Is "Wagyu" ground beef a scam?

we have a wagyu problem and today I want to start to get to the bottom of it you see when I first heard about wagyu maybe 10 years ago it was always used to reference the insanely well marbled beef from cows that were bred in Japan costing like 150 for a single steak however that has all changed if you have looked around lately the word wagyu is seemingly everywhere yes wagyu beef content has exploded on social media from YouTube Tick Tock and Instagram reels but that's not the problem the problem is food marketing is starting to use the term wagyu on everything at the grocery store I'm seeing Cuts labeled American or New Zealand wagyu wagyu ground beef Kobe ground beef and I've even seen wagyu hot dogs and in the fast food World Arby's recently came out with a wagyu Steakhouse burger McDonald's came out with a limited Australian wagyu burger and the whole thing has me confused like there is no way McDonald's is shelling out the cash to make a burger from real wagyu right and specifically today I want to focus on wagyu ground beef and here are the questions that I want to get to the bottom of first what exactly does the term wagyu even mean and secondly does something labeled wagyu actually taste any difference from the regular old beef that I'm used to making my burgers with or is this just some marketing Ploy so I shell out my hard-earned extra cash we'll Buckle in because we have an interesting one today with two different experiments first we'll cover the origin story of wagyu and then for the first taste test we're gonna make our own real A5 wagyu ground beef with the only guy I know crazy enough to do so then we'll explain how wagyu got to the United States in the first place and explain what something at the grocery store labeled wagyu actually means and the last taste test I'll be putting four Supermarket ground beef burgers together at varying price points to see if there is actually a difference in taste because even if this stuff is mislabeled if it may makes a better tasting Burger I'll still probably buy it so let's start in the country where this all began Japan wagyu is a Japanese word literally meaning Japanese cow wa means Japan and you means cow and this is a specialty beef cow that's genetic Origins can be traced back 35 000 years and today it is known for extremely high levels of inner muscular fat also known as marbling for example take a look at this gorgeous inner muscular fat on a USDA prime rib eye now Prime is the highest rating for beef in the U.S but it pales in comparison to the marbling of this A5 wagyu from Japan which can have up to 56 intramuscular fat so why does this matter well in short more fat means more flavor so as the wagyu Cooks the fat will render and coat our tongue as we eat it but more importantly Japanese Wagyu beef is said to have a unique flavor just like chicken fat pork fat and beef fat all taste different it's the same idea with wagyu beef this specific cow is said to have more Umami taste than regular beef and additionally has more beefy flavor Aromas in addition to some different melting properties when it's cooked but you may be wondering how does this beef end up looking and supposedly tasting so much different well in short traditional Japanese Wagyu sets itself apart in three ways firstly genetics this is probably the most important as even cross-bred American wagyu cows while still good do not match the marbling of a 100 full bud lagu cow secondly there are some insane feeding strategies famously these can include feeding cows sake mash and crust olives which is where you get drunken Olive and Kobe wagyu and lastly there are strict grading systems this needs to be a whole separate video doing a deep dive here but in short anything labeled as wagyu coming from Japan will have an A3 to A5 rating on it which basically means it was the fattiest cuts of beef from the full blood wagyu cows which go through this crazy marble a scoring process in the US on the other hand we really just have select choice and Prime but even A3 wagyu is still significantly higher in terms of marbling and meat quality than Prime Beef now what I've been super curious about is this does a true A5 wagyu beef burger actually taste that much different next to a USDA prime one except we have a problem as you can guess this package from the store with wagyu on the label is not actually made with A3 or A5 wag UB from Japan so you have two options if you want to find some you can either specialty order some online or you gotta know a guy who is just crazy enough to agree to grind up an A5 Wagyu steak for you and I know a guy this is googa a man who has probably eaten more wagyu than almost anyone in the world and has done countless experiments with all types of beef and ingredients but even he needed some convincing on this test I told Google the concept for this video and he uh he just kind of looked at me and checked his head he's like he's like I'll do it one more time but this might be the last time for science yeah that's the good thing about these experiments we always learn something you know yeah we do it so you don't have to everybody so while this is not a test I would recommend trying at home it was absolutely fascinating and I want to walk through a couple of key takeaways so for this test I made three burger patties all 160 grams each the one on the left is ground up USDA prime rib eye the one on the right is ground up A5 wagyu rib eye and the one in the middle is USDA prime rib eye mixed with 26 grams of A5 wagyu fat now before we cook these up and do the