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 TikTok, 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'm even seeing 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 going to 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 and to see if there is actually a difference in taste. Because even if this stuff is mislabeled, if it 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 gyu 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 intermuscular fat, also known as marbling.
For example, take a look at this gorgeous intermuscular fat on a USDA prime ribeye. Now, prime is the highest rating for beef in the US, 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 crossbred American Wagyu cows, while still good, do not match the marbling of a 100% full bud Wagyu 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 marbling 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 Wagyu beef 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 Guga, 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 Guga the concept for this video and he just kind of looked at me and shook his head. 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 ribeye. The one on the right is ground up A5 Wagyu ribeye.
And the one in the middle is USDA prime ribeye 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 Guga knew this, so before grinding, he started slicing up the frozen ribeye, 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 break. 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 ribeye. Typical American beef fat melts 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. Look at it.
Wow. As this burger continues to cook, Guga 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 160 gram burger to start.
So how much do you think this burger weighs after we pulled it off? This weighed just 78 pounds. grams.
The burger literally lost half its weight in 2.5 minutes. It's like so fragile. It lost half its weight.
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 Wagyu 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 have some fun doing it. Hey, they look fantastic, I gotta say.
And the amount of fat that was on that Wagyu is just ridiculous. It's not meat and fat. It's fat with a little bit of meat.
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 do it. What are we doing first? Okay, we got Wagyu, we have USDA Prime mixed with some Wagyu, and then we have just USDA Prime ground up.
It's very little meat. It really is. Yeah, because everything else went down the drain. And a lot of the fat is already in the bottom bun. Exactly.
Yeah. Okay, enough. You ready?
Let's do it. 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, isn't it good?
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 feels wrong. But if you do, just know that it's the best burger you'll ever have in your life. It is very good.
Yeah, I must say. Okay, but if you do, don't do it. But if you do, I think you get it. Let's go for the next one. Let's do it.
Yeah. 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 tallow from the Wagyu. Let's find out.
Let's do it. Cheers. Mmm. We're onto something there. That feels and tastes, or like, texturally is like a burger.
This is like pretty soft. Yeah. And it's amazing.
This is like what you're used to, like, 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?
or regular USDA prime that you maybe grind up? Probably not, but let's see. Well, 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 yeah 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 a prime but a prime steak with much really good marbling and it i mean it comes through 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 time 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 toppings 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 this, I probably like this one better. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Yeah. And if you add it like us. sauce, like a nice sauce here, and you gave me that one without sauce, I'd probably go with this one too.
So it's not worth it, spending that much money, because you can buy so many more with this one here, and add toppings, 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 know all too often maybe once a year maybe once every five years 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 that to share this is not a steak that you can have it by yourself yes and on top of that you're not gonna be wasting all that fat that you paid for on melting out into the container yeah but goddamn that's delicious Well, thank you Guga for the crash course in Wagyu. That was some fascinating experiments.
My brother, it was so great to have you here. Thank you for coming. It was, 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 Guga, 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 $8 per pound American Wagyu ground beef will taste and feel different than my regular $4 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 cows 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 cows 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 U.S. 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 1 through 9 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 ribeye 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 Arby's 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 U.S. 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 $4.60 per pound is 73% lean and 27% fat ground beef. Next, at $6.25 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 $8 per pound. And lastly, I special ordered some A5 Wagyu ground beef online That cost me $33 per pound, but it also cost over $30 to ship it.
So if you want to factor that into the cost, we're looking at over $60 per pound. Also, you may be wondering what makes this different from the A5 meat we ground up with Guga. So this A5 ground beef that I ordered has a much lower fat content.
You see, Guga and I ground up a ribeye, and this was estimated at around 50% fat, which... As we saw when we had 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% lean and 25% fat, made by grinding the less expensive and leaner cuts of an A5 Wagyu cow like the sirloin, round, or chuck. And in the first test, we learned that the Wagyu definitely does taste different than the U.S. beef. But remember, those burgers were literally just beef.
beef and bun. It was the purest form of a burger. When there's only two ingredients to compare, it's going to 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 pickled 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 to pound.
All the way up to the most expensive, which is A5 Wagyu Ground Beef at around $35. 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 Guga, 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's definitely the firmest. If I had to 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. But 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 palate 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 firmest 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 that'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 8020 and this is the 7327, 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, which I think was the 8020. So I think, what did I mix up? These two?
Yeah, I mixed up the Chuck and the American Wagyu. So this is really interesting to contrast with the taste test we did with Guga, 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 differences 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 5% of the fat content and ground and 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 only if you understand the big picture, because this is something we often forget to think about when we do this sort of AB 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 TikTok 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 cooked them in completely different ways. The first, you smashed 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 if you are using the beef for 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 US and some of the current products there are today. Also a big thank you to Guga 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, Guga. 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.
Look at it. Wow.