Producing Wagyu beef is as much an art as it is stockmanship, according to Kenichi “Ken” Kato. “Just as the painter has different brushes, inks and papers, the Wagyu producer has breeding, grain, grass, water and atmosphere. They create your own fragrance, flavor, and texture. This is an art and a science.”
Speaking to around 250 Wagyu breeders during the 2021 American Wagyu Association annual conference in Fort Collins, Colo., Kato said those things are what makes Wagyu beef so unique. Because each, in its own measure, bring a distinctive fragrance, taste and texture to the beef.
Kato is a well-known butcher and restaurant owner in Japan, who is four generations deep in the Wagyu culture and a second-generation high-end butcher of truly high-end beef. In the classroom and during cutting demonstrations, he showed U.S. Wagyu beef producers that the creation isn’t possible unless you know what you want to create.
That’s where U.S. and Japanese beef production differ, at least in the commodity market. But Wagyu is anything but a commodity, both in Japan and the United States.
So, Kato’s goal was to show U.S. Wagyu producers, many of whom have farm-to-fork or other value-based marketing arrangements, how to produce more than 60 cuts from a Wagyu carcass, many of which are never consumed as whole-meat entrees in the U.S.
Kato can cut and his customers in Japan can enjoy those 60 different pieces because of Wagyu’s remarkable and unique marbling, tenderness, fragrance, and flavor. By doing so, Kato only produces around 50 pounds of trimmings for ground beef. In the U.S., on the other hand, around half of a commodity beef carcass goes to trim to feed the seemingly insatiable demand for ground beef in America.
But since Wagyu is anything but commodity beef, Wagyu beef consumers in the U.S. want a dining experience that’s a notch or two above commodity beef. To that end, Kato urged U.S. Wagyu beef producers to get to know their customers.
As Kato began to take over his parent’s butcher shop, “I found that we needed to educate not only our customers, but also ourselves,” he said. “Most customers did not know anything about the cut. They just bought whatever looked good.”
The butcher shop was able to sell all the beef they had, “but not necessarily what (customers) actually needed. I came to believe that to understand our customer’s needs, it might be better not to show our meat.”
Kato is a lifelong learner and while he grew up cutting meat in his parent’s butcher shop, he wanted to know more. So, he came to Colorado State University and earned a master’s degree in meat science. When he returned to Japan, he opened a boutique butcher shop where no meat was on display. “I made it as fancy as possible. It was in one of the most popular areas in Tokyo.” The goal was to showcase Wagyu’s world-class superior quality and how each cut has unique taste and flavor.
What the concept did was force the customers to talk to the butchers and the butchers to talk to the customers. When that happened, the butchers became familiar with each customer’s cooking style and taste preferences and the customers learned which cuts best fit them.
If a customer prefers a stronger, beefier flavor, there are certain cuts that provide that dining experience. Likewise, if a customer prefers a lighter flavor, there are cuts for that, too. And given Wagyu’s unique carcass characteristics, muscles that Americans wouldn’t even think of cooking as an entree, like the shank, can be a successful center-of-the-plate dining experience.
Likewise, Kato said he and his butchers need to know the farmers they buy carcasses from. “With this understanding, we then purchase good carcasses, dry age them, fabricate and cut, providing a superior product for every customer.”
For more information about Wagyu, go to www.wagyu.org.
