a lower fat content. Heifers and oxen are slaughtered at about 520 to 600 kilograms in weight. Their meat has a greater fat storage (marbling) than young bull meat, it is fine-grained, delicate and particularly aromatic.

Experienced consumers pay attention to quality criteria such as color, structure and marbling. However, important properties such as tenderness and taste can not be judged by the naked eye. Also on ingredients, low residue, origin and type of attitude, the cut piece of meat gives no information. Here one must rely on the experience or the information of the specialized staff.

In general, the flesh color is lighter in younger animals, darker in older animals. So veal should be pink to light red, young bull meat light red to medium red, heifer and ox meat medium to strong red and cow meat dark red. Young bull meat and cow meat are coarser structured than heifer and ox meat. The meat is traversed by fine fatty veins. Fat gives the meat the taste. Good marbled meat is tender and juicier than very lean. The marbling depends on the breed, degree of mating and age of the animal. Cattle raised only for meat production have more marbled meat. Heifer and ox meat, in turn, contains more fatty dumplings than young bull meat. Another quality criterion is the juice retention capacity. It can be recognized by the dry cut. Meat, which is in its own juice, has no good quality. The delicacy is determined mainly by the duration of the suspension. Cooked meat is ripened after five to six days, roast and short meat should last for at least 14 days. As the ripening period progresses, the meat aroma also develops. The tenderest meat is oxen followed by heifer meat.

For more information on Food of the Month, please visit the Federal Center for Nutrition at: http://www.bzfe.de/inhalt/rindfleisch-648.html