taste test do you notice something not only is the color completely different on the burgers which is understandable when you look at the meat before it was ground but the full wagyu Burger is also kind of pasty and that brings me to key observation number one and that is wagyu has a really low melting point at just 59 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit this is below a person's body temperature and googa knew this so before grinding he started slicing up the Frozen rib eye because it's almost like a race against the clock as he starts running it through the meat grinder you can see it's starting to get Pasty oh my God it doesn't even uh break it just yeah it's just like mush it's just like pure Emulsion now compare that to the beautiful pebbly bits of beef from the USDA prime rib eye typical American beef fat melt around 104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit so even when I'm forming the patties with my hand it's not pasty at all so can you guess what happens when we go to the stove well we set up the stove over ripping high heat and then placed each Burger down starting with the USDA prime the hybrid USDA prime with wagyu fat and the 100 A5 wagyu burger and just look at how fast the wagyu fat starts to melt and shrink in size oh my God immediately immediately just melting yeah wow as this burger continues to cook Google and I are just watching the burger fat melt away and shrink in size and legitimately one minute and 30 seconds later we're like we need to flip this thing it's cooking so fast and getting so small whereas the other Burgers aren't even close to being done and you can put in your bets right now remember this was a 160 gram burger to start so how much do you think this burger weighs after we pulled it off this weighed just 78 grams the burger literally lost half its weight in 2.5 minutes it's like so fragile it lost half half its way wow that is crazy for the remaining Burgers it took another three minutes the mixed wagyu and Prime weighed 113 grams and the full USDA Burger weighed 121 grams so obviously a high fat burger is going to lose a lot of weight too but because that wagyu melting point is so low it renders and drips into the pan so much faster and we actually collected the fat and this right here is why true A5 wag of ground beef is kind of a waste because you end up with all of this liquid fat however the point of this test remains does an A5 wagyu Burger actually taste better than American beef so let's see we have I gotta say today is a good day yeah never a bad day when you get to eat burgers for the afternoon and uh yeah have some fun doing it hey they look fantastic I gotta say and the amount of fat that was on that wacky is just ridiculous it's not it's not uh meat and fat it's fat with a little bit of meat like yeah because we took the weight after and I think this lost literally 50 of its weight and you're paying for that and it's going down the drain yeah yeah hey science we gotta we gotta do it we gotta do it what are we doing first okay we got wagyu we have uh USDA prime mixed with some wagyu and then we have just USDA prime ground up there's very little meat it really is yeah there's everything else one not the drink it's and a lot of the fat is already in the bottom bun exactly yeah okay enough you ready cheers everybody I hate to say this but this is a 10 out of 10. we'll recommend but not really because it's so good it is very hard to describe like that is shocking like that is crazy how different that is yeah like it's the most beefy thing you can imagine in like the best way possible it's a 10 out of 10. but it's too expensive yeah it's too much money for a burger everybody you shouldn't do this it it feels wrong but if you do just know that it's the best burger you ever have in your life it is very good yeah I must say okay hey but if you do it don't do it but if you do but I think you get it let's go for the next let's do it yeah okay I'm excited to see because this one didn't lose quite as much weight right so we still got some lean beef in there but mixed with some of that uh Tallow from the uh the wagyu find out let's do it cheers hmm we're onto something there that feels and tastes or like texturally it is like a bird this is like pretty soft yeah and it's amazing this is like what you're used to like in a in a nice burger like a high-end Burger yeah very high end yeah you can actually feel the fibers of the meat versus this one is just so soft yeah but the flavor is so intense but this one here is is a burger obviously it's not going to be as good as that one but man yeah you get some of those flavor notes for sure with the added Tallow it's not like like I literally can't describe like how beefy that is like I can't like I just there's no like words to describe it it is interesting now that you taste it like the difference between the fat flavors like it does taste different is it shock like is it gonna you know completely blow out of the water like our regular USDA prime that you maybe grind up probably not but let's see let's find out right now you know what this feels like like a steak burger I would agree yeah it very very solid like thicker Burger yeah juicy whenever you see a steak burger on the menu this is what you're gonna expect quite literally a steak ground up into a burger not a regular steak yeah not not just a regular steak but a prime steak with much really good marbling and it I mean it comes through with the burger like look realistically this tastes fantastic now this is better at least for me but this is not something