I was going to put this in the fitness thread, but I figured most the beef eaters aren't reading it.

I've always been a red meat lover, but in going along with our families plan to try and eat healthier, go green and support sustainable growing practices as much as possible, my wife is suggesting we try some grass fed beef. Has anyone tried it? It is a bit more expensive, but is healthier. I'll gladly trade the extra cost for the health benefits if it tastes as good or better.
Any help would be appreciated.

My wife is of the opinion that the grass-fed tri-tip that we tried tasted odd because of the fact it was grass fed. My opinion is that I merely didn't cook it properly. However, she's found a few places on the net that say you have to cook it differently. I've only tried it the one time; I usually try to get kosher beef from Trader Joe's, as they're good cuts with a good price.

Still, can't hurt to try it, can it?

I prefer cows that didn't grow up on Cheech and Chong movies.

The beef we get from my inlaws farm is corn/hay fed, nothing better.

I don't eat a lot of red meat now day, bad heart ya know, but what I do eat is straight from a meat locker. I don't think it is grass fed but it sure isn't the garbage found in the local supermarkets. It all comes from local farmers and is fresh killed and frozen.

If you want an alternative to beef try Elk meat. From what I read it is lower in fat and cholesterol and higher in protein than beef. I picked up some at a meat market that specializes in wild game along with some ostrich steaks, a pheasant, some buffalo burgers, rabbit and a dozen quail. I plan on having a wild game feast here in the near future, it should be quite interesting.

I had steak today, keeping in mind that I am actively pursuing better (healthier) eating. Anyway, corn fed beef tastes the best, hands down. Sirquack and I are living here in Iowa where we know our beef. (Iowa isn't all about corn ya know... Or maybe it does with corn and corn fed beef.)

I used to chow down as much steak as I could at a meal because I love the stuff so much, but today I had about 7 ounces (6 ounces from my steak, and a little extra from my youngest daughter's steak). It was darn good, corn fed steak from Omaha.

I don't remember the last time I grilled a steak. Damn cholesterol!

We were gonig to have a steak tonight until my mother-in-law made some chicken noodle soup for us all. It had whole wheat noodles, which was different. It was yummy and helped out with my sore throat (allergy season - when is it not allergy season in Virginia?!).

So, tomorrow night - steak! I like NY strip; the wife likes filet mignon.

One of my pet peeves is people who take a nice piece of steak and butcher it by drying it out in an oven. The first time this ever happened to me was at a very fancy restaurant in Stockholm. I didn't learn my lesson the first time so I ordered beef again in another Swedish restaurant only to have the same thing happen. If you're ever in Sweden, stay away from beef.

Weird.

Don't knock the oven method. It just has to be blazing hot. The best steak I ever had was cooked (medium rare) in a 2400° oven under a mound of rock salt.

It was the mound of rock salt that made all the difference.

Grilled steak tonight. Worked out quite nicely.

So I open two Explorer windows and have the Axiom boards open on both.

First I read a couple of posts in the Steak Thread and then take a long swig from the Beer Thread. Back and forth between the two for awhile, until I find my way to this thread to read about chipotle corn.

When I'm done, I feel the need to visit the Fitness Thread.

If we can start a sex thread, I'd date this board.

CV is doing his best to mimic a sex thread in the shout box...

Hey, Charles, this is a call! You can be our Carrie Bradshaw, and this can be your forum...

.

Anybody feel like they're already dating this board?

"Honey, where are you?"
Upstairs, checking my messages...
"Are you chatting with those audio [pick one: snobs/nerds/guys] again?!"
Yes, dear...
"When do you plan on joining us for some family time?!"
Almost done, you should see this funny thing that [Peter/Ken/Mark/Sean/Charles/other] said ...
"Isn't that great, maybe you can marry him next time"

etc

J/K, it's not that bad. Yet?!

You guys crack me up.

I agree completely with the Iowa caucus on the beef topic. I've tried to enjoy grass-fed beef a few times, but it's just not as luscious as grain-fed.

Grass fed cattle are walking around, looking for food, and spending more energy to digest it once they find it. Grain-fed cattle are just standing around easily converting delicious corn into pure, fatty yumminess.

I don't think that the health benefits of grass-fed beef are going to be "enough" to warrant a switch. If you want healthier red meat, perhaps Elk or Buffalo would be a better choice.

But, well, I'm just an enthusiastic omnivore, not a scientist.

Thanks everyone, I've decided to give the grass fed a shot, I can't buy it anywhere locally so I ordered a few steaks from Alderspring in Idaho.

As Ken pointed out they can't be cooked like a grass fed steak, since they are leaner they cook much faster.

The health benefits are that Grass-fed beef not only is lower in overall fat and in saturated fat, but it has the added advantage of providing more omega-3 fats.

Of course none of that means anything unless they taste good.

I've had Elk, Buffalo and Ostrich, I'm a city boy and can't eat anything that tastes gamey or looks like Bigbird.

I'll report back in a few days after we've tried a couple of the steaks.

I haven't had the gaminess problem with buffalo. Odd. I tend to use it ground, though.

