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Post by copperhead on Feb 27, 2008 14:10:27 GMT -5
A lady on another forum, homesteading today, has ask the question about why her grass fed beef taste so awfull. She said she has bought a half beef, twice and they have been gamey and bad tasting. I grass feed my beef, and love the flavor, but I do cheat and give a pound or so of calf creep for the last 45 days of so. My beef has never been bad tasting, I have people tell me the hamburger taste like steak. So tell me, why her beef is so bad. P.J.
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Post by gene on Feb 27, 2008 19:15:05 GMT -5
p.j., a couple of things. do you know what the animals were eating? grass? what kind? what condition was the grass in? hay? how old? what was in it? what kinds of weeds are in the pasture with the cows? the other thing is it could just be a matter of taste. several years ago, my brother and sis in law wanted some beef so we butchered one straight off of the cow. they couldnt stand it. went back to the grocery store for their beef. i took it back and there wasnt anything wrong with it.
gene
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Post by copperhead on Feb 28, 2008 11:07:57 GMT -5
I think you're right Gene, people who don't know fresh beef or the different flavor of grass fed would think it was bad. One person said it tasted like venison to him, didn't like it at all, so I figure thats probably what it is. As for me and my house, we will eat grass fed I like knowing what I'm feeding my family, and I know that crap out of the grocery store is not fit to eat !! P.J. ps...forgot to answer the questions, they were raised by her neighbor and were on good grass, so it was just the different flavor
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Honeycreek Dexters
member
All Natural Drug Free Grass Fed Beef, From Our Herd Sire Phoenix
Posts: 362
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Post by Honeycreek Dexters on Feb 28, 2008 15:22:32 GMT -5
For some folks if their stuff is not from the store it all has a gamey taste. If you take a deer in the desert it has a sage taste due to the sage in the diet. If you take a deer in corn country it has a strong corn taste also because of the forage. Now if these folks are country folk and it taste bad it could come from the cooler it was hung in before processing, Or it could be something wrong with the processing. I would look into the cooler if they are hanging their beef for more than a day or 2 and most folks do. Grass fed beef does not have much fat and here the USDA inspector has discretion on the hang time after 7 days. He can order it down and cut up if he sees anything he dosn't like. He has only let a very few of our grass fed hang longer than that, so that may be somthing to look at.
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Honeycreek Dexters
member
All Natural Drug Free Grass Fed Beef, From Our Herd Sire Phoenix
Posts: 362
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Post by Honeycreek Dexters on Feb 28, 2008 15:29:22 GMT -5
What I meen about the cooler is it may need a good cleaning. Even tho it's a cooler things can start to grow in there and they can put off a bad oder or give an off flavor to the meat.
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Post by Olga on Feb 28, 2008 15:50:00 GMT -5
Jimmy was our first grass-fed beef. The ground beef is really good and so lean that I don't drain it. I told the butcher to cut the stakes too thin - I remember telling him 1/2 " instead of 1" to 1 and 1/2" - and I've mentally kicked myself over it many times. The thickness of steaks, or lack thereof in my case, has a lot to do with flavor and tenderness. I've had a 50/50 success rate with steaks and now know how to get them to taste good. I tenderize them with a mallot just a bit, marinade them with a bit of freshly ground salt/pepper, lemon juice, onions and garlic, then fry them on a seasoned cast iron skillet with ribbs, heated HOT, 1 min per side. The steaks come out med-rare, very tasty. Anything I tried with "braising" or wrapping in foil, cooking in oven, or such was too tough. Another aspect, is the genetics, I think. Some bloodlines must have better beef than others where it comes to either tenderness, or the intramuscular fat, or other taste-affecting qualities. Our cows are on the dairy side, and our bull is no heavy-weight. So there is no surprise for me that our steers will never look like a butterball. But I still like Dexters better because in the long run, it would take more money to raise a dairy steer, and even then he might not have as much meat.
The health aspect if very improtant to us, and I do believe that our Dexter beef (as well as our venison) is a much better meat choice. But I can't really market it to others, because I can't tell them that it taste better than a corn-fed steer they could buy from the butcher shop. But yes, it's probably better than the store-bought.
