We get a lot of questions about how to cook grass-fed meats- especially beef.

The truth is that cooking grass-fed beef is entirely different. When we first began cooking our meats from the first wave of meats that came back from the processor, I was a little disappointed in the tenderness in the beef. Okay....really disappointed.

But, I was treating our wonderfully raised grass-fed grass-finished beef as I would corn-fed feedlot beef.

Once I figured out the cooking technique, I fell in love with our beef (and pork and chicken for that matter). The flavors are rich, the broths are thick, and the texture is just as it should be.

I found this article on Kelly the Kitchen Kop (wonderful site full of great info) to be extremely helpful with a lot of good information and tips on how to cook grass-fed beef.

5 Ways to Achieve Grass-fed Beef Cooking Nirvana (posted below)

Kent & I have ruined a few expensive grass-fed steaks before giving up – there’s a definite difference in how you cook grass-fed vs. conventional meat! But now that we’ve got some solid instruction from Kristen (the “Food Renegade“) in today’s guest post, we’ll be ready to give it another shot. Thanks Kristen!

5 Ways To Achieve Grass-Fed Beef Cooking Nirvana

Kelly has done a thorough job sharing the many benefits of eating grass-fed beef on this site. Hopefully, she’s convinced you to make the switch. (If not, then what’s holding you back?!) I remember when I decided to “go grass-fed,” I enthusiastically brought home packages of grass-fed beef from the farmer’s market, only to be disappointed.

Why?

Because I was still cooking that marvelous meat as if it were the same as conventional meat.

So, if you want to know how to cook grass-fed beef, look no further.

First, let me say this only applies to 100% grass-fed and finished beef. Many “grass-fed” labeled meats these days ship the cattle off to feed lots to finish fattening up on grain (even many organic operations). That basically strips away all the nutritional and health benefits of eating grass-fed beef, as even 30 days in a feedlot can undo the balance of Omega 6:3 ratios and virtually eliminate the presence of that miracle-working CLA.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the chart below, which I stole from Jo Robinson’s book Why Grassfed Is Best!

5 Ways To Achieve Grass-Fed Beef Cooking Nirvana

The biggest mistake people make when cooking grass-fed beef is over-cooking it. Following these rules will help ensure don’t make that mistake.

1. Lower the cooking temperature. Because grass-fed beef is leaner than its grain-fed counterpart, you need to cook it at a slightly lower temperature (at least 50 F) for 30-50% less time. Otherwise, you cook off the fat that’s there and are left with a dry, tough, unappealing mass of meat that’s lost many of its nutrients. (The more cooked your grass-fed beef, the more Omega 3s and CLA you lose.)

2. Invest in a meat thermomenter. You may know how to “eye” when conventional meat is done, but because grass-fed beef is leaner, you don’t have the same kind of wiggle room for mistakes. A meat thermometer will ensure you cook your meat just the way you like it — every time. The desired internal temperatures for grass-fed beef are:

• Rare — 120F
• Medium Rare — 125F
• Medium — 130F
• Medium Well — 135F
• Well — 140F

IMPORTANT NOTE! To achieve the desired temperature, remove the meat from heat when it’s about 10F shy of what’s on that list. The residual heat will finish cooking the meat over the next ten minutes as you let it rest.

3. Start steaks and roasts at room temperature. This is a good rule for all meats, but especially for grass-fed beef. By starting your meat at room temperature, it will take less time to reach the ideal internal temperature while cooking. This gentler cooking method will help your meat stay juicy and delicious.

4. Don’t play with your meat. Avoid the temptation to poke steaks or roasts with forks or pat burgers down with spatulas. This lets all that delicious fat escape, giving you a less juicy end result.

5. Give your meat a rest. When you’re done cooking your meat, let it rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing into it. This allows time for the escaped juices to get sucked back into the meat. If you don’t do this final step, you’ll slice into your meat only to have all the juices dribble out onto your cutting board or serving plate. What good are they there? You want them in each and every bite of meat you eat.

Kristen is a nutrition & wellness coach and a passionate advocate for Real Food. She is the author of Food Renegade, a growing community of like-minded people dedicated to passing on practical wisdom about traditional food preparation techniques. She leads regular film discussion groups, offers real food consultations, and teaches semi-regular courses in traditional food preparation and grocery store navigation. She also blogs. Endlessly. If you’re a lover of raw milk, pastured meats & dairy products, locally grown and organic vegetables, and slow food, come join her at the Food Renegade Blog.

