Beef  Facts

The Meat Tenderness Debate
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Why is meat tender?  Or rather, why is some meat tender, and some not?  You get what you pay for. Meat from the hindquarters is made up of much larger muscle groups, with less cartilage and connective tissue and is therefore more tender. Meat with the fat deposited within the steak to create a 'marbled' appearance has always been regarded as more tender than steaks where the fat is in a layer around the outside. But there is a view that both stress before slaughter in particular, and lack of aging of the meat has more to do with toughness than most other factors, including marbling . There is a complex interplay between pasture species effects, protein intake, calcium status, stress before and at killing, breed, the age of the animal, and how the meat is treated after slaughter.

The best meat cuts on an animal can be made tough by stress, and an older animal can have relatively tender meat if it is docile, handled and slaughtered without it becoming stressed, and the meat aged correctly.

The message for the person killing beasts for the home freezer is that a quiet and humane kill gives superior meat; for the hunter, an animal ambushed and killed cleanly and instantly will have superior meat to that chased by dogs or not killed cleanly.

The message for the consumer is that the more you pay, the more likely the meat is to be tender. Any expensive cut that is not tender may have been stressed before slaughter. For cheap cuts, we must resort to pounding it with a tenderizing hammer, marinating it with ginger, or cooking it long and slow.
 

Which meat cuts are tender?
Those that you pay most for, basically.  But tenderness is not guaranteed by price.  There will be tough meat cuts in every grade.  Tough meat cannot be recognized by eye when you are buying at the supermarket.  In the USA, where cattle are fed grains and other supplements to lay down extra fat within the muscle ('marbling'), consumers often choose the most 'marbled' cuts as an indication of tenderness.  Yet marbling accounts for a mere 10% of the variation in tenderness.  Many lean carcasses that testing has shown were tender have received lower grades because they don't have enough visible fat marbling to be classified as 'USDA choice' or higher.  And yet marbling is a very poor predictor of tenderness.
 

From Morgan et al 1991 -- tender and tough meat cuts as measured by shear force derived from the US National Beef Tenderness Survey. 'Tender' and 'tough' are grades, and the most tender cut is at the top of each column. The terminology for the cuts is American.

How do you measure 'tenderness'?
Scientists measure the force needed to shear muscles. The more force needed, the tougher the meat is.  This is known as the 'Warner-Bratzler shear force test.'  It's units of measurement are kilograms of force needed to shear a 1 cubic centimeter muscle sample.  The other method used is a straight sensory panel test, where ordinary people eat the meat and record their perception of it's tenderness.  In the table above, the most tender cut, tenderloin, had a shear force of approximately 2.6, and the toughest meat cut, top round steak, had a shear force of 5.3.

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