Finding Abnormal Fat Accumulation in Beef Processing

Lindsey is on a mission to uncover the secrets hidden within a peculiar beef carcass lurking in her cooler. With more fat than expected, Lindsey is determined to uncover the truth behind this anomaly. Join her as she dissects the mystery, aiming to shed light on the curious genetic steatosis at play. It’s a captivating butcher’s tale you won’t want to miss! Join her as she butchers, analyzes, and salvages this cow carcass in this extraordinary butcher’s tale.

What You’ll Learn:

• See first hand the unique features of a beef carcass affected by genetic steatosis and how it is different
• Understand how genetic steatosis can affect meat texture and tenderness, influencing consumer experience
• Learn about the practical considerations and strategies involved in processing genetically mutated beef

Tune in now to beef up your knowledge and have a ‘meat’-ing of minds with Lindsey Fulton! Don’t forget to like and subscribe to Blondies Butcher Shop for more!

Transcript:

Lindsey Fulton: Okay, I wanted to jump on here quick and talk to you a little bit about this kind of genetic mutant of a beef that I have in my cooler today. We’re going to go take it out on the table and we’re going to cut it. I have sent info and pictures to both the University of Minnesota and SDSU’s meat science labs to see and confirm if I’m right. I’ve got a bunch of meat heads on it. So I think I have a beef here that has mutant genetic steatosis, which is basically an encringement of fat on a carcass the average animal. So the burger we cut the front quarter last week and the burger I got out of this animal was about a 60-40 ratio blend. So super fatty, little backstory on this beef. This is a purebred red agus, carcass weight of I think 823. I lied 806, so even smaller. This animal should be pulling this type of fat content. Watch for more pictures. Let’s go get our cut.

So here’s the other front quarter that I was hoping it would only be on one side. But here we can look at the T-bone here. You can see the fat intertwinement on here. We can go down the spine. You can see it in here. And then what really telltale me was when I look in here, you can see kind of on the belly flank cut of the front quarter, you can see that all this fat is intertwined. Even on the outside skirt here and then down to the brisket. You can really see it. So let’s take this front cord, let’s get on the table and see what we got.

Okay, so here’s the follow-up on what I believe is a genetic steatosis, a muscle steatosis beef. So you can kind of see here the muscle fibers go kind of kitty-wompous on here that would make for really tough chewing. These are porterhouses, especially this one right here. See how that is? That would be really tough. Here’s T-bones.

And you can see here as well, the fibers break down individually. This is a chuck roast. And I don’t mind a lot of this, but when we get into this fat takeover, that’s a crazy layout. That’s almost a 50-50 fat to muscle ratio, if not a little more fat. Here’s another chuck roast. You can see the fat muscle here. This is an arm.

This is a dark cutter, so the backstory on this beef unfortunately had an accident unloading. It launched itself out of the trailer and did a superman and ended up tearing its suspensory muscles, which is basically a muscle that holds the hind legs together. So when they try to walk, they do the splits so they can stand, they can get up, they just can’t take a step without their hind legs tied together like hobbled-wise and stabilized so they can take predominantly in Holsteins more than you do beef, but in this scenario This beef jumped basically to Superman and the beef behind it jumped on top of it So this is why it is a dark cutter was definitely a stressed beef did have some damage in the hind end But that doesn’t explain The fat content we see in here is insane. Like look at this Check out this brisket

And you can kind of see how this could definitely be stressing this muscle here that makes it almost look like the fibers are, you know, wound cotton string. That definitely has to do with lactic acid and the animal being stressed due to injury. But it is the fat content that is killing me on this that makes no sense on an 808 pound animal.

Okay, so we’ve decided to completely grind this genetic steatosis, muscle steatosis beef. I want to kind of show you, the steak actually looks really, really pretty. This is a stress, a darker cutter. This is a lighter side. This is your sirloin and this is your tenderloin. So this would be a Porterhouse steak. It looks pretty, but I kind of want to show you what we see on the butcher’s end. So with genetic steatosis, you can really see the muscle and the fat tissues running opposite directions of each other, which is not gonna be an easy thing to bite on. But I want to show you one side. I can completely get my hand through the tenderloin destroy it. Super tender, this would be really great eating. This side, I can’t get my hand through at all. It’s tender but this you wouldn’t be able to chew this. So this is the pro and the con of a muscle steatosis beef and an entringing fat beef on this. So we’re going to go ahead and grind it make it into hamburger and unfortunately it’s not going to be a loss for this farmer but it’s definitely not what they wanted to do with this prime animal. So we’ll call this a lottery win from a meat processor side, a fun genetics freak carcass. Probably not the best outcome for my farmer but pretty cool nonetheless.