• Another good book: Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook
• Read more about grass-fed meat and why it’s so good for you!
• Have you seen this short little movie about conventional farms and how they raise their animals? The Meatrix

We love going to the city and meeting our customers. However, when our customers and fellow foodies make their way out to the farm we really get excited. Nothing thrills us more than to tromp around the farm with those who share the same passions as we do in regards to knowing where your food comes from.

I was amazed at how many foodies came out to the farm despite the rain and mud. Rubber boots abound and warm smiles were plenty as we endured the cold wind together.

I stumbled upon a wonderful blog, Stetted, that you must check out. The author had a really nice blog post about the Slow Food Austin tour with wonderful photos of the tour.

Below, is the blog post. Enjoy!

Yonder Way Farm Tour: Stetted

Posted on January 16, 2010

So I’m not among the “in” crowd of Austin food bloggers.

To be honest I didn’t know there was one until I started following Austin Farm to Table’s tweets and saw all her tweets about amazing meals she had with other food bloggers. Color me jealous! But through her I’ve learned about some great things, among them the Slow Food Austin farm tours.

As soon as I saw the blurb on the Slow Food Austin site, I wanted to sign up.

SFA is launching our farm tours with a bang – come with us on January 16 to meet Jason Kramer of Yonder Way Farm, an ambitious and exciting operation along the lines of Joel Salatin’s pastured salad bar beef farm, Polyface. Jason raises pastured pork, beef, poultry and eggs, and is completing construction of an on-farm commercial kitchen from which he plans to serve barbecued pork, sausages and other eatables. In the best farming tradition of cooperation, Jason also offers organic produce and milk from two other neighboring farms.

If Joel Salatin or Polyface sound familiar, that’s because he and his farm are featured prominently in Food, Inc. , and he is also in Fresh. (Both of these are worth seeing, by the way. Food, Inc. is currently available on Netflix Instant.)

Of course I completely didn’t take into account that this tour would be right in the middle of my cleanse. Oops. But having been caffeine, alcohol, gluten, meat, dairy, and sugar free for two weeks, I figured I would be OK if I took the day off.

Saturday morning I dressed in my tromping boots, jeans, and layered shirts, grabbed my camera and notebook, and headed out to Brenham, 90 minutes from Austin. We’ve been having some cold weather topped with rain for three days, and even with all my preparation I was a bit chilly. Thankfully, waiting for us at the farm was some amazing coffee roasted by Independence Coffee, which is located just up the road from Yonder Way.

Once everyone had arrived, Farmer Jason Kramer told us a little bit about his farm. It’s hard to believe, but four short years ago Jason didn’t know anything about farming. Now he runs a 113-acre farm with 1,100 chickens, 80 cows, and 40 pigs. All the animals are raised without the use of chemicals of any kind, and they are never fed corn. The animals graze on the land, rotated through different areas of the farm.

There were chickens wandering all over, and they are super friendly. Apparently that is a trait of Red Sexling chickens, which make up most of Yonder Way’s flock. Jason told us that he also has some Americana chickens, but is phasing them out. If you’re wondering about the roosters - yep, Jason pretty much bets on all the eggs being fertilized.

These are some of the portable shelters for the chickens. They’re made with recycled fiberglass and are mounted on wheels for easy transport. The chickens follow behind the cows about 3 days apart, to help, erm, clean up. The chickens are supplemented with organic feed, but get much of their food from the ground. The chickens above are some of the younger layers. “Some of these guys don’t even know what’s coming out of their hind ends yet,” Jason joked. Among this group the eggs are found all over.

These are the more experienced layers and their portable egg house. The chickens just hop inside when they need to lay (or sleep) and chill in the grass the rest of the time.

Did you know that for a store-bought egg to be considered organic free-range, the chicken only needs to have access to the outdoors? It doesn’t mean they actually go outside. Jason’s chickens are always outside. His chicken’s eggs are healthier than the standard egg, too. According to Mother Earth News, pastured eggs have more beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, and omega-3s, and less cholesterol and saturated fat.

Jason said that all the sows are either pregnant or nursing right now. It was hard to get a picture of them, but you might be able to see a piglet in the upper right of the above picture. Apparently pigs are pretty hands-off when it comes to giving birth, although he did have to get rid of one pig that rolled over on her piglets and crushed them. We did see one of the pigs come in from the woods to get some water to drink, so they have plenty of roaming space as well. Also, having the chickens be able to enter the pig enclosure helps with the smell. I don’t remember smelling anything bad at the farm, just crisp fresh air.

