Friday Spork and I took the new reefer truck(that’s a refrigerated truck to you snickering out there) and picked up Sam from Chaudhrys. We had enough truck to pick up 30 cows so I was a bit worried we didn’t get enough meat from one cow because the meat looked pretty puny in the big truck. However when we got home and started packing the freezer, we filled it to overflowing and had to put the rest into another freezer. I guess there was more there than I thought.
In talking to SWMBO this morning, she’s agreed that we could sell some of the beef we have to make a bit more room in the freezer just to be organized. If you’ve been asking me when we’ll have beef, now is the time. Shoot me an email if you want some. We have all kinds of cuts and will be updating pricing on the website as soon as possible.
Now, onto the rest of the story.
As you can see, not only did Spork get to ride along (I love home schooling) but he was able to catch up on his sleep as well. Don’t let the snooze fool you. He worked hard on each end of the trip and was a joy to ride along with for the hour trip each way. As you can see we had the windows down on this trip. It was mid-July in North Carolina and it was about 84 degrees, low humidity, and a light breeze. It just doesn’t get any prettier.
Chaudhry’s did a great job with our cow, packaging, communication, etc. The only hiccup we had was they didn’t box our meat for us, which I’m used to. It’s not even remotely a problem, except I didn’t have boxes with me so we had to scramble a bit but it all worked out fine. Next time I’ll have plenty of boxes with me so we’ll be prepared.
We had dinner plans last night and tonight so I couldn’t whip up a test steak to see how everything came out which was driving me crazy. What to do? How about steak and eggs for breakfast? The verdict? Holy cow! Quite simply the best grass-fed beef I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some “good” grass-fed beef. I cooked these steaks the way you DON’T cook grass-fed beef, fast and with high heat. The steaks were tender, juicy, and flavorful. It’s really hard to get fat into a grass-fed cow but with our methods it seems to have worked in this case very well. When you consider that our cows receive NO COMMERCIAL FEED, no GMO, no hormones, etc, etc it’s pretty exciting that we can finish a cow to this quality. Fat equals flavor and fat is what you need to cook with high heat. We have fat in these ribeyes and they are wonderful. We have a number of ribeyes so we can spare some, along with sirloin steaks, hamburger, stew beef, etc. SWMBO has decreed that no filet mignon’s (her favorite cut) will be sold so I apologize in advance if you want some of them.
Here you get a better look at the marbling in these ribeyes. Ribeye is usually the most heavily marbled cut and has the most flavor. That’s why it’s a prime cut. High end cattlemen have ultrasound machines where they measure the fat on the ribeye before the process the cow to make sure there is enough for the cow to grade out well. Of course we don’t do that here and rely on the old eyeball and experience to tell when a cow is ready to process. Sam looked ready and boy was he. This is a beautiful ribeye with lots of white flecks in the muscle. Those flecks are the marbling that we are after. Seeing that much marbling is what caused me to cook the steaks hot and fast. Our steaks will stand up to the grill.
Of course we couldn’t leave out our hard-working guardian dog. After we’d finished our breakfast, Cotton got to clean up all the scraps and bones. She was a happy dog this morning.