Page 80 - Summer2008

it does in a mature, active animal grazing on pasture. Rapid growth also animal less than two years old is ‘completely
means a high level of protein-digesting enzymes is present in the muscles insipid,’ while meat ‘at the summit of quality’
of immature animals, which after slaughter help to tenderize their meat comes from a steer three or four years old.”
and actually reduce the need for much of an aging process. Shortening
the time spent on any aspect of the beef production model is of course TWO TYPES OF MEAT
music to ears of the industry. The resulting feedlot meat may be yielding, For centuries, people have eaten mature,
but still fairly lean (young grain-fattened animals will put down a thicker tough, well- avored meat—often from draft or
outer coating of fat rather than intramuscularly), not be necessarily juicy, dairy animals at the end of productive lives—and

and with a mild avor in need of saucing. created long-cooking, moist, low-heat methods to
In other beef-eating countries, however, traditional tastes have prepare it. Also for centuries, people have raised
been different. “According to a standard French handbook, Technologie animals speci cally for the luxury of roasting
Culinaire (1995),” states Harold McGee in On Cooking, “the meat of an a tender piece of meat from a young, specially

THE IMPORTANCE OF FAT

When we chew a piece of meat, we perceive it to be tender often based on the presence of fat. Marbling of meat
means that the muscle fibers and connective tissue are interrupted by fat cells, which help to weaken the tougher structures.
As it cooks, fat melts and lubricates other tissues (which alone tend to dry and stiffen) and individual muscle fibers are
pleasingly, unctuously coated. Without a lot of fat, even tender meats (those without connective tissue) can easily shrink,
dry out and become tough, making a very finicky meat for the cook to handle properly.
Many farmers raising grass-finished beef are proud of the fact that their meat is so lean, perhaps partially because
they, too, fear saturated fat and believe less of it in their animals is a good thing. (The argument that grass-fed beef is better
because it contains more omega-3 fatty acids is bogus—cows are ruminants, designed to turn unsaturated fatty acids into
saturated fats, and the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in the fat of both grain-fed and grass-fed beef is very small.) It is the
ample presence of saturated fats that contributes to the satisfying taste of beef. Fat can compensate, to some degree, for
a shortened aging process by contributing that unctuous coating around meat fibers, and as it insulates the meat, is more
forgiving to the cook’s recipes and higher temperatures.
Shannon Hayes, in The Grassfed Gourmet discusses fat and weight gain in grass-finished beef: “For the meat of beef
animals to be tender, they must gain weight at a rate of one to two pounds per day before they’re processed. (In feedlots,
a typical gain is three pounds per day.) If the rate of gain is less, the meat will be tough.” She then emphasizes that the
cattle must be on lush fields with grass no taller than 6-10 inches. “If the grass is higher than that, then it has probably gone
to seed. Once this happens, the energy has gone into the lignan (the woodier plant tissue), and the cattle can no longer
digest it efficiently. . . When pastures are overgrown, the animals will eat only enough to survive—they will not eat to gain
weight.”
In what could not be more stark contrast, Joel Salatin recently published an article in the May, 2008 issue of Acres,
USA called “Tall Grass Mob Stocking” that directly contradicts this approach. By his own admission, Salatin had long pro-
claimed the same recipe for grassfeeding that Hayes describes above. . . until unexpected events showed him otherwise.
When delays prevented Salatin from moving his cattle onto a neighboring farm for grazing until summer, it was nearly
September before the herd reached the last fields in their grazing rotations. Late season, rank and over grown, “it looked
like a wreck from a conventional grazing mindset.” Expecting the cattle to reject the browning grasses that had gone to
seed, Salatin was stunned to see them mow down everything in sight—what they didn’t eat was trampled into the soil
surface. To Salatin’s great surprise, “The animals looked extraordinarily fat. They possessed a bloom that we were unac-
customed to. We expected them to fall apart. . . What we got instead was a remarkable performance from the stock and
a landscape change nothing short of miraculous.” The key to the cows’ performance lies in bovine dietary requirements:
“. . . bovines need starch more than protein. After all, these are walking fermentation vats, and fermentation thrives on
sugar. . . Young, vegetative, succulent grass blades are high in protein and low in carbohydrates, or energy. We follow that
principle carefully in selecting corn maturity for good silage fermentation, but generally throw the same concept out the
window when it comes to harvesting our forages at their energy peak. That is why I like the corn parallel. It shows easily
and graphically the disconnect between how we harvest corn and how we harvest grass for maximum energy. The goal is
the same. Both are feeding a fermentation process; one inside the cow and the other outside.”
Autumn is the time to harvest grass-finished beef—this is the lesson we can learn from Salatin’s experience and from
the tradition of native peoples who hunted bison on this continent. As summer turns to fall the animals’ natural feeding
selection is maturing grasses going to seed, and is the key to the laying down of fat—delicious, satisfying fat—for the win-
ter.
78 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2008