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Post by liz on Feb 28, 2008 18:33:24 GMT -5
Grain fed anything....sheep, chickens or beef, is what North Americans have come to be 'used' to as far as taste. Our hens are free range and the yolks in the eggs they lay are a yellow/orange colour and creamy like custard. Well one customer brought them back saying that there was something wrong with them because they 'looked' and tasted so different to the battery eggs she was used to buying! Have you notice that the old hen you put in the jar tastes more chickeny than the young ones? It is the same for our beef. Prior to the middle of the last century, (I never thought that I would be old enough to say that!!) it was taking farmers at least 2 years to 'finish' a steer, better towards three. These were all grass fed and every farmer probably 'cheated' a little by giving a little 'treat' of some wheat or rye or corn that they were growing before it went to slaughter because they noticed a difference in the weight or the meat etc. But the majority of what they ate was grass. Then in the last half of the century finishing times went from 2 - 3 years to 18 months....a little more grain. Recently during the height of the BSE crisis, ok maybe not that recent!, I listened to a report of a feedlot who was saying that the beef came in around about a year old and stayed for about 45 days and a week or two after that it would be 'over condition' for the market. Well we have cut the time in half to finish a steer by reversing the order or grass and grain. Thing is that also reverses the saturated fats and the omega 3's and 6's. Not only does this beef taste different than grass fed it is different. They have proven that grain fed, we are talking feed lot, is higher in saturated fat and omega 3's than grass fed. Of course it is also milder meat....look how young it is!The taste of grass fed, which some people call gamy is really beefy and really does take a couple of years to properly finish. It is leaner, 70% less saturated fats and higher omega 6's. But it takes longer, maybe twice as long to finish and that is why it will never be 'industrial' again. Although China seems to be going very 'organic' With our steer, it takes 24+ months for them to finish properly. The advantage of Dexters is that they do marble nicely given time. Ok I give them a wee bit of grain during the last month and a half but honestly I don't consider that cheating. The half a small scoop per day is probably what they would eat in a wild pasture, if we weren't mono cropping grass! JMO
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Post by liz on Feb 28, 2008 18:38:26 GMT -5
Ps I don't actually 'remember' prior to the last half of last century!! L
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Post by copperhead on Feb 28, 2008 21:31:31 GMT -5
Too late Liz, you allready gave it away................thanks for the opinions from all of you. I think you are all right on money. I too give a little creep feed, maybe 3/4 to one lb a day. I think the extra protein helps them utilize the grass better, don't know, just think maybe. I'll send the lady to this website and let her read everyones thoughts,,because they are good ones. Thanks everyone, P.J.
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Post by backwoods1 on Mar 5, 2008 21:47:45 GMT -5
The best beef I have and in years was a 5 yr dexter cow. She was grass fed with just a touch of grain added from time to time. She and great taste and was so tender you could cut her with a fork!!!!!
I have found the best time of the year to butcher a grass fed beef is June when the best grass of the season is growing and at the hight of nutrition.
I have also found that it is better to have the animal killed at the farm and then taken to the butcher shop, than killed at the butcher. The animal is less stressed at home than there. I have had two killed at home and one at the butcher. And the two done at home were much more tender than the one done at the shop. Still had taste but wasn't as tender.
I have sold a few halves in the past two years and no one has complained about the taste. And none of these people will go back to store meat. And I have people waiting for beef this summer.
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Post by tim52160 on May 13, 2008 15:49:19 GMT -5
:)I cant go from experience yet but . One thing is the lack of finish which does make the june finished beef sound good because it is easier to finish out with abundant grass. Two i've heard longer hanging time. plus the cooking too fast for the leaness. 3. stressfull handling of the animal prior to slaughter. causes hormones and other enzymes i vagely remember Graze mag and the stockman grass farmer have had excellent articles. Plus the dexters with their shorter muscle fibers should be tender. If you cannot find people who prefer grassfed then you might have to use grain or succulant forages to get proper finish to see if it helps. Plus some may have been trying to "bargain" the prices down. Buyers remorse for a premium priced product makes you try to find a reason not to like the product so you can have a reason to go back to the old cheap tried and true. After all we arent going to live forever and maybe the vacation,new car ,etc would be better use of money according to some peoples thinking.If all your customers you can find are the cheap beef kind and you cant find the gourmet,or health consious ,premium type product types to make it worth your while then you might have too. When neighbors sell free range eggs for a buck a dozen then getting someone to drive past to buy the same thing for $4.oo a daz might be hard.
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Post by copperhead on May 13, 2008 18:04:13 GMT -5
You may be on to something there, Tim. It sure makes sence, plus, like Gene said, people just don't know what real beef taste like anymore. We try to educate them, and have made several converts with our Dexter beef. P.J.
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Post by murigen on Nov 26, 2008 11:41:32 GMT -5
The first grass fed beef we ate was a 5 year old cow (hereford) that we bought from our neighbor. It was very gamey. He warned us it might be because he was forced to have it slaughtered at the wrong time...what he called on the lean meaning it was late fall and the animal was not gaining weight but actually loosing some. The next half we bought from him was butchered in the early summer, on the gain. That wasn't gamey. He does not grain finish.
This year we butchered our first Dexter steer. We had the farm slaughter guy come out. I don't want to take them to the butcher to be slaughtered, why put them through the stress. We feed a little grain every day, their treat and bribe to get them into the barn easily. Anyway, that steer is great! Meat so tender and full of flavor, not gamey at all. I'm sold on slaughter in June or early July.
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Post by Clive on Dec 18, 2008 12:50:46 GMT -5
Here's a pic of one of our grass-reared/grass-finished T-Bone steaks just before I am going to eat it. It was a steer slaughtered at 25 months...just thought it would make a change from pics of cattle!
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Post by wstevenl on Dec 18, 2008 15:27:26 GMT -5
Got Marbling? lol You wouldn't happen to have a picture of a younger one would you? Like 18-22 months? That's pretty amazing for grass/clover pastures.
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