If you haven’t heard of olive wagyu, you’re not alone. This particular type of beef has eluded even the most informed aficionados. Considered to be the rarest steak in the world, only about 2,200 heads of this specific cattle exist in the world. On top of that, just a few are harvested each month for their meat.
Raised in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture, the cows are fed a special diet of Inawara rice straw, Italian ryegrass, and pressed olive pulp. But why olives, you ask? The method originates from Shodoshima—the second largest island in the Seto Insland Sea—where the fruit has been growing since 1908. Following the belief that nothing should be wasted, cattle farmer Masaki Ishii wanted to find a way to repurpose olive lees, a byproduct of olive oil production, and came up with a way to toast and dry the pulp, drawing out its sweetness and making it more palatable for cows. The result is a high-quality steak with a bold umami flavor—which is attributed to increased amounts of peptides and glutamic acid—and a high level of oleic acid. The monosaturated fat makes up 65.2% of olive wagyu’s fat content, which is higher than any other beef in the world and is what gives steak the desired soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture. This incredible marbling is also what led this variety of beef to win the award for best fat quality at the 2017 Wagyu Olympics, beating out 182 other entrants.
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