Walking around Wegmans today after my daily workout I noticed they now had organic grass fed beef for sale. So far I’ve been unable to fully jump on this bandwagon because of the need to visit a farm and buy half a cow. Without hesitation I decided to grab a sirloin and see if it’s worth the extra cost. In essence it is absolutely worth it. Put aside any eco or animal friendly motives you may hear about, grass fed beef just tastes beefier. Not necessarily better, but it’s distinctly more robust in its beefy flavor.
The first thing I noticed was the rich color of the meat. Rather than the generic pinkish red you find throughout the meat aisle, this particular sirloin was a deep red. Almost purple in color, and my wife said it looked like liver. Taking the meat out of the packaging I was intrigued to find the meat felt a lot more pliable than the sirloin cuts I’m used to. Unfortunately this didn’t equate to a grass fed sirloin being as tender as a filet mignon, but the meat wasn’t as dense as I’m used to.
When you’re told by foodies or professional chefs that a serving of beef should be around the size of your fist many Americans scoff. We’re used to the meat portion of the meal taking up about 80% of the plate. I now have a loose theory that this has a lot to do with the mildness of flavor that comes from industrial produced meat. In order to feel like we’re getting our meat fix we just need more.
The grass fed sirloin I prepared was seasoned with only salt and pepper, and topped with a Mushroom Juniper sauce. The intent was to let the beef stand on its own, but to give it a nice accompaniment. I began by eating the sirloin without any sauce and for a moment felt left down. This was just a piece of steak. There was no transcendence, no choir of angels sang to the joy of my decision, and I sat there wondering, “Is that it?” But then I slowly realized that the best part of the sirloin was that it was indeed just a piece of steak. Fully flavored and complex, like I assume beef should be. There was something so clearly “other” about the flavor of the steak.
I can only guess at what that unidentifiable quality was, but I’m going to imagine it was the grass the cow fed on. I haven’t looked into what farm Wegmans gets their grass fed cows from. It is entirely in the realm of possibility that these aren’t free ranging cows; they could sit in stalls next to their corn fed brethren.
The biggest question right now is about pricing. Is it worth the extra change in the current climate? Yes it is. It’s worth you cutting down your steak consumption to about once a week at the most and make that serving organic grass fed beef. You’ll probably come up nearly even, and no matter how tough of a time we’re going through we should never neglect the food we eat.
