Australian producer develops new marbled lamb in hope of rivalling wagyu

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

Marbled beef is synonymous with premium prices at high-end restaurants and lamb producers are working hard to compete for top spot on the menu.
After years of development, Australian breeder Lambpro has created lambs with a high distribution of fat in the meat.
General manager Tom Bull said they had reached a marbling score of 7 per cent or more.
"It's that level ahead … it's really hard to go back to eating generic lamb once you start eating the really good stuff," he said.
Marbling of meat changes the flavour when it is cooked, making it more tender and juicy.
That flavour edge motivated the lamb industry to increase marbling levels, working for over a decade to make it happen.
"Now the technology is really coming together, we can start to really pull out those top-end lambs," Mr Bull said.
"The biggest advantage for us now we can do that, we can actually charge a lot more and we've got customers willing to pay."
Mr Bull said average lamb marbling was 4 per cent in Australia, and he was hoping the meat would feature more prominently on fine dining menus as quality shifted.
Joseph Abboud, chef and owner of Rumi Lebanese restaurant in Melbourne's Brunswick East, uses a lot of lamb in his dishes.
"Lamb is a really important part of Middle Eastern cuisine," he said.
Mr Abboud said using lamb with high levels of marbling had not been an option before.
"I just don't think there's the spectrum of lamb where you have such a noticeable difference," he said.
"A wagyu beef compared to just regular beef, they're almost different products."
He said the 7 per cent marbled lamb "sounds great" and he would be interested to see what it would be like.
"For us the flavour is the most important part of the lamb … we're looking for a more robust flavour and we tend to go towards an older lamb," Mr Abboud said.
"A marbled lamb sounds like it could give us that tenderness which you get in the young lamb, but also that richness of flavour."
One of the biggest sticking points for the production of high-end lamb has been consistency.
"Chefs are used to having the likes of a wagyu and Angus where you might have a marble score of 10-plus and every piece of meat is the same," Mr Bull said.
Lambpro developers have worked to calibrate their testing machines in the abattoir to sort and pack the meat into different marbling grades.
But Mr Bull said the years of work had been worth it.
"There's a real incentive to be able to breed a lamb that hits 7 per cent and financially you certainly get rewarded," he said.
"We can sell racks at almost double what a commodity rack goes for."
The hefty cost of marbled lamb would not deter Mr Abboud in his restaurant.
"When you have something like that to offer, it's generally worth it because it is something tangible that's different," he said.