‘Gamey’ or ‘Beefy’ Flavor?

Folks have commented that they really like how our ground beef fries up in the pan with little “grease”.  A friend said, “yeah, love grassfed beef, but still think it tastes a little ‘gamey’.”  I asked, “‘Gamey’ or ‘Beefy’ flavor?”   After a moment he said, “Ahhh, maybe that IS how beef should taste.”  Your taste buds aren’t confused, they probably don’t know any better, let me explain…

If you have spent anytime on our website, you know we refer to our beef as Pasture Grazed rather than grassfed because our cattle consume more than just grass.  Take a look at a list of known plants growing in our pasture:

In addition to the flavor from our pasture, in earlier posts we discussed the following factors that play into the flavor/taste of our Pasture Grazed Beef:

• TIME – overall flavor comes with animal maturity.
  • Our beef is harvested after 24 months of age.
  • The last 60-90 days of feed probably influences flavor the most.
• FATS – Lynne Curry in her book Pure Beef notes:
  • “omega-3 level is one of the reasons grassfed beef has a more intense taste than grainfed beef”
  • Remember our beef is high in those good Omega 3 Fats!
  • Phospholipids fat, the fat we cannot see, stores the flavor.
  • The triglyceride fat we can see will be a hard creamy white to a tint of yellowing.
• DRY AGING – Lynne Curry has this to say:
  • “It’s all a matter of taste, but many people find dry aging critical to giving the muscles their due time to dry and contract, concentrating the flavors, and letting the calpain enzymes do their tenderizing work.”
  • Our beef is allowed to dry age at least 14 days.
  • Since our beef is vacuum packed, consider letting it thaw in your fridge for an additional “wet age” period.
• COMPLEX Pastures = primary and secondary plant metabolites
  • In this past post we encouraged you to “eat the rainbow” for your health.
  • Our cattle can transfer to us the part of the rainbow that we cannot eat first hand.

Now let’s take a look at the feed source for typical conventional beef:

Look at the above feed for the last few months of feedlot beef.  Pickup some conventional hamburger at the grocery store.  Now look at the above list again, these are the primary ingredients that make up the store-bought hamburger.

• Pickup up any other prepared food product in the grocery store.
  • Corn, corn, soybean and more of the same.
  • Aren’t you tired of eating corn for three meals a day?
  • Consider eating beef with real “beefy” flavor.
• In addition to the simple feeds, feedlot beef are harvested much younger and don’t have the time to acquire “flavor”.
• Dry aging, due to the time and locker space involved, is not practiced for conventional beef.  It is “wet aged” in a package waiting for purchase at the store.
• Finally, when you add grain to the diet, the beef rumen bacteria populations switches over to “proteolytic”.
  • The good omega 3 fat disappears, along with the conjugated linoleic acid.
  • The fat turns from a hard milky white marble to a clear greasy fat.

So enjoy some “beefy” pasture based beef!  Just as folks like trying different wineries for the different flavors from each vineyard, we encourage you to try different pasture farm beef!  The different makeup of each farms pasture will give a unique flavor to the beef you find there.