j biesinger
TVWBB Platinum Member
After reading a big book about meat appropriately named "The River Cottage Meat Book," I decided to investigate grass fed beef. Although the author makes some compelling ethical arguments, I was sold mostly on the taste an quality issues. Since I already had established a mental catalog of all the meat sellers at various local farmer's markets, I figured it would be a good project to work on this summer. I guess I was already kind of primed (no pun intended) to eat local meat before I even read the book.
So last week I started with localharvest.org and I was pretty excited to see a bunch of farms raising grass fed, angus beef that weren't too far from me. I shot a few an email, and one farm replied almost instantly. As luck would have it, a coworker knew of this farm (but didn't know they sold their beef retail) and happens to live near by and was planning on driving right by it on saturday. He figured he'd check it out and buy himself a roast and me a steak or two. Here I'm planning on spending most of the summer figuring this all out and instead, in mere days, I had local beef being hand delivered to me at work. I didn't get to see the farm first hand but they seem like one of the few people around that butcher their cows and have the meat cut into sub-primals (and further into roast and steaks) and try to have a selection of frozen cuts around all year long, which made it ideal for trying before buying larger quantities. Most of the other farms I've seen listed only sell sides, wholes, or 50 lb grab bags and only in the fall.
I requested one porterhouse hoping it would be a double cut (1.5") but ended up with two that were 1" (better than the scrawny .75" stuff I normally see in supermarkets). The meat was $7.70 a pound which compared to a local supermarket that sells prime, dry aged porterhouse for $16.99 a pound it was a relative steal. Each steak ran about a pound so the package was $14 and change.
Appearance wise, they were certainly a lot smaller than what I'm use to (but turned out to be a nice big portion for a hungry eater) and had a far amount of marbling despite being 100% grass fed and not corn finished. The rind of fat encircling the meat may have been a bit thicker but that's not that important unless you want to figure waste into the original price. The steak seemed to have been butchered weird because there was a bit of fat hanging down from the pointed end and there was a bit of meat hiding in the fat. It was like the butcher nipped the next sub-primal when he was taking this one off the carcass. Again it was of no consequence unless you want to count I'm paying porterhouse per pound for fat and random meat.
Taste wise, I was really impressed. I couldn't get over the fact that the fillet side tasted so much different that the strip side, and both had a rich, gamy taste that I've rarely experience with beef. I told my wife, while we were eating, that if there's better beef out there (and I'm sure there is) than I can't wait to try it.
I'm glad I heeded the tons of advice there is out there to "go local." I'm really eager to find other sources of beef and find some for pork. I think this has the potential to really improve the quality of my bbq. I can't wait to try a brisket and if its anything like these steaks, it'll be fun to use in a comp.
I'm interested to hear other stories about experiences with local meat. And for those of you that might need some incentive to go and try some for yourself...do it, you won't regret it.
I also received an additional link from Kevin. the site is called "eat wild" and it lists producers of grass fed meat by state.
So last week I started with localharvest.org and I was pretty excited to see a bunch of farms raising grass fed, angus beef that weren't too far from me. I shot a few an email, and one farm replied almost instantly. As luck would have it, a coworker knew of this farm (but didn't know they sold their beef retail) and happens to live near by and was planning on driving right by it on saturday. He figured he'd check it out and buy himself a roast and me a steak or two. Here I'm planning on spending most of the summer figuring this all out and instead, in mere days, I had local beef being hand delivered to me at work. I didn't get to see the farm first hand but they seem like one of the few people around that butcher their cows and have the meat cut into sub-primals (and further into roast and steaks) and try to have a selection of frozen cuts around all year long, which made it ideal for trying before buying larger quantities. Most of the other farms I've seen listed only sell sides, wholes, or 50 lb grab bags and only in the fall.
I requested one porterhouse hoping it would be a double cut (1.5") but ended up with two that were 1" (better than the scrawny .75" stuff I normally see in supermarkets). The meat was $7.70 a pound which compared to a local supermarket that sells prime, dry aged porterhouse for $16.99 a pound it was a relative steal. Each steak ran about a pound so the package was $14 and change.
Appearance wise, they were certainly a lot smaller than what I'm use to (but turned out to be a nice big portion for a hungry eater) and had a far amount of marbling despite being 100% grass fed and not corn finished. The rind of fat encircling the meat may have been a bit thicker but that's not that important unless you want to figure waste into the original price. The steak seemed to have been butchered weird because there was a bit of fat hanging down from the pointed end and there was a bit of meat hiding in the fat. It was like the butcher nipped the next sub-primal when he was taking this one off the carcass. Again it was of no consequence unless you want to count I'm paying porterhouse per pound for fat and random meat.
Taste wise, I was really impressed. I couldn't get over the fact that the fillet side tasted so much different that the strip side, and both had a rich, gamy taste that I've rarely experience with beef. I told my wife, while we were eating, that if there's better beef out there (and I'm sure there is) than I can't wait to try it.
I'm glad I heeded the tons of advice there is out there to "go local." I'm really eager to find other sources of beef and find some for pork. I think this has the potential to really improve the quality of my bbq. I can't wait to try a brisket and if its anything like these steaks, it'll be fun to use in a comp.
I'm interested to hear other stories about experiences with local meat. And for those of you that might need some incentive to go and try some for yourself...do it, you won't regret it.
I also received an additional link from Kevin. the site is called "eat wild" and it lists producers of grass fed meat by state.
