Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

OK, the disclaimer to Angus is mostly untrue, rather than true. We raised our own steers for a while, and one of the most important determiners of flavor is the feed that the cattle are raised and finished with. This also helps determine how lean or fat they are. To that end, grass fed steers taste a bit gamier than those who are finished with corn or a mixture. But there is an important caveat to all of this: to wit, bison, oxen, elk, and genuine Angus taste quite different than do most domestic cattle breeds, even when raised on a pure grass diet -- their meat is leaner, yet quite flavorful and relatively tender. The more that cattle run or graze over wider territories (like in the movies where they would herd them to the stockyards over hundreds of miles or more) the tougher the meat.

So saying that Angus taste like any other beef is false, but conditions do amplify or improve the final result. Why is Angus specifically different? It's because the Scots bred the Angus from hybrid stock to begin with, they are part old European zebu buffalo and more modern cattle strains. If you have ever actually seen Angus bulls in person, the resemblance to other cattle breeds ends fairly quickly. They are big, very big. And their heads look like something halfway between bison and cattle.

Again, all that being said, there are grades of Angus, just like any other beef and perhaps low grade Angus is indistinguishable from better grades of Hereford, Limousin (which I also like), et al, but a good cut of Angus can be easily taste tested as different from an equal cut of the others.

Let's face it, if all cattle tasted the same, or provided the same quality of meet, then they would all sell for the same price per pound, which they never have, even before the "marketing ploys" of the last decade. That is why dairy cattle are rarely the choice for meat, and why the Japanese can get $100 a pound for Kobe beef -- and yes, again, how they feed and prepare the beef is critically important.

There are many of my friends who cannot taste the difference between
ground chuck and sirloin, too. And those who cannot appreciate the difference between a Grand Cru Bordeaux and a low price bottle of California Pinot (don't get me wrong, there are some extraordinarily good California Pinots -- I live in the Central Coast!) but that does not mean that others cannot tell the difference or even recognize by taste the origins and identities of what they drink or eat.

Bon Appetite!