Beef Roadtrip (the Computer Age)

You may have noticed that the price of meat has risen fairly dramatically over the past couple of years. The forecast is that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, due to a number of factors including prolonged drought in many parts of the country, a new and nasty pig virus, and increasing demand for meat in China and much of the rest of Asia. Here are a few links for the skeptical, from NR and the New York Times:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/26/343403757/high-prices-arent-scaring-consumers-away-from-the-meat-counter

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/business/meat-prices-continue-to-rise-but-corn-and-soybeans-slip.html?_r=0

Even those of you who buy meat by the half animal, as I do, have probably seen major increases. When we bought our first local half-beef, some six years ago, I think we paid $1.75/lb hanging weight. Even two and a half years ago, when we last bought beef, we paid only $2.00/lb. Granted, that was from a neighbor and a friend, who was charging us quite a bit less than the going rate, which if I remember right was about $2.50.

This year, I spent quite a bit of time searching Craigslist for decently priced grass fed beef (our neighbor and friend only raised enough for his extended family) without luck. The best price I could find was $3/lb, and that only applied if you ordered six months ahead of time and didn't include cut and wrap. Figure that in, and by the time you are done you'll be paying about $5/lb for what you actually put in the freezer. It's not that $5/lb is such an outrageous price (though it is pretty high), but that to buy a half you need to get together some $2,000 all at once.

I really hate buying supermarket meat. I hate participating in the CAFO feedlot system (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation - Wikipedia, the free ...); I hate eating animals that lived in misery eating GMO soy and corn; I hate contributing to the destruction of tropical forests and the displacement of indigenous peoples. But I love eating beef. If it came down to a choice between eating CAFO meat or no meat at all, I know what I'd choose. So, to avoid slathering my burgers with guilt sauce, I decided to look further afield for my grass fed beef.

Washington State is divided between the wet west and, on the other side of the Cascade mountains, the wide open rangeland of the drier east. On the eastside, land is cheaper, hay is cheaper, and as a result, beef is cheaper. Marginally. After searching through all the Craigslist listings for beef in all the little towns of Eastern Washington, I struck gold: USDA prime grass fed black angus beef for $2.85/lb, cut and wrap included. A half weighing a little over 500 lbs was available. Problem is, it was a five hour drive, and comparatively cheap as it was, that half would still cost more than $1,500.

Social media to the rescue: on Facebook, I invited all my friends to go in on it with me. In the end, we bought a quarter for ourselves, and the other quarter was split into two eighths for two other families. I didn't charge the other families anything extra per pound, but I did ask them to contribute something toward the price of gas and dry ice. Dry ice, although pricey, is a necessity when transporting a quarter-ton of raw meat in a hot trunk for five hours. I used google maps to find the closest supplier to our destination, and lucked out: there was one in the same town. I collected cash and coolers from my co-purchasers, and Homero and I set off on a road trip.

The ranch was a lovely place, and the beeves on view were beautiful - vast, sleek, shiny black animals, moving slowly through flank-high grass or cooling themselves in a green pond, on which I saw a blue heron standing quietly among the reeds. The ranch owner, a friendly, tall, middle aged woman, was kind: There was a misunderstanding about the weight and we hadn't brought quite enough money. With no bank within a two hour drive, she simply decided to trust me to send a check when I got home.

It may seem like an awfully long way to go, but the math is convincing. On our quarter, we saved about $300 over local prices. Our diesel Jetta gets 45 miles to the gallon, so the gas cost us only about $30. The dry ice was the biggest expense, at $40, but friends kicked in on those costs. Our share of the travel expenses was about $25, which adds only a negligible amount to the price per pound.

If there's a downside, it's that the meat included an unreasonably high percentage of hamburger. At least 2/3 of the total weight was in burger, which is higher than I am used to. It seems like a shame to grind up that much of an animal that graded out to USDA prime, the very highest category. B ut I'm not complaining. The freezer is full of guilt-free meat and I am happy.

Stuff to Do With Too Much Beef

Rowan stopped eating beef. It's a mammal. That's fine with me, she's old enough to decide what she wants to eat (as long she decides to eat real food, not just sugar from the bowl or whatever) but it means it's that much harder to get through a big old hunk of beef. 

Our quarter-steer is more than half gone. What's left is mostly hamburger - in two pound packages - and roasts. The roasts are immense! About five pounds each. Next time I'm going to have to ask them to make them smaller, or cut them all into steaks or even stew meat. There's just no way two adults and two tiny, finicky children can eat five pounds of beef before it goes bad.

This last roast I defrosted was labeled "London Broil." If you buy that in the supermarket, it looks like a big, two or two and a half inch thick steak. It's recommended on the package that you "broil and slice thinly on the diagonal." Well, this roast was much too thick for that. If I'd tried to broil it, the outside would have been charred to ash while the inside was still raw. So I decided to thaw it and cut it into steaks before cooking. 

