Renowned for excellent eating quality, the Wagyu breed is famous for it's marbling, where the fat us dispersed throughout the muscle. This effectively melts through the cooking process, which realses impressive flavours and succulence. The grade of marbling depends on a number of factors including breed, feed and time. At Warrendale, our aim is to work with our UK climate, topography and farmers, to produce Wagyu predominantly outdoors, grass fed with a time spent on grain at the end to help increase the marbling levels and meat quality.
We are not targeting the extreme marbling often seen in Japanese or imported wagyu that has been fed on grain for a long duration. Marbling is an important part of the overall quality, however, there are also a number of other factors that effect the quality of meat such as feed, age, welfare and how we treat the meat once the animal is processed.We age all our beef on the bone for at least one week, it is also aitch bone hung to improve tenderness. We then continue to age the meat once it is de-boned.
Wagyu beef has a genetic predisposition to contain a higher percentage of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids than other beef breeds, meaning it has a better ratio of monounsaturated fats to saturated fats.
These monounsaturated fats can melt at room temperature, in fact at just 77F (25C), a lower temperature than any other beef.
Wagyu beef can be treated differently to standard beef as more cuts can be used as steak cuts. For example, one of our most popular steak cuts is the Denver steak, this is from the chuck which normally is used for stewing and pies.
We offer the standard UK cuts such as sirloin, fillet as well as some lesser known cuts like the Denver, Flat Iron and Ranch that are better value and can be used in the same way as the more well known steaks.
The Japanese traditionally thinly slice the Wagyu and use all cuts for their different cooking style. Thinly sliced wagyu is used in cooking styles known as sukiyaki and shabu-shabu where the meat is immersed in boiling broth.
