Why is beef so different from chicken or pork? It’s just muscle and they all have the same diet so what makes the texture and taste so different?
In: Biology
The meats serve a different purpose when the animal is still alive. More work required from that muscle means longer fibers (more beefy texture) and more myoglobin (the red color) for extra oxygen storage. Chicken breast, for example, isn’t used very much when the chicken is alive. It’s developed very short fibers- that slimy texture when raw- and hardly any myoglobin- it’s white. The flavor mostly comes down to the subtle differences in diet.
TL;DR
lots of muscle use = long fibers, lots of red color
little muscle use = short fibers, little red color
long fibers = tougher/chewier texture
short fibers = softer/tender texture
its not quite fair to call it exactly the same since Chicken and Cows are separated by nearly 325 million years of continued evolution. 325 million years of tweaking little things here and there on both ends genetically, and using them for different lifestyles in different bodies.
In the blood there are red blood cells which contain haemoglobin to transfer oxygen, in muscles cells in darker meat (like beef) there is another iron based factor called myoglobin, which stores oxygen directly in the muscles which influences the flavour of the meat. https://youtu.be/t6kQhilO04c
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