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I was going to buy some supposed 'ribeye' steak today (in Indonesia). However it looked weird. The marbling did not look anything like any ribeye I've ever seen.

enter image description here

I found it was 'Meltique' http://www.meltiquebeef.com.au/, which is some lowgrade cut of beef injected with either canola oil or beef fat. Apparently the halal version (which they had) is canola, for fears about lard or something like that.

Anyway I passed on it.

Can anyone who has bought/cooked this pass comment on the quality of the product? My instincts suggest I'd just buy regular beef without fat injected and cook it some other way. But it seems to sell large volumes in Asia. Is this available in Western countries? I'd kind of expect low-grade restaurants to use something like this to save money? But maybe it really is that disgusting?

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  • I've never bought it, and I don't have any reason to doubt the cleanliness of the factories in which this is done, but if it were me, I would make sure that you cook it through. (as the needles or whatever they used to inject the fat broke the surface of the muscle, and so you need to treat the whole thing as surface that needs to be pasteurized, as you would with ground beef).
    – Joe
    Nov 10, 2020 at 22:19

2 Answers 2

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"Can anyone who has bought/cooked this pass comment on the quality of the product?"

Im in Surabaya, and have working (Surabaya restaurant projects) experience with meltique steaks.

Heres my assessment of them:

When fresh off the grill, they are quite "juicy" and their general taste is "acceptable" (for its low price). However their taste degrades rapidly as they cool and I find them horribly unpalatable.

As a result, although restaurants think it is wonderful and even try to put it on their menus as "Wagyu", I will never buy it myself.

Local (Indonesian) beef is far better than meltique.

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I have made my own experiments using Transglutaminase (TG), aka Meat Glue, which is a natural enzyme that has the ability to glue protein-containing foods together.

I have recreated steaks from trim cuts, added to burgers, re-shaped hanger steak into filet mignon "coins".

From everything I've read, there is nothing unhealthy about this process.

As to doing it on a large commercial scale… I don't know if they're doing anything beyond using TG, so might be worth seeking more info.

Also, try the meat. From the photo, it looks fresh and clean. I'm sure it'd taste great.

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    What makes you think that TG is being used here? The stuff I’ve read about artificial marbling doesn’t mention it as being part of the process.
    – Sneftel
    Nov 11, 2020 at 7:10
  • the linked website has two "perfectly round" cross-section products similar to what is depicted: strip loin roll and cube roll. I would expect both products to use TG as @beausmith implies. TG is often used to "regularize" perfectly good cuts of meat into a tube shape that makes for easy cooking and portion control.
    – Yorik
    Nov 13, 2020 at 18:53
  • Fair enough, but the key feature there is the marbling, which clearly follows the muscle grain. You wouldn't get that from rolling/chopping/mincing and gluing.
    – Sneftel
    Apr 10, 2021 at 19:17

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