After we saw the chickens and sows, it was already time for lunch. The Kramers and their friends and family served us a delicious lunch of apricot-glazed pulled pork, cold broccoli salad, and simple beans (also with pork). I am already wishing I had the recipes for all of it!

After we ate we were able to see the processing room for the chickens. They are working on getting organic certification for chicken processing, and hope to have organic processing for beef and pork in six months. Once they do this, they will be the only certified organic meat processor in the entire state of Texas. This is huge, considering what a big meat-producing state Texas is.

This is where the chickens, well, die. They are put head first into these funnels and the jugular is cut, so the chicken bleeds out, passes out, and dies. In factory chicken processing the head is just lopped off, which is why your store-bought chicken generally has blood-filled arteries running through it. Letting the chickens bleed out makes for tastier chicken, and it takes less than a minute. Bleeding a chicken is “kinda like steeping a tea bag,” Jason said. After that, they go into the scalder, then into the defeathering tank.

Jason said this machine can defeather 4 chickens in 30 seconds. Then they go off to the next room to be cut up. Yonder Way’s facility can process up to 700 chickens a day, if they had enough workers. That’s a pretty impressive number for a small-scale farm!

Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to see the rest of the pigs, or the cows. We were all so interested in hearing what Jason had to say that we ran out of time! And, of course, we were interested in getting some of the products the farm has to offer. Included in our tour fee was a sample pack - half a chicken, a pound of ground beef, and a pound of pork sausage. We also were able to buy off their order sheet. Unfortunately they were out of flank steak (fajita meat) and oxtail, both of which I really wanted. They did have pork jowl, but not cured, so technically not guanciale. (Yes, those Namu Sprouts are still eluding me.) In theory I could cure them at home, but my husband already thinks my foodie habits are half-crazy, and hanging strips of pork in our fridge wouldn’t help my case of sanity. Anyway, I went with pork shoulder and beef short ribs. Of course, I’m already plotting what to do with everything.

Jason and his wife Lynsey (and their helpers) were wonderful, informative hosts, and it was a real pleasure to hear what they had to say about farming. You can really tell they are passionate about what they are doing. I know many people who love their jobs, but I’ve never seen anyone been as animated discussing their work as Jason was. This farm is happy. No wonder half of us are tempted to spend a week working on the farm for free.

I’m going to end with what could be Yonder Way’s entire farm philosophy, as Jason said it:

“Animals know themselves better than you do. Put them in their environment and let them go to work.”

I have found that investing in a good enameled cast iron French oven with a self-basting lid (like this one) to be invaluable in roasting chicken, pork, and beef.

Chicken, 4-5 lbs

1 cup of water

½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt, Pepper, Garlic

Use a thawed chicken. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Pour water in the bottom of the pot. Coat your chicken with 1/2 cup of olive oil making sure to rub some of the oil in the chest cavity of the chicken as well. After the chicken is coated well with olive oil, rub the seasonings on the skin. Place lid on your pot and roast in the oven on 275 degrees for about 3 to 4 hours- check on chicken every hour or so and baste with the broth in the bottom of the pot. Cook until chicken has nice golden skin and the internal temperature has reached 170 degrees F. Let chicken rest for about 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

You can get really creative with this basic recipe. Ingredients and flavor combinations that would be wonderful to add would be….

Place veggies like carrots, celery, onions, and red potatoes in the roasting pan with your chicken.

Slice a lemon in half and place the lemon with some rosemary sprigs in the chest cavity.

Slice an onion in half and place that in the chest cavity.

Try adding honey on the skin for a sweet crispy flavor.

Spice it up by slicing a lime in half and stuff the chest cavity with lime and cilantro. Coat the skin with Mexican-flavored seasonings.

The possibilities are endless.

Enjoy!

We are so thrilled that our new egg layers have started laying as of recently. We are collecting more and more eggs each and every day. A month ago we were getting about ***36 eggs a day. That number has now increased to about 200 eggs per day and is steadily going up.

We still have a ways to go to get to where all of our hens are laying again and all of our new hens are laying, but we have eggs once again to offer our customers.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. When you do things the natural way, its hard to predict the outcome a lot of times.

Enjoy a recent photo I took of our egg bounty.

