Different types of steak can provide you with unique flavors, from rich and fatty to lean and even minerally, but fishy is one that catches a lot of people off guard. There are a lot of varieties of steaks that are becoming more available, either through your local supermarket or specialty retailers, yet you never really expect your meat to taste like a different animal entirely.
This leads to the natural question of: Is there something wrong with this? It turns out that the answer is pretty complicated. Beef that has actually gone bad will usually smell more sour than fishy, so no, your fishy steak isn’t actually spoiled — it isn’t bad to eat it. Instead this flavor can mean that your cut of steak was grass-fed.
Beef that is 100% grass-fed rather than just grass-finished naturally develops tastes that are different from industrial cattle in America, which while not entirely grain-fed are usually finished on grain. This normally comes in the form of a leaner, gamey flavor that we associate with wild ruminants that naturally eat grass, while grain gives the meat a richer taste. Grass contains different nutrients than grain and will produce leaner cattle and also give the fat that does form a yellow hue and a different flavor that sometimes moves into the fishy territory. What’s complicated is that you will hear different explanations for why this is and whether it’s totally fine or the sign of poorly raised cattle.
The debate over where the fishy taste comes from
One explanation you will see for grass-fed steak’s fishy flavor has to do with omega-3 fatty acids. Grass provides more of those fatty acids, so the cattle that mostly eat grass develop more omega-3s, which is true. And supposedly, it is this that gives the beef a fishy flavor, since omega-3s are also the fat found in fish. Finishing cattle on grain can get rid of these flavors.
But not everyone agrees. There are also farmers raising grass-fed beef who think that fishy notes are the result of the cows being undernourished. While grass-fed beef is naturally more lean, it should still have a good amount of fat, which is what helps mitigate the fishy flavor even when the cow only ate grass. So fishy steak isn’t the natural taste, it’s a sign that the cow wasn’t fattened properly before being slaughtered. This can happen with grass-fed beef because the lower fat diet means it takes more time and skill to properly fatten 100% grass-fed cattle. But do it right, and grass-fed beef should not taste fishy at all.
Given the lack of agreement on the matter and the still-developing grass-fed beef industry, it may take time to sort this all out. But if your steak does taste fishy, know that it’s mostly fine. At the very worst, the cow was probably just a little skinny.
