The new Hardee’s commercial has me curious, but not enough to eat there.
According to my friend who is an agricultural animal science major at CalPoly :
“Bottom line - nothing. Certified angus beef isn’t even a guarentee its from the angus breed. Its just a black steer that must grade well. Besides grade no longer matters once you grind up the meat. Could have utility grade meat and prime grade fat; doesn’t really matter. Tenderness is only important when the meat is non-ground.”
Ah…just as I suspected…another breakthrough in marketing technology™…
Q.E.D. is right.
The advertising community made it better.
Credit where credit is due. Thank my friend Alexa for that answer. I had no clue, really.
Isn’t the name “Angus beef”, if not in the US, at least in the UK, strictly regulated?
Certified Angus Beef LLC is a brand name for a feed lot.
You can find it by Googalizing Angus Beef.
Funny it uses Marbleing as an outstanding difference in their beef.
Marbleing is the white stuff you see in a raw steak. Its fat.
Apparently it needs to be moderately or better marbleized to qualify.
In their description of their product they mention Angus type beef.
So it doesn’t need to be of the angus breed.
First, thank you Q.E.D. for making me finally register for this message board so I could correct the quote you used from me.
Angus is a breed of cattle (or two breeds: angus which must be a black color and red angus which must be a red color). Saying that something is “angus beef” means nothing more than that the meat came from an animal of this breed. It happens to be one of the more popular breeds in the US for meat production but it is not highly correlated with quality of the product. USDA grade is a better indicator of quality.
“Certified Angus Beef” is a current marketing program designed to get more money for the ranchers that participate in the program. To qualify a carcass must grade high (I believe Choice or higher in the USDA grading system) and be from a black animal. The animal can be either a steer (male) or heifer(female) but a steer is more likely to grade high (males tend to get nice and fat after castration etc). A carcass can qualify for this program even if it was not from the angus breed or one from one of the angus breeds may not qualify. A non-angus animal can make it into the program as long as it has the black color. Also notice this coat coloring excludes any “red angus.”
The only difference between the two breeds is the color. There used to be talk of merging the two breeds but when the Certified Angus Beef program started, those with black angus no longer wanted to ruin their chance at getting a premium for their product by introducing red genetics.
Wow, msrexrabbit, you really know your meat. Er, no innuendo intended. 
And welcome to the boards! Q.E.D. always has good taste in friends. 
Yes, it is fat(deposited within the muscle), but fat = flavor, so fat=good and its not really funny that they list it as an outstanding difference. I can even start a whole new fun thread if someone would like to tell me that fat is bad for you.
Those explainations make sense now. I consider myself somewhat picky on steak “taste”, and cannot tell the difference at all between Angus and any other choice cut of beef.
Well… as long as the meat has a certain grade of marbling, and a comes from a young adult animal, it gets the Choice label according to USDA, regardless of their breed.
Angus beef may have more propensity to have marbling, therefore making it easy to get a Choice grade on the meat, which is good for the rancher (many ranchers want that grade, a balance between yield and quality). Angus is otherwise average, and used as a model when comparing different things like heterosis, muscling, and marbling.
Maybe it’s just where I live and where I get beef, but there is quite a difference between standard beef and Angus, at least in the higher cuts. We’ve compared the two quite often and with round or sirloin, there isn’t much difference. But for porterhouses, rib roasts, etc, we pay the extra couple of bucks per pound. There isn’t much of a flavor difference, but the texture is much better. Angus meat is far more tender when cooked the same as regular beef. The past few prime ribs we’ve made can be eaten without a knife quite easily. Regular roasts, when I can’t get an Angus one but must have rib, just aren’t as tender. It’s not like they sell low quality meat. The beef here is of far better quality than I ever found in CA (outside of private companies).
If I went to a restaurant or someplace out of the area, I doubt I could tell you if I was eating Angus or not, but if my wife has a porterhouse cooked for me, I can tell immediately which store she bought it and if it is angus or not, and she can do the same, especially when I do a rib roast. I’m cheap when it comes to food, so the idea of spending an extra 2 to 3 dollars per pound for a roast didn’t make sense to me. Until I tried it once out of necessity. Now I do it happily. Again, maybe it’s just my area, but in what I buy, there is quite a difference.
Tenderness of meat has a lot to do with how long it hangs. The longer it hangs the longer the meat fibers
have to break down.Thats how it becomes tender.
You just can’t kill an animal cut out the prime rib and eat it with a fork.
Yes when you buy meats labeled as angus you will tend to get a better product, but my point is it is not a better product because it is from an angus animal. The fallacy is in causation. The USDA grades and how long the meat has been aged are the best indicators of quality. I suggest trying to find a non-breed-specific steak that is graded as choice (and aged if your angus product is marked as aged) and compare it to the eatting experience you get from that that is marked as angus.
Here is a slight breakdown of the grades of beef you might encounter in order of most enjoyable eatting experience to least:
Prime(usually only attainable in high end restraunts due to price, we tend to sell these carcasses to Japan because they are willing to pay for it)
Choice (found in good restraunts and sometimes in grocery stores)
Select (your usual grocery store meat)
Standard (your low end grocery store meat)
In the UK with our Bovine Spongiform Ecephalitis woes, Scottish Angus beasts were taken from the banned import lists of most countries much earlier than other beef.
This was because the herds were very quickly certified of being free of BSE, and this was due to them being exclusively grass and grain fed, rahter than the rest of the UK herd which had ground meat supplements in their feed, and which was the source of the BSE outbreak.
Scottish Angus beef has a better taste and texture than most other and commands a premium for it.
I think we’re all agree that, just as one tomato may be much better than another, one cut of beef may be better than another – but a little divided on whether or not the angus label is a reliable indicator of beef quality.
I’d pick certified angus over “Shop-Rite” brand.
When I can, I get my meat from a butcher, which is almost as good as getting it from friends. Frozen beef from a steer I once knew is often better than really freaking expensive unfrozen beef, for what it’s worth. I think it’s the aging. Dry aging.
drooooool
The feeding of ruminant by-products to other ruminants is suspected to be the cause of the outbreak of BSE in cattle but we do not understand the disease enough to say for sure that it was. BSE is caused by a prion and is similar disease to Scrapie in sheep. It used to be a common practice to feed meat and bone meal from from one species to another. There is speculation that Scrapie jumped species and became BSE. Because BSE is caused by a prion(not a bacteria or virus) there is not much we understand about it yet.
This feeding of ruminants to ruminants was mostly a practice in Europe where is was very economical. I am not sure about other countries but I know that in the US the practice is now banned, just in case.
msrexrabbit, you bring up an interesting point when you say that a lot of U.S. prime goes to Japan.
I’ve only recently been introduced to the wonders of Kobe beef, but I think it kicks ass over most everything I’ve had. It’s absurdly expensive in the U.S. if you don’t have a line on it.
Can you tell me how American prime rates against Kobe beef here in the U.S. and/or in Japan?
It is better, and thanks for doing the research for me. On the first line of the website it says “Kobe Beef is a legendary delicacy of Japan, a type of beef that is so well marbled that it goes right off the charts for Prime grading in any other country.” If it scores better than prime than it is better than prime. If you would like a more detailed discription of my person feelings on the difference feel free to send me some and I will let you know. The picture on the site appears to be a very well marbled cut and is making me drool, and as a jobless starving college student there is no way I can get my hands on stuff even close to that for dinner sob.