***correction: post originally said 36 dozen.

We'd like to invite you to join us on Facebook. We will be posting there pretty regularly.

To go directly to the Yonder Way Farm Facebook page, CLICK HERE.

Upon sunset, you would be able to visibly see an amazing process that takes place every single day like clockwork. Our hens make their way up the ladder one by one to roost for the night. They find their spot nestled within the shelter of the coop. We close up the coop nightly to protect them from night’s predators that are out and about. Just one attack from any predator could potentially be devastating for our flock. The eggs are then collected to ensure the freshest and cleanest eggs around.

Upon sunrise, the farmers make their way out to the large metal coop and move the coop to a new area of fresh grass. This process is to make sure that our hens have fresh green grass to play around and hunt in for the day. It’s also a way for us to naturally fertilize our pastures with a daily dose of chicken manure on various parts of our pasture.

This methodical process is all done to make certain that our eggs are high in omega-3 fatty acids, lower in fat, and lower in cholesterol. Our hens are raised in the most humane and respectful way possible. Studies have been done to prove that hens raised on pasture lay eggs superior in nutrition compared to factory-raised hens.

One thing is for certain; you cannot imitate a chicken raised on grass. Happy hens mean healthy eggs. 

Due to chickens being chickens and in their natural environment, exhibiting all of their chicken-ness, we are extremely low on eggs right now.  This time of year is a rather difficult time for egg producers- not the chickens.  They continue to do the chicken things that chickens do each and every day but their conversion of feed and sunlight are going through different phases.  Let me explain.

This time of year, chickens tend to reset their bodies.  The most evident is in their displaying of new feathers.  This amazing feat performed by the chickens is called “molting.”  Throughout the year, they lose their feathers in different sections, putting new feathers on as they go.  This keeps them from losing all the feathers at once for this would cause serious protection problems for the chickens.  Then, about this time of year (late October – November) they do the big molt.  New quills start sprouting from all over and these amazing new feathers begin to form. 

Once it starts, there is drastic growth each day.  It is rather amazing how these animals are made.  However, because during the molting process all of their energy is going to putting this new plumage on, their egg production virtually becomes non-existent until they are done.  Not all of our flock is molting right now. I would say about 60% of them are.  These are the main contributors to our lack of eggs. 

This leaves the remaining 40%. When fall comes, we begin having shorter days.  Right now we have about 11 hrs of sunlight.  Chickens are very finicky animals and feel they need 14 hrs of sunlight to ovulate at optimum production levels. The chickens that are laying currently aren’t laying an egg a day like they normally do.  I hoping that they are laying at least every other day, but there is no way to tell with a flock as large as ours.

So, what to do?  This is what we are asking ourselves.  We can’t do anything about the molting.  This is a natural occurrence that chickens go through.  I don’t believe in forced molting that is performed in commercial industrial models.  The chickens are starved from food and water for several days until the process stops. They start back up laying eggs once food is introduced again.  These chickens look terrible with extreme loss of feathers, which I guess they feel they don’t need since they are packed inside buildings in tiny little cages. 

For right now and for the sake of keeping things “natural” around here, we will just live with the molting part of chicken-ness.  The shorter days can be remedied.  It would be easy to put lights in the house and plug it into the wall for a couple hours a day after the sun goes down but their house moves everyday since they are out on pasture, so that just won’t work.   This is where solar lights will come in handy.  We are currently figuring out a way to run some lights off solar polar.  I feel this will greatly improve production from the non-molting chickens.  We’ll see.

All of this is to say, “Please bare with us”.  We try to allow our animals to live in the most natural environment possible, which leads a lot of time to natural processes out of our control.  We have 400 new layers that should start laying in a few weeks. Our hope is that they will greatly fill in the gaps.

Thank you so much for your support of our farm.  Honoring God and His perfect creation, being caretakers of it everyday, and producing healthy food for families is our passion and we are so thankful for families and individuals that allows us to do this everyday.

Baby steps are good.....real good.

Its hard to live out all of your food convictions initially off the bat once you begin the journey of eating well and eating locally. Things can quickly become overwhelming. Especially if you are use to driving to your local supermarket for everything that you consume.

I'm still working through it all and trying to find ways to improve for our family. It takes lots of digging and looking into things.....mainly because our government and the food industry have become real good at hiding things and dumbing us down as a culture. We are a society of convenience.

