Five 1.3-cm (0.5-in)-diameter cores were drilled from each of the 35 steak samples parallel to the muscle grain. Cores were cut at a speed of 180 mm/min using a Warner-Bratzler blade attached to a TA.XT2 Texture Analyzer (Texture Technologies Group, Scarsdale, NY). The shear force value assigned to each steak sample was the average of the maximum forces in
kilograms required to cut each set of cores (Figure 3).