you should do this is something like once in a lifetime that you could give it a try if you want to but I wouldn't recommend it but realistically this one that we just tasted right now is something I can eat regularly it tastes fantastic it tastes like a steak burger I just love the texture and the taste of this one yeah yeah these are better but it's like an hors d'oeuvre yeah you have a little bit one time in your life if you can and that's pretty much it what do you think yeah I think it's kind of like a you know like diminishing returns like this is already really really good these are better but they're not like going to be out of this world completely different like these are all really Burger every Burger we tasted was all really good yeah they're all good because again like good sear good enough fat content salted you're good to go and then if we did like kind of add toppiness to these like it might be completely lost on us oh yeah no if you added cheese to this one right here good old American cheese and this one you just give it to me like I probably like this one better yeah you know what I mean yeah 100 and if you added like a sauce like a nice sauce here and you give me that one without sauce I'd probably go with this one too so it's not worth it expending that much money because you can buy so many more with this one here and add topping sauces vegetables but don't get us wrong everybody this is ridiculously delicious it is amazing but we don't recommend it to answer the question of does wagyu actually taste better than you know like a regular steak definitely does but it's not something that you probably want to splurge on you don't want too often maybe once a year maybe once every five years I I said if you ever tried a Japanese Wagyu A5 Burger one time in your life yeah that's it but don't make it a burger make it as a steak you will better have a better experience you will be able to share with more family members because this is a steak deck to share this is not a steak that you can have it by yourself yeah and on top of that you're not going to be wasting all that fat that you paid for on melting out exactly into the Container yeah but God damn that's delicious well thank you Google for the uh crash course in wagyu that was some fascinating experiments my brother was so great to have you here thank you for coming it was uh you know I've learned a lot from you I've been watching your videos for a while love your videos keep doing what you're doing thank you for coming hey appreciate it all right everybody say goodbye to Google I'll meet you back in my kitchen to round out the video so this test proved three extremely important fundamentals when it comes to freshly ground wagyu beef number one it does have a unique beefy flavor that is different from USDA prime two it has a lower melting point than USDA prime beef and three because of those first two it has a different texture however the question now becomes do these fundamentals hold true for the ground beef options at the grocery store for example does this mean an eight dollar per pound American wagyu ground beef will taste and feel different than my regular four dollar per pound ground beef well that's exactly what we are going to taste test next but before we do we need to figure out what a package labeled wagyu ground beef actually means and basically it's the wild west so let's quickly take a look at the timeline of how wagyu cowls and wagyu products got to the United States in the first place if there is one thing most Americans love it's beef so naturally when people started hearing about this insanely delicious wagyu from Japan they wanted in and in 1976 four live wagyu Bulls were imported to the United States from Japan and were subsequently bred with the American Angus and Continental breeds and this made these the first wagyu cows in the U.S except they weren't full blood meaning genetically pure wagyu cows it wasn't until 1993 that American farmers were able to import Japanese black female cows allowing them to breed the First full blood wagyu cattle in the U.S however that was quickly shut down just four years later in 1997 Japan enacted an export ban on wagyu cows and Japanese officials declared wagyu cattle a National Treasure and in order to protect this status enacted an export ban on live wagyu cattle this ban has helped keep authentic Japanese Wagyu exclusive to Japan and this is why full blood wagyu cowls and their insane marbling are so rare anywhere else in the world but since these wagyu cow Bloodlines were already introduced in the U.S American wagyu beef kept going however they're still pretty rare in the U.S just how rare take a look at this graphic there are over 30 million beef cows in the U.S bred for meat of those there's an estimated 30 000 that have Japanese genetics meaning they can be labeled as wagyu however these are not 30 000 full blood wagyu cows in fact it's estimated there are just 5 000 full-blood genetic Japanese cow in the U.S the rest of them are crossbred so when we Zoom back out you can see just how few cows there are with wagyu genetics in the U.S now you may be wondering why does any of this matter well the US now has a massive mix of genetics and different wagyu cows and none of it is regulated by terms or grading in Japan obviously they have a robust grading system which is heavily regulated however Australia has also gotten in on breeding wagyu cows but they also have a rigorous grading system of one through nine of beef that's really helpful for someone trying to buy some however when you go to the