Meal number 1:  I put seasoned tenderizer on the steaks (I don't usually use this, but I find that the grass fed beef is tougher than regular beef, and london broil is a tough-ish cut.) and pan fried them with poblano peppers and onions for fajitas. Although I fried less than half the steaks, there was enough leftover for

Meal number 2: A fat steak sandwich in Homero's lunch. 

Meal number 3: The rest of the steaks, now deeply tenderized from a night in the fridge, were cubed and sauteed with tons of garlic and a teaspoon or so of cumin seed, and more onions. Then I tore up and shook the seeds out of eight or ten dried chiles, some of them guajillos and some of them anchos, I think. I tossed them in the pot along with a can of whole peeled tomatoes (squished by hand as they went in), salt, and.. that's all. Put the lid on and let it simmer for a couple of hours. Then - and this is probably some kind of cheating - I fished out all the chiles and put them in the blender. I scraped the resulting paste into a sieve and pushed it through, back into the pot, with the side of a spoon. 

That was one fine bowl of red, friends. Only one problem. There's a lot of it left.

Holy Steer

         What approximately 150 pounds of grass fed steer looks like.

                                Filet Mignon in red wine caper sauce

Today we picked up our beef from Keizer meats. My sister's family came with us to pick up their half of the half. It turned out to be a bit more expensive than we had figured, for two reasons. Our steer just happened to be a big one, weighing in at over 900 pounds hanging weight. My neighbor had told me they usually dress out at around 600. Each of our quarters weighed 247 pounds. That's a lot more cut and wrap fee than we had anticipated. Also, there is more waste on a cow than there is on a hog. From our hog, we got about 80% of the hanging weight back in meat, but a steer yields more like 55-60%. Instead of paying $2.30 a pound, we are paying about $4.00.

But still. Go price grass fed beef at your local grocery store. Oh wait, you probably can't find any. 

In preparation for this day, I hadn't bought any beef in weeks. I wanted to be hungry for it. Deciding what to cook for dinner tonight took me a few minutes. Of course I went right for the Filet Mignon (which they label tenderloin steak). I also grabbed a package of short ribs. My brother-in-law Marcus opted to take his ribs in a big old barbecue slab, but I chose to have mine cut into more manageable portions. I snarfed my filet just a few minutes ago (that plate in the picture didn't last long), but the ribs are braising in the oven in a bath of barbecue sauce made from cider vinegar, soy, siracha, garlic, mustard, ketchup and honey. Homero ought to be home in about two hours, which sounds like perfect timing.

Filet Mignon in red wine caper sauce

two or three or four 8 ounce filet mignon steaks, 3/4 inch

olive oil

3 0r 4 tablespoons butter 

1/2 cup red wine

tablespoon or two of capers (rinsed, or the sauce will be too salty)

tablespoon or two of heavy cream

chopped parsley

salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet until very hot, almost smoking. Salt and pepper steaks on both sides, and lay in pan. Let a nice crust form, then flip. Cook to desired doneness, but anything beyond medium is a crying shame. 

Set steaks aside, lower heat to medium-low and add half of the butter and the rinsed capers. 

When butter is foamy, add wine and let simmer for a few minutes until slightly reduced. Add the rest of the butter in small pieces, stirring with a wooden spoon, and last the cream. Put sauce on plates, steak on sauce, and shower with finely minced parsley.

Local Beef

My neighbors across the street have been raising beef cattle for nearly fifty years. These lovely polled Herefords enjoy unlimited pasture, the freedom to raise their own calves, run and wander at will, and generally live a pretty natural and happy life for a cow, right up until the end. They are completely grass raised and grass finished, never grain fattened or sent to a feedlot. When the time comes, the knackerman comes and collects them right off the field. 

Choosing one of these animals to be our meat for the year (along with our own pork, chicken, and kid) fulfills several goals. I couldn't possibly eat more locally; I've been looking at these cows out my window all year. I get to support two local family owned businesses: my neighbor's, and Keizer meats, the slaughterer and butcher. There is a great feeling of security in having a whole winter's worth of food in the house. I know for a fact that the animal I am going to eat has been humanely raised. And I get to refrain from participation in the feedlot system that is so incredibly detrimental to the environment, as well as being horrifically cruel to the animals involved.

And for those who say "All very well, but isn't it more expensive?", be informed that I am paying $2.25 a pound for my side of beef, which includes plenty of  filet mignon and prime rib as well as hamburger and stew meat. My steer was picked up for slaughter Saturday, and I ought be able to collect it in about two weeks. I can't wait. Every time I look out the window, I practically drool.