Not as luscious, but more seductive.

Homedad--

I strongly suspect that you will taste a difference. Fat content/marbling aside the meat itself definitely tastes different.

Have you ever had wild duck as opposed to farm-raised? I'll never forget the ducks I got from a hunter friend -- it literally tasted of the seafood on which it ate. But that's really more about "gaminess".

I'm not saying grass fed is better or worse, just different. Will be interested to see your feedback on it.

Rich

Beef from Idaho??? Now that is crazy talk. Potato fed cows?

Seriously though, let us know how to turns out.

Yep, they call them Pows.

My family had a cattle ranch in Nevada and I would spend my summers there as a kid. It was all free range. The beef we slaughtered for our freezer spoiled me for life. Then I moved to Alaska and had moose. Moose is quite a treat….lower in fat, no wild game taste. Unfortunately after figuring out how much it costs to gear up, kill one and then butcher it, it was running about $20 a pound. I eat beef again…

I’ve been on a flank steak kick lately. I’ve found that if I marinate it for about 48 hours then grill it, it’s very tender, tastes great and pretty low in fat / cholesterol.

A good flank steak marinade is equal parts soy and red wine, a bunch of crushed garlic, and red pepper flakes to taste. Yummy.

That does sound good Peter. I've got a couple from cooking light. They were both very good. If I cut it across the grain after grilling it, it just flakes apart like a slow cooked brisket (my favorite).

Medallions of elk served with a portabello mushroom pepercorn sauce. Yummy!!

I found moose quite tasty, but rather chewy, but we tried it bbqed medium rare sans marinade.

OTOH, I just chowed down on a pack of kd with a few peas mixed in. I'm gonna have to do something special later this week to make up for this.

I haven't checked in on an Axiom forum for a while and was quite surprised to see a grass fed beef link. I am farming here in western Minnesota after 20 years of city life. My wife and I are very involved with the "local" foods movement. We are in the process of certifying our farm for organic crop production and beginning a grass fed beef enterprise on our farm. Hopefully within a couple of years we'll have grass fed beef for sale. We are fortunate to have grass fed beef readily available and have been very happy with the beef that we have purchased in the past few months.

Grass fed beef can be very lean so it is important to not to overcook it. In our experience it is very similar to buffalo. We've had great luck grilling steaks and keeping them a little on the rare side. Yesterday we grilled sirloins to feed my (very skeptical) parents and my very particular father thought they were some of the best steaks he had ever eaten. We cook our roasts at a lower heat than normal and try to use a little more additional liquid while cooking. I'm surrounded by my twin 4 year old boys at the moment and can't take the time to post a few links to some websites that might be valuable. I'll try to get back to the thread soon, but PM me if you would like and I'll respond with more information.

UPS should be delivering my steaks on Thur. in time for dinner, I'm really looking forward to trying them. I'm just crossing my fingers that I cook them right.

I've already found cooking tips and recipes to try, I just have to avoid operator error

A good resource I've found on the net has been Eat Wild, a lot of interesting information.

jorge016, good luck to you and your family that's really a cool thing you are doing, thanks for sharing.

I thought this thread was going to be about country girls

My dad goes elking hunting in colorado every year, elk is my favorite meat.

Dinner tonight was grass fed Top Sirloin Steaks.

In preparing them I did nothing, being a little worried about how fast these steaks were reported to cook I wanted to keep it simple so I decided to pan fry the first batch, I coated the pan with olive oil and cranked up the heat, seared one side flipped the steaks to sear the other side, turned down the heat, stuck a meat thermometer in and pulled them out of the pan when the temp. hit 140, covered them up and let them soak in the juice for 5 minutes and then served.

Without a doubt some of the best steaks I have ever eaten, this without any seasoning. The steaks were tender, juicy and full of flavor. If I had cooked a couple of Sirloins from the local grocery store in this manner they probably would have been tasteless.

Now are these better than, Iowa, Texas or Nebraska steaks, I honestly couldn't tell you, but I certainly don't think I'll be eating any beef from the grocery store again.

The source of the beef is a big deal too. Of course, that also gets back to the grass fed and corn fed vs. the "whatever-it-is-we-feed-them" fed grocery brands.

Maybe we should all get together and have a BYOS (Bring Your Own Steak) cookoff. Not as a contest, but for "educational purposes"....

Glad you enjoyed your steaks!

Glad they were so great! Did you notice a difference in taste? Or was it such a different quality of meat (than from the grocery store) that it was hard to separate what exactly made it different (and better)?

Rich

Once you get off grocery store offerings it is impossible to eat that crap, yes it is crap, again.

The meat tasted like some of the better steaks that I would find in a great restaurant. I don't know if I would be able to distinguish it from a really good piece of grain fed beef bought at a butcher, but it was easily distinguishable from some of the better cuts at the supermarket. I plan on finding some really good cuts of grain fed Top Sirloin and do a taste comparison.

One of the major points in favor of the grass fed beef is that it has half the fat and at least 4x as much omega3. So If I'm going to pay premium prices for beef and all the good meats taste similar, I'll go organic and healthy first.