This paper presents a microwave sensor for the non-destructive dielectric characterization of biological tissues. The proposed sensor is based on microstrip ring-resonator, which is utilized for quality evaluation of meat at 1 GHz frequency. The obtained results from measurement and simulation are in good agreement for the studied meat samples. Using numerical formulations, dielectric constant of meat samples is extracted and then compared with those acquired by well-established and commercially available coaxial-probe method. Negligible difference is observed in obtained data, the maximum discrepancy is about 6 only. Findings of this study provide new possibilities to employ microwave circuits for non-destructive evaluation of dielectric materials. © 2016-IOS Press and the authors.