Post by BBQ Butcher on Jul 26, 2008 15:22:29 GMT -5
Even old dogs can learn new tricks. No, I’m not referring to the canine that we keep around the house as a pet. I am, in fact, referring to myself! Before you start scratching your head and wondering what the heck I’m talking about, I’ll just get right to the point and you can make your own decision.
Hello, my name is Steve and I’m a beefaholic. I have been eating beef and enjoying it for at least fifty years. Other than hamburgers at the family gatherings, my earliest recollection of a nice hunk of beef was when I was ten years old at my grandmother’s “Kountry Kitchen” restaurant. I was rather thin and underweight for my age, so my grandmother took it upon herself to feed me a nice steak and a bottle of beer at least three times a week. Her reasoning was that the only time I cleaned my plate was when she served steak and sliced fried potatoes. Both cooked in good old fashioned lard on the restaurant’s flat top grill. And, by the way, both were cooked well past ‘DONE’, which I didn’t realize until a few years later on. The beer? Well, a kindly old country doctor told her that feeding me a beer before dinner would make me hungrier and I would gain weight. Little did the doctor, or I, know that his suggestion helped me put on about 100 extra pounds between 1992 and 1998!!!!
When I turned twelve, my grandmother turned me loose at the grill and let me cook my own meat. I experimented with different steaks and all kinds of seasonings, spices and marinades. In high school I would bring in buddies after hours for ‘special’ steak dinners and BYOB beer out behind the storage shed. Eventually I went into the grocery business and natural progression led me to the meat department. After a few months of cutting steaks and cooking them at home, I held up a raw piece of Sirloin and thought, “What a shame to cook this beautiful hunk of cow to the point of shoe leather!” From then on, it was only ‘rare’ or ‘medium rare’ for me, occasionally snatching a sliver of Top Round or Rump to enjoy raw at the meat block. Mmmm, I was in seventh heaven.
Fast forward forty years……… there still isn’t any thing I like better than a great big old chunk of USDA Prime Grade Iowa corn-fed steer with lots of nice white fat on the outside and pretty marbling on the inside. Now all of my steaks are cooked on a ceramic type grill with all natural lump charcoal for fuel. I still like them ‘rare’ and yes, served with a beer on the side. The only thing I’ve changed about the way I grill them is I don’t sear at a high temperature, but just the opposite with a “Reverse Sear”. It’s not about the hullabaloo with the charcoal & carcinogens causing cancer, it’s because the reverse sear will make a good steak better.
So, what does all this have to do with “old dogs learning new tricks?” Bear with me, I’m getting there. Yesterday, while grilling a fat Rib Eye for the other half and myself, I got to thinking about the price of gasoline, the rising costs of groceries, meats, produce, services, etc, etc, which in turn led me to contemplate the shortage of corn. Some farmers have cut back on their corn fields (some have quit entirely!) to replace them with Soy Beans. Why? So they can sell them as an alternative fuel to gasoline and make more money in the process. Can’t fault them there, this is a free enterprise system and Capitalism at its best.
I now flip the steak and wonder what my poor cows are going to eat instead of corn? I know the price of that commodity has sky-rocketed and any feed containing corn has increased exponentially due to its shortage. Of course the price per pound will increase foe the consumer, that’s a given. I’ve already cut back on my meat consumption with one meal a week being ‘meatless’, increased my fish and chicken intake to healthy levels, but I still need to have a steak every now and then. What to do? Sure, I could buy all natural ‘grass-fed’ beef, but I’ve been down that road and I didn’t think it had any flavor.
I finish dinner and hit the Internet in quest of a decent ‘future’ steak in these hard times. I don’t have the time, space or inclination to tell you every thing that I found out, but I will tell you this…..if you are on the Internet (and you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!), please place the following phrase into the Google search bar, “corn fed beef vs. grass fed beef” and hit “ENTER”.
For those of you that don’t have the time or the inclination to do that, I’ll just give you a short and brief summary.
1) Cows were not meant to eat corn! They were created to eat grass and that is all they ate in the United States until about 100 years ago.
2) Demand for beef led to feed lots and growing them quicker in order to satisfy our need for steaks.
3) Switching the cows from grass to corn enables quicker growth. For example, at slaughter the cows are now 14-16 months old instead of 5 years old!
4) Cows cannot digest corn and it will make them sick the longer they eat corn. To combat this, the growers add antibiotics, growth hormones and other supplements to their diet!
5) The corn diet will lead to excess acid in the cows’ intestines and elevate the presence of E.coli bacteria and diarrhea. This is not good for the cow or US, for that matter.
6) Corn-fed beef has more over all fat and also more artery clogging saturated fat!
7) Etc, etc, etc, etc……….
No, no, no, I’m not joining PETA, the Sierra Club, becoming a vegan or any other such drastic life changing situation, and I’m certainly not telling you what to eat. I’m just asking you to think about that Google search the next time you are pumping gas or grilling a steak. That flavor in the corn-fed steak IS fat, plain and simple. The missing flavor in the grass-fed beef is, well, it’s all natural flavor and it does take getting used to.