grocery store or a restaurant in America and see a wagyu product like an American Wagyu steak you don't really know what you are getting there's no rigorous guidelines and these scores do matter a lot when you're paying top dollar for a rib eye or thick cut of steak now for this video even though we're just talking about ground beef products you're not going to get the most pristine beef anyway however just because it's ground beef I don't think we should be throwing around the word wagyu everywhere for example take a look at this Arby's wagyu Steakhouse burger if you read the fine print they are using a blend of 51 American wagyu ground beef with 49 regular ground beef so here's a question for you should Orbeez be allowed to call it a wagyu Burger when that 51 American wagyu beef is from a potential 50 crossbred wagyu cow in the first place if you ask me it seems pretty misleading which is why I think the US needs to come up with a grading system that allows for more transparency for consumers for example when I go to the grocery store and buy American wagyu ground beef this could be from a normal Angus cow that barely has any Japanese genetics and my question is does it actually taste any different from the cheapest ground chuck well that's exactly what we're going to put to the test next for this burger taste test I bought four different ground beef options at four different prices the cheapest at four dollars and sixty cents per pound is 73 lean 27 fat ground beef next at 6.25 cents per pound I have USDA prime which is 80 lean and 20 fat third we have American wagyu ground beef which is 75.25 at eight dollars per pound and lastly I special ordered some A5 wagyu ground beef online that cost me 33 dollars per pound but it also cost over thirty dollars to ship it so if you want to factor that into the cost we are looking at over 60 dollars per pound also you may be wondering what makes this different from the A5 meat we ground up with Google so this A5 ground beef that I ordered has a much lower fat content you see googa and I ground up a rib eye and this was estimated at around 50 percent fat which as we saw when to cook it it's just way too much fat to use for ground beef for a burger because it all renders out making it kind of pointless however this A5 ground beef is 75 percent lean and 25 fat made by grinding me less expensive and leaner cuts of an A5 wagyu cowl like the sirloin round or Chuck and in the first test we learned that the wagyu definitely does taste different than the USB but remember those Burger were literally just Beef and Bun it was the purest form of a burger when there's only two ingredients to compare it's gonna be much easier to tell a difference however that's not how we make burgers at home I can't remember the last Burger I made that didn't have cheese a burger sauce and some fresh toppings so here's the key question to keep in mind during this test and that is can you actually taste a difference in the beef flavor when the toppings are added so I prepared my basic burger with the toppings that I use most frequently for each Burger I weighed out 150 grams or 5.3 ounces of beef and formed it into a ball then I added those balls of beef to a ripping hot 450 degree Fahrenheit griddle and gave them a smash I let the crust develop and then gave them a flip before going ahead and adding a slice of American cheese to each now while that was going on I prepped Martin's potato roll buns and added a spoonful of my favorite burger sauce to both the bottom and top buns I followed that with three pickle chips per bun before lastly topping it with some shredded lettuce and once each Burger was done I added that right on top okay so I've got these color coded underneath and what I'm going to do is mix them up to see if there is any difference between the cheapest one around like four dollars a pound all the way up to the most expensive which is A5 wagyu ground beef at around 35 a pound let's see I blindfolded up and shuffled the burgers around so I could try to give myself as much as a blind test as possible and actually see if there is a difference when I give these a taste one two three four so let's Dive Right In to Burger number one it's a good burger nothing to really compare it to yet when it comes to the second Burger again it's really good but is it that different that one maybe felt a little bit softer in texture as far as flavor goes I'm not sure if there's a massive difference there though then on the third burger my initial reaction was that something tasted a little bit different here but it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is three really good again I feel like it tastes a little different but it just like I don't know exactly what about it though Burger number four and after tasting all these Burgers once through based on my test with Google I thought I would be able to pick up on some differences in flavor a lot easier and there was some maybe subtle differences here but the texture is really what stood out the most the fourth one is definitely the firmest if I had a guess maybe that's because it's the 80 20 but I don't know two and three were like a little bit softer number one was kind of in between two and three but as far as taste goes like they just all taste really good that first time through other than the texture there's nothing jumping off the page to me flavor wise um but let me let me see if I can find out a little bit more now even after going through and tasting all the burgers again with some palette cleansers in between I still was not getting significant