Rubia Gallega

Rubia Gallega — the Galician Blond — is the principal native cattle breed of Galicia, in the wet Atlantic northwest of Spain. It is a heavy, wheat-to-cinnamon coloured animal that grows slowly on pasture, and its beef is unmistakable on sight: dark, dense muscle with a pronounced iron-mineral savour, sheathed in a fat cap that runs from creamy white to deep yellow rather than the flat white of grain-fed cattle. It is eaten above all as the chuletón, a thick bone-in rib chop grilled over embers, and because that fat cover is so deep it takes long dry-ageing where a leaner carcass would simply dry out.