Some beef connoisseurs consider Wagyu Cattle to produce the best steak in the world. Wagyu just means “cattle” in Japanese. It’s also known as Kobe beef, named for the Japanese prefecture famed for the product. Raising Wagyu in the Kobe style calls for exacting techniques in feeding and handling—the cattle even get massages.
If you know that the best beef in America is graded Prime, based on the amount of intermuscular fat or marbling, then you should know that the Japanese marbling scale puts Prime as less than a 3 out of 13 levels—lower than the minimum grade for Wagyu beef, whose quality is also labeled A1 through A5 based on its consistency and butchering. Grade 13 A5 Wagyu has marbling so fatty that it often looks like red and yellow stripes.
A5 Wagyu is the tenderest, most unctuous beef you could ever eat. It is so flavorful that some steak-lovers find it almost too intense, so small portions are often more than enough. For years Japan restricted the export of this delicacy, but these days, American farmers have been raising Wagyu or Wagyu/Angus hybrids and the market in Japan has opened up considerably. But no matter where you get it, it is a luxury at luxury prices. Still, if you have never tried it, you can find more and more places that sell it at a price that you can “afford.”
How much is “a lot?” You can go to Costco and order a 6-pound tenderloin from Japan for $1000 and break that down into sixteen 6-ounce filet mignon steaks if you have the money. But over 130 bucks a pound is kind of ridiculous. While not quite at the price of supermarket Choice-graded beef, these specialty purveyors can give you a taste of the tenderest beef in the world.
Crowd Cow sources its meats (and seafood) from responsible sustainable family farms, and while they aren’t supermarket-level cheap, it isn’t stratospheric. It is worth trying the dry-aged Wagyu ground beef at about $8 a pound to see what all the hype is about. It makes some of the best hamburgers and meatloaf you have ever had, especially if you use the DxD recipe.
Marx Foods This purveyor sources its Wagyu from American and New Zealand farms. The price of steaks can be expensive, but lesser-known cuts can yield a lot of pleasure. The BMS8-grade skirt steaks, at $36 a pound for a 10-pound order including shipping can be a revelation if all you ever knew about skirt steak was Tex-Mex fajitas.
Snake River Farms Their selection of American Wagyu meats range from steaks to roasts, and, like Marx Foods, their individual steaks are pricey, the cost of roasts that can easily be cut into steaks are at least within splurge-level budgets. A boneless ribeye roast can be cut into six or seven one-pound steaks for around $50 a pound. Served as a whole roast, it can be the centerpiece of an amazing holiday meal.
