If you follow my tweets, you’ve seen that recently we were the recipient of a huge order of beef of Prescott Frost’s pasture fed, organic beef—flash-frozen and delivered from “farm to fork” from the Sand Hills of Nebraska.  Last week while I was running out the door for cooking club my husband had just served the boys hamburgers of which I was lucky enough to get a quick taste.  I’d seen them cooking and noticed how different they looked. It might be hard for me to describe but they just looked astounding.  They were so fresh looking, yet they’d been frozen.  I found out today that they grind 75% of the beef—so there are some marvelous parts in that ground beef.  And the bite each son allowed me was really good; flavorful and delicious. 

I’d been missing grass-fed beef (our first year of CSA beef’s delivery is in October) since I left New Zealand.  Because there is so much pasture land there grass-fed meat (beef, lamb, venison), at least when I lived there, was the norm.  Here large corporate feedlots, which bulk up our cows with corn (more than 80% of US corn is GMO), have dominated the markets. But there has been a movement back towards grass-fed since Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma shed light upon the impact of corn-fed beef.  It can be hard to find, very expensive but well worth it when you can get it!  This is definitely worth it!  We will also be getting our first local CSA pastured beef next month, but previously I’d been buying “natural, no antibiotics, no growth hormones” beef from the supermarket, Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s on the rare occasion I bought beef. 

My husband loves steak, he worked in a steak house in San Francisco years ago, and prefers dry-aged beef especially Ribeye.  So I defrosted 2 Ribeyes and one filet packet for our dinner on Sunday.  Make sure you slowly defrost frozen beef (in the fridge and never in microwave) so that you don’t lose any moisture which would bleed flavor as well.  My husband grilled them, with lots of pepper,

until they were between rare and medium-rare.  They were served with Swiss Chard, green & magic beans, grilled eggplant and mashed new potatoes.

I was very impressed with the filet.  I love a filet for its melt-in-your-mouth tenderness, but this one was also more flavorful than almost all I’ve had in the past 10 years at least.   The Ribeye had a subtle aged taste that was just right for me, but probably not enough for my husband.  He noticed that the fatty parts of the steak “weren’t as fatty” but still had wonderful taste.  My eldest loved this fact as he hates fat.  All three loved the steak.  2 had some leftovers today— one in lunch and one he added to my Meatless Monday meal.   They are worth the price (high quality beef that is not fed corn in winter …or ever).  No hormones, no antibiotics, no pesticides in the feed— so many reasons for us to eat/farm this way.

If you’re concerned about cost, buy the ground beef to make burgers, meatballs or some other meal because you’ll have amazing quality, healthy meat that can be stretched out to feed many.