There's more to an eye of round than meets the eye. And there is plenty of tender, high-quality meat in the beef round and chuck that deserves a better fate than being ground and slapped between two hamburger buns.

A two-year University of Nebraska study profiling the muscles that make up the beef chuck and round found that many of the muscles that traditionally are ground should have a higher value use, said Chris Calkins, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources meat scientist.

"We wanted to completely characterize the muscles with the ultimate goal of finding their optimal use and optimal value," Calkins said.

The study was motivated by a 1997 cattle industry report showing that over a five-year period the value of the loin and rib had increased 4 percent to 12 percent, while chuck and round values decreased more than 20 percent. That's a huge loss, considering these cuts make up the majority of the weight of the beef carcass."This was startling," Calkins said. "We wanted to know how to recapture some of this value."

Collaborating with the University of Florida, IANR animal scientists extensively profiled more than 5,500 muscles from the chuck and round in the largest study of its kind ever conducted, Calkins said. A third of the muscles went to Florida for tenderness and taste panel studies, the rest were analyzed by Calkins' laboratory for nutritional and biochemical traits important to value-added processing. Calkins' lab performed more than 25,000 different tests, including measurements of color, fat and moisture content, pH, water-holding capacity and amount of connective tissue.

Once all these test results were gathered, Calkins set about compiling them into a useable, understandable booklet format, a veritable "encyclopedia of the chuck and round."

"If you are someone in industry looking for a muscle for a particular value-added product and you know the traits you need, you can go to this booklet and easily identify a candidate muscle," Calkins said. The booklet was published by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), which funded the muscle profiling study.

Calkins summarizes the study's findings in one word: variation. The team found a wide range of variation for virtually every trait studied, leading Calkins to conclude that many muscles of the chuck and round have a higher quality and warrant a better use than butchers and chefs have traditionally given them.

"There are things we do with these cuts that are just a matter of tradition, like grouping certain muscles together or cutting them to a shape that the consumer is accustomed to seeing," Calkins said. "Now we have definitive information that can be used to develop new products that can benefit both the industry and the consumer." That process has already begun, Calkins said. The NCBA hired a top-notch chef to develop recipes using eight of the characterized muscles. As a result, one of the largest beef distributors in the eastern United States has begun to order these cuts. To get the word out to industry even more effectively, Calkins is going high-tech. He's collaborating with IANR colleague Steve Jones and information technologists in IANR's Communications and Information Technology unit to compile the muscle data and related information on a CD-ROM that will be distributed by the NCBA. "The CD-ROM will be a premier educational tool and make the information available in a format the industry can really use," Calkins said.

– Monica Norby

IANR Meat Scientist Chris Calkins measures the thickness of a cut of beef round. Calkins' team profiled the muscles that make up beef round and chuck in the largest study ever of its kind. Researchers found many muscles that traditionally are ground should have higher value uses.

Calkins cuts an individual muscle out of a beef hind quarter. The carcass and the muscle each are photographed for use on a CD-ROM that an IANR team is developing to share findings and muscle-specific information to industry.

Calkins uses a meter to measure the lightness and redness of beef round and chuck.