Ingredient of the Week: Beef
This week on Todd Kliman’s Washingtonian chat, a reader asked about the difference between Kobe and Wagyu beef, and if they were the same thing. Kliman’s response was:

[T]hey are NOT the same. The restaurant industry would like you to think they are the same. A lot of menus are constantly referring to something called “American Kobe.” There’s a reason it’s in quotation marks: There’s no such thing.

In most cases, kobe is a scam.

Real kobe — the kind that comes from Japan, from cows that have been treated better than some spa-goers — is prohibitively expensive. You can sample it right now at BLT Steak. It’s $130 for five ounces.

Wagyu is tasty, but really nothing close to kobe, which is famed for its exceptional marbling. In essence, its fat content. A slice of real kobe is akin — as my wife once put it — to tallow-flavored butter. Five ounces will make your heart race. Three, four ounces in, you’ll feel as if you’d ingested a few uppers or run up a couple of flights of stairs.

We’d like to delve deeper into this issue, because Kliman makes a good point. Many restaurants are misrepresenting the beef on their menus by calling it American Kobe, and charging in accordance.

Kobe is Wagyu beef, but Wagyu is not Kobe. Kobe beef refers to the specific type of Wagyu cattle raised in Hyogo Prefecture. The cattle are treated to the famous massages and diets of sake and beer. This mixture of treatment, as well as a variable climate, makes for happy, delicious, fatty cows. The meat is beautifully marbled with tiny veins of evenly distributed fat, unlike the huge globs o’ fat found in other typical beefs.

However, there is such a thing as American Wagyu. Many ranchers have imported Wagyu-breed cows and cross-bred them with Angus cows, often until there is very little Wagyu in the bloodlines. This, in combination with less fancy treatment, shorter lives and a different climate, makes for less happy, fatty cows. Not to mention a lot less delicious with the dreaded globs o’ fat.

For the most part, you might as well save the bucks and just go for a prime piece of Angus steak. It’s likely to be just as or more delicious than this so-called Kobe beef. Or if you want the real thing you can spring the $130 for the five ounces at BLT Steak.

Photo by jetalone