MONITOR:Fat equals flavour when it comes to buying beef
WHAT DO MARKS Spencer, Lisnaskea in Co Fermanagh and a number of top restaurants in this country, the UK and Europe have in common? The town, located in the stunning Erne basin, is home to an unassuming factory that has revolutionised the way some of us buy and eat beef.
For years we have been told by supermarkets that we want fat-free, rosy coloured beef. And for years many of us struggled trying to cook something at home that resembled our restaurant experience: succulent inside, richly coloured and glistening on the outside. In reality, beef that eats well tends not to be rosy at all, if anything it takes on a deep dullness, a colouring that is dark and forbidding. As for the fat, you need quite a bit, but more of that later.
Maurice Kettyle was a veteran of the wholesale meat business, shipping both good and and not-so-good beef all mixed in together. Like many good business ideas, his was a simple one. He thought there might be a demand for specially selected beef, researched the market, and created Kettyle Irish Foods in 2004. Beef is undoubtedly part art, part science. Aberdeen Angus, Hereford and Dexter breeds are preferred, not because they guarantee perfection, but because handled in the right way they perform more consistently.
At Kettyle the process of selection starts not with the animal, but with the farmer. The idea is to work with the farmer in terms of diet and husbandry and this, by its nature, has to be a long and on-going process. But the carcasses are then further inspected at the plant, so there is no guarantee to the farmer at this stage, which is quite a risk. However, five years on, there are 40 farmers linked with Kettyle Foods. After 14 days there is further selection and it is only these carcasses that are taken on and matured for between 28 and 35 days.
And now to the dry ageing, what exactly is it? Beef can be wet- or dry-aged. The aim of the ageing process is essentially twofold; to increase flavour and to tenderise. If you wet-age beef you are likely to get a more tender result, but the flavour is not concentrated in any way. In addition, the moisture retained tends to get lost in the cooking, which makes it difficult to get that enticing caramelisation on your steak.
If you dry-age in the right conditions – temperature and air flow are crucial – you expect to see a 15-20 per cent moisture loss, which concentrates the flavour creating meat which is typically more nutty and slightly sweeter than conventional beef. And because the meat has less moisture when you come to cook it, you are likely to get a golden, crispy caramelisation on the outside.
Sitting in Maurice Kettyle’s office in Lisnaskea, early summer sunshine bathing this overlooked area of Ireland, I am curious as to the lack of marbling in the sirloin steak I am being shown. The packaging is a winner, the beef a dull red, but the marbling is minimal. We Irish consumers apparently don’t like fat mixed up with our lean, so the well-marbled steaks go to restaurants.
Two days later I am looking at dry-aged steaks in Superquinn – supplied by AIBP – and where one steak is gloriously marbled, the others are all virtually free of marbling, so I take both the marbled and non-marbled home for a brief grilling. The marbled one not only tastes better, but is more tender, more succulent and holds its shape. The following week I am buying meat at Wholefoods in London. The counter has a massive stainless steel fridge on the rear wall with whole slabs of gloriously marbled beef sitting resplendent in their coating of off-white fat. These, too, cook up to a tender, buttery finish. Marbling? You bet.