Horse meat is very useful for the body, it is recognized as an easily digestible meat, because it is completely digested in 3 hours. Horse meat also lowers blood cholesterol, is a source of complete protein, trace elements and vitamins. Despite all its advantages over beef, housewives give more preference to the latter. But since it is outwardly difficult to distinguish between these types of meat, it is quite possible to make a mistake on the market. How to distinguish beef from horse meat?
Instructions
Step 1
Consider the texture of the meat. In horse meat, it is dense, dark red, and in the air it may even appear slightly purple or dark brown. In the longitudinal section, coarse short fibers are clearly visible, which are connected in bundles. The cross section has a coarse-grained surface. Marbling is completely absent. If the meat is from an old animal, then it can give off an unpleasant smell, especially when cooked. Horse meat is soft and melts quickly from the warmth of the hands. Beef has a bright red (cow) or dark red (bull) color. In young animals (calves), it is light red, pink. The fat of beef is hard and freezes quickly. On the cut, the meat of bulls is fibrous, granular, has white fatty layers, subcutaneous fat is absent. The meat has a characteristic smell of bougaine. If in front of you is the meat of an ox, then it may be dark, but with a more delicate structure and the presence of a large amount of fat (interstitial and subcutaneous). Has a pleasant, slightly sour milky smell. In cows, the color of the meat is lighter, bright red, the fibers are coarse, strong-grained in the cut. There is marbling.
Step 2
If there are large bones in the piece in question, then try to distinguish horse meat from beef by the signs of a difference in the structure of the skeleton. The scapula in cattle has a pronounced triangular shape and an awn in the form of an acute angle, and in a horse it is long, the awn gradually passes into the neck. The dorsal vertebrae also have characteristic differences. In a horse, the spinous processes are slightly inclined and located very close to each other, have a knobby thickening. There are 18 vertebrae in total (17-19). In cattle, the spinous processes are strictly vertical, slightly distant from each other, the upper half is elongated. Number - 13. The chest bone in horses is compressed from the sides and has a crest, in cows there is no crest, and the bone itself is flat (compressed from above). The elbow and radius also have strong differences. On the cut, you can immediately see that the horse has a kind of mesh in the brain canal. In cattle, this is absent, the cerebral canal is large and free.
Step 3
By-products are also different. So, the equine tongue is flat with a long end in the form of a spatula and with a leaf-shaped epiglottis, and the beef tongue has thin edges, in the middle there is a bulge in the form of a tubercle, the epiglottis is oval. Sometimes the beef tongue is pigmented. The horse's liver is clearly divided into three lobes with a deep notch for the esophagus, while the beef liver has no notch for the esophagus, there are also three lobes, but the boundaries between them are unclear. The horse's left kidney is bean-shaped, the right one is triangular. The cow has oval kidneys, of 16-28 fused lobules.