Until next time, this old dog wishes you a safe journey to the meat counter and good health. Pass me a ‘Light’ beer on the way.
Hello, my name is Steve and I’m a beefaholic. I have been eating beef and enjoying it for at least fifty years. Other than hamburgers at the family gatherings, my earliest recollection of a nice hunk of beef was when I was ten years old at my grandmother’s “Kountry Kitchen” restaurant. I was rather thin and underweight for my age, so my grandmother took it upon herself to feed me a nice steak and a bottle of beer at least three times a week. Her reasoning was that the only time I cleaned my plate was when she served steak and sliced fried potatoes. Both cooked in good old fashioned lard on the restaurant’s flat top grill. And, by the way, both were cooked well past ‘DONE’, which I didn’t realize until a few years later on. The beer? Well, a kindly old country doctor told her that feeding me a beer before dinner would make me hungrier and I would gain weight. Little did the doctor, or I, know that his suggestion helped me put on about 100 extra pounds between 1992 and 1998!!!!
When I turned twelve, my grandmother turned me loose at the grill and let me cook my own meat. I experimented with different steaks and all kinds of seasonings, spices and marinades. In high school I would bring in buddies after hours for ‘special’ steak dinners and BYOB beer out behind the storage shed. Eventually I went into the grocery business and natural progression led me to the meat department. After a few months of cutting steaks and cooking them at home, I held up a raw piece of Sirloin and thought, “What a shame to cook this beautiful hunk of cow to the point of shoe leather!” From then on, it was only ‘rare’ or ‘medium rare’ for me, occasionally snatching a sliver of Top Round or Rump to enjoy raw at the meat block. Mmmm, I was in seventh heaven.
Fast forward forty years……… there still isn’t any thing I like better than a great big old chunk of USDA Prime Grade Iowa corn-fed steer with lots of nice white fat on the outside and pretty marbling on the inside. Now all of my steaks are cooked on a ceramic type grill with all natural lump charcoal for fuel. I still like them ‘rare’ and yes, served with a beer on the side. The only thing I’ve changed about the way I grill them is I don’t sear at a high temperature, but just the opposite with a “Reverse Sear”. It’s not about the hullabaloo with the charcoal & carcinogens causing cancer, it’s because the reverse sear will make a good steak better.
So, what does all this have to do with “old dogs learning new tricks?” Bear with me, I’m getting there. Yesterday, while grilling a fat Rib Eye for the other half and myself, I got to thinking about the price of gasoline, the rising costs of groceries, meats, produce, services, etc, etc, which in turn led me to contemplate the shortage of corn. Some farmers have cut back on their corn fields (some have quit entirely!) to replace them with Soy Beans. Why? So they can sell them as an alternative fuel to gasoline and make more money in the process. Can’t fault them there, this is a free enterprise system and Capitalism at its best.
I now flip the steak and wonder what my poor cows are going to eat instead of corn? I know the price of that commodity has sky-rocketed and any feed containing corn has increased exponentially due to its shortage. Of course the price per pound will increase foe the consumer, that’s a given. I’ve already cut back on my meat consumption with one meal a week being ‘meatless’, increased my fish and chicken intake to healthy levels, but I still need to have a steak every now and then. What to do? Sure, I could buy all natural ‘grass-fed’ beef, but I’ve been down that road and I didn’t think it had any flavor.
I finish dinner and hit the Internet in quest of a decent ‘future’ steak in these hard times. I don’t have the time, space or inclination to tell you every thing that I found out, but I will tell you this…..if you are on the Internet (and you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!), please place the following phrase into the Google search bar, “corn fed beef vs. grass fed beef” and hit “ENTER”.
For those of you that don’t have the time or the inclination to do that, I’ll just give you a short and brief summary.
1) Cows were not meant to eat corn! They were created to eat grass and that is all they ate in the United States until about 100 years ago.
2) Demand for beef led to feed lots and growing them quicker in order to satisfy our need for steaks.
3) Switching the cows from grass to corn enables quicker growth. For example, at slaughter the cows are now 14-16 months old instead of 5 years old!
4) Cows cannot digest corn and it will make them sick the longer they eat corn. To combat this, the growers add antibiotics, growth hormones and other supplements to their diet!
5) The corn diet will lead to excess acid in the cows’ intestines and elevate the presence of E.coli bacteria and diarrhea. This is not good for the cow or US, for that matter.
6) Corn-fed beef has more over all fat and also more artery clogging saturated fat!
7) Etc, etc, etc, etc……….
No, no, no, I’m not joining PETA, the Sierra Club, becoming a vegan or any other such drastic life changing situation, and I’m certainly not telling you what to eat. I’m just asking you to think about that Google search the next time you are pumping gas or grilling a steak. That flavor in the corn-fed steak IS fat, plain and simple. The missing flavor in the grass-fed beef is, well, it’s all natural flavor and it does take getting used to.
Until next time, this old dog wishes you a safe journey to the meat counter and good health. Pass me a ‘Light’ beer on the way.