differences and actually my guesses on which Burger was which was made solely based on the texture not necessarily the taste and Aroma of the burger so I gotta say all of these are just really really good burgers and nothing from like a taste or Aroma perspective is really jumping off the page for me is different the only thing that's pretty easy to pick up is the textural difference the fourth one is definitely the firmest of them then number one is like second firmness and then two and three are the softer ones so based on kind of what I know from the prior test and the handling them I think two and three are the wagyu versions whether it's American wagyu and A5 wagyu I'm not really sure which one is which though and then as far as the outside one goes I think this is probably the 80 20. and this is the 73 27 but all of them are great Burgers so I'm really interested to see exactly which ones these are okay interesting so first one was American wagyu Chuck was the middle one this was the A5 wagyu and then this was the Prime um which I think was the 80 20. so I think what I mix up these two yeah I missed up the Chuck and the American wagyu so this is really interesting to contrast with the taste test we did with Google which was literally just bun salt and there were some big differences in mainly the amount of fat but all of these are really close in the amount of fat and I think the difference is really are much much smaller at this stage so let's go through my final conclusions so in conclusion let's answer the question is wagyu ground beef actually worth it I think the short answer here is no but I want to give you a nuanced answer let me explain so after doing this burger testing assuming that your ground beef choices are within plus or minus five percent of the fat content and ground in package similarly texture wise for example tightly packed like the grocery store or both fresh ground at home I think the short answer is no but that's all only if you understand the big picture because this is something we often forget to think about when we do this sort of a b testing so let's zoom out and look at the big picture here this is my burger craft theory that I presented in my analysis of Gordon Ramsay's viral Tick Tock burger and for this test we have been zoomed in on one choice of this burger craft Theory and that is what type of ground meat should I use but if you zoom out remember this is one of many choices when it comes to constructing a burger the bun the cheese the sauce and toppings all matter a ton too and even if we stay in this burger patty category how you cook it is going to drastically change how the burger tastes for example imagine you had two wagyu ground beef patties but cook them in completely different ways the first you smash it on the grill just like we did in our test but the second you formed into a thicker Patty and cooked over a charcoal grill these patties are going to feel and taste completely different even though they're made with the same ground beef you'll get an amazing crust on the entire Smash Burger but the Charcoal burger is going to have Aroma molecules that are unable to be replicated inside from the charcoal and this gets back to the fundamentals of how to make the perfect burger that I explained in this video where we did a number of tests and what matters more than the specific type of cow that the ground beef may have come from are things like the total fat content and how you actually go about cooking and constructing that burger so here's what I would do get a 20 to 25 fat ground beef and first figure out one what's your favorite way to cook them and secondly what are your favorite toppings bun and sauce then only when you have that figured out would I worry about a b testing specific ground beef like I did here also I should mention even though based on the flavor I would say it's not worth it to grab these more expensive options there are other considerations you may have when shopping at the store this could include supporting your local farmer buying grass-fed or regenerative ground beef or this could be entirely different or if you are using the beef or something else like Browning it up for tacos or a sloppy joe ultimately this video is not about me telling you what you should or should not buy and how to make a burger the point is to use this video as an information resource so you can make an informed and confident purchasing decision next time you are at the grocery store and see a package labeled wagyu so in conclusion hopefully you guys have enjoyed this video it was a ton of fun to put together from looking at the history of wagyu how it got to the U.S and some of the current products there are today also a big thank you to Google for collabing and grinding up the A5 wagyu that experiment and that day I spent with him was a lot of fun and he also gave me some extra footage of the wagyu cows when he went to Japan so thank you again Google but anyway that will wrap it up for me in this one hopefully you guys have enjoyed I will catch you in the next one peace y'all oh my God immediately immediately just melting yeah wow

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 2,923,838

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, wagyu burger, Guga foods, Guga wagyu, wagyu beef, wagyu ground beef, is wagyu overrated, wagyu steak, wagyu cow, A5 wagyu, japanese wagyu beef, wagyu japan, cooking video, how to cook, wagyu, a5 wagyu, american wagyu, american wagyu vs japanese wagyu, wagyu a5

Id: E6w_W6GyHEs

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023