I worked at Arby’s (briefly!) when I was in college. They don’t roast cuts of beef in an oven, they heat up big rolls of processed beef and then slice them very thinly so it’s hard to tell the difference.
One thing that I read is that the beef really is 100% real beef, but it is so processed that it only somewhat resembles actual beef. Hence rumors that it isn’t beef.
Still, I like it anyway. My standards are low.
I thought they did have flat top grills? At least when they used to have potato cakes I would see them throw it on a grill to cook like 20 at a time.
Yes, of course there’s a beef industry in Japan. It’s just a very small beef industry, because Japan is a terrible place to raise beef. And because it’s such a small industry, it produces very little beef, which leads to it being expensive, which leads to people assuming it must be good.
WAL-MART is selling ‘wagyu’ beef, and it’s not much more than their regular beef. I tried some, because why not? It’s fatty, of course, and I thought it was better than their regular beef, but that’s a hellaciously low bar when their 85% beef in foam trays has gristle in every single bite.*
I’ve never had real wagyu beef, so I can’t really compare.
*As an aside, I’ve discovered their 93% beef in chubs has a lot less gristle.
Um…okay. Have you ever had any real Japanese Wagyu beef?
Stranger
As I’ve said before, I became allergic to red meat a few years back. I don’t remember ever eating at Arby’s. But, I love the ads with Ving Rhames. They make me very hungry and a little sad.
Well, it technically is cooked over a flattop grill, but does end up being steamed. The onions (reconstituted dehydrated onions as I understand it) are placed on the flattop, then the patties over them, then the buns to finish. They call it steam grilling.
To put some facts to this, as of 2020:
- United States beef production: 12.5 million metric tons
- Japanese beef production: 475,000 metric tons
- Beef head
Cattle Population:
- United States - 91.9 million head
- Japan - 2.5 million head
I call them steamed hams.
There is a place that does full-on steamed burgers in that general part of the US. (near Hartford, CT).
I’m not convinced, but I would absolutely make a road trip to try were I in that neck of the woods.
Wegmans’ flagship store sells waygu beef that looks like a 2" x 2" cube of fat. It must cook down to a teapsoonful. It does not resemble normal beef in any way. The picture I found online has way more red in it than anything I’ve seen in the store. It appears to be authentic.
Wagyu beef refers to beef produced from 4 distinct cattle breeds found only in Japan. These cattle are fed a rich carbohydrate diet that allows them to put on dense intermuscular fat. Grading of Japanese Wagyu beef is strictly done by the Japanese Meat Grading Association. A5 is the highest grade and yields a rich taste and velvety texture that will linger on the pallet, truly an experience not matched by any other beef
At $220/lb. I’ll never find out.
Here’s what wagyu A5 looks like. As said in the post above, it does not resemble normal beef in any way:
I bought an 8 oz piece for my brother for his birthday for $100 a few years ago. I think I bought a NY strip cut. I never got to try it, but he said it was quite rich and amazing. I’ve seen H-Mart (a Korean grocery) around here carry thinly sliced versions of this for Korean BBQ but at lesser prices (like $100/lb), so probably not A5 grade. And, yes, American Wagyu is a bit of a different thing, and there’s been plenty of burger places here in Chicago over the last decade to decade and a half advertising Wagyu burgers (and even Kobe burgers) at prices that would clearly suggest they are not Japanese Wagyu or Kobe. Real Kobe is a special type of Wagyu and only about 3,900 (I looked that up – but the number is from 2014) cattle are certified as Kobe in a year, and only about 10% of that are exported, so you ain’t gonna find it down at the local hipster pub. As of 2016, I found that only 9 restaurants in the US have ever served certified Kobe, and one in Las Vegas had it on the menu for $880/lb.
Yeah, I’ve bought preformed “wagyu” burgers from the gourmet market for an inflated but not outrageous price and they were fatty and delicious, but it’s ground beef; they can add in as much fat as they want and I’m sure if the percentage were listed on it, it would be an insane number (and ground beef of any stripe is almost never from just one animal).
This is the worst news here, but I guess I already knew but forgot they dropped potato cakes. I grew up on their potato cakes and breakfast croissants (have never seen breakfast since I moved to my current region). Their loaded baked potatoes were a good cheap lunch option, and they had “concrete” shakes. Guess they don’t have any of that stuff anymore, or onion petals or potato bites, but it looks like they added school lunch fries.
Cylindrical rolls because the engineers couldn’t figure out how to do it with spherical beef.
Now I’m having flashbacks to high school physics and discussions about spherical cows on frictionless grass.
Eh, I’ll wait for the McWagyu.
mmm
TO be perfectly blunt, making a burger from wagyu is freaking stupid. [Actually it is a way to use up trim and get outrageous money for scraps] The deal with a wagyu chunk of cow is the marbling rendering during cooking to make the meat butter-tender. Flavor aside, and one can get wonderful flavor from bog standard american cow - it all depends on the feed and how it is treated [holy crap on a stick, I had some meat in Europe that was fed fish meal and the damned thing tasted like fish, the fat was almost rancid tasting, and the restaurant was so proud of their fresh off the farm slaughtered that day steak]
I put to you, get an American Wagyu and a 100 percent pure Angus, pasture them in the same field, feed them exactly the same, treat them exactly the same and slaughter them exactly the same. Grind the wagyu trim, and the angus trim, make sure they are the same fat content, prepare them the same and I would be willing to bet that one could not tell the difference in a blind taste test.
If you want wagyu, do what I do and save up your money til you have enough to go and get a real steak at a real steak house that cooks it in and on the proper equipment [hard to relace that 700 degree fast broiler or the real wood charcoal grill. Bricquettes of mashed together leftover sawdust blended with wax and accellerants just don’t do it.]