What I have learned the most on this journey so far is that buying from a person takes a little more effort (and money) than running to your local Walmart for your one stop shop. Our family buys produce from a sweet family (we are working on growing our own), coffee down the road, honey from a farm in Montgomery, our dairy, butter, and cheese from a local dairy, wheat from a farm up north, and have meat and eggs from our farm. These are the basics of our diet.

For the rest of the small things, I do have to go to HEB for and will buy organic/local (GO Texan) and Fair Trade if possible, but the majority of our stuff is purchased from people and farmers. I usually buy things in bulk to prevent having to run around too many times.

As long as I'm in the right frame of mind, the effort all of this takes is overshadowed by the notion that my products have faces.

Being in the farming world has opened my eyes a million times over. I realize I'm very blessed to live this life, but also no longer can claim to be naive or ignorant about the food system knowing what I know.

Farmers who sell direct market to their customers have much much higher standards than the USDA or FDA. Our farm believes strongly in accountability and our customers holding us accountable for the way in which we raise our animals.

We get a lot of questions on the safety of our meat and eggs along with the dairy we purchase from. A lot of people want to know is the food we produce "safe" since we aren't technically overseen by a government official (our meat does have to butchered at a USDA inspected facility).

It's just a sad fact that we need fancy labels, catchy phrases that the government is buying up (they purchased the term "Free Range" so small farms can no longer use this unless they pay big bucks), and institutions to tell us things are safe instead of trusting a small farm and the farmer who has put their blood, sweat, tears, passions, and resources into their products. A lot of times, their livelihood depends on the quality and safety of their products so its a big deal to them and something they take seriously.

I hear a lot about the economy and it being so terrible as to instill fear in the lives of many people. The sad thing is that one of the areas that people cut back on first are their food choices. I understand this on one hand....it can be expensive. There is no denying that fact. On the other hand, food is a big deal and major part of your life. What we put into our bodies directly effects us on many levels- spiritually, mentally, and physically.

When you purchase goods and food from people and small farms, you are supporting something with a face and (if locally) fueling money directly back into your local economy which then in turns has a positive result on helping the economy around you. Scaling back and buying processed foods, canned goods, and meat from Walmart made and grown in other countries does not have this effect nor are these things usually good for us to eat. 

There are changes we could all make. I do think people need to know that we have options all around us. We just need to find them since its out of the box.  

To find local farmers all around you visit these sites:

Eat Wild

Local Harvest

Eat Well Guide

For steps on how to render your own lard, visit our family blog HERE (www.yonderwayfarm.blogspot.com).

I recently told someone that I was going to try and render my own lard for cooking. To that they replied,"I thought you ate healthy. Lard does not sound healthy."

So, this is attempt to dispell the myths that all fats are bad for you. All fats are not created equal.

(Feed lot in California)

There was an article in The Houston Chronicle today about commercially raised beef. The article focuses in on the slaughterhouse practices in factory farming. Butcherers of large meat producing plants grind up various undesirable parts of the cow (instead of whole cuts) and can use multiple cows from different slaughterhouses to make up their hamburger meat.

This particular article spotlights a young woman who thought she was purchasing top quality meat labled "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties" and paid a premium price for the meat only to be sticken with E. coli and paralized from this deadly food-borne illness.

The article gives insight into the awful practices of the commerical meat industry and how the USDA is doing virtually nothing to combat the problem of the spread of E. coli throughout the commercial meat industry. This quote is taken directly from the article.

"In August 2008, the USDA issued a draft guideline again urging, but not ordering, processors to test ingredients before grinding. Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers.

“I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Petersen said.

(Feed lot....where is the grass?)

The article makes a case to buy from local farms without even directly stating it. By simply stating facts, its obvious that consuming factory farmed and slaughterhouse butchered meat is not in our best interest.

Our farm is very particular in who we use to butcher our meats. We have established a wonderful relationship with a local small butcherer to ensure that we receive only our cows. Our cows are never held in a slaughterhouse. They go straight from our pasture and are slaughtered right when they arrive at the butcherer.

On the days our cows are butchered, we go to great lengths to make sure that our cows are butchered first before any other meats. The hamburger meat that we sell contains none of the "junk meat" that you would receive from commercial hamburget meat.

If the USDA won't look out for our best interest, then we have to take it upon ourselves to do so. Factory farming is not the answer.

You can read the article from the Houston Chronicle HERE.

 (Factory Farm meat processing plant)