Beef: It's What's for Dinner...Still

A lot of people presume our new lifestyle means going vegetarian.

Stop. It.

While we are reducing the amount of meat we eat, we are still enjoying our carnivorous cravings. However, we have made significant changes to the meat we purchase. Our standards are very strict and non-negotiable. The criteria include:

Grass-fed and pasture-raised
Organic and hormone-free
Locally raised is also nice to have

Whole Foods makes finding acceptable meat easy. Well...almost. Dearest Interweb, do you know I have not had chicken in over a month? Chicken! The good for you meat. I saw a package of pasture-raised chicken once. You should have seen it! Tiny chicken breasts the size of an actual chicken, not Robo-Chicken. But did I buy chicken that day? Have I seen pasture-raised chicken since then? Will I ever get a chance to try the Chicken Tikka recipe I have? Who's bitter?

The post title says beef, so I should talk about beef. Enter the farmer's market. Like a beacon in the fog, there she was. Her table across the parking lot calling to me. Grass-fed, organic beef from the local farm. Ding, ding. We have a winner. My eyes glazed over and I might have drooled a little. I'm just keeping it real here. Drool happens.

I left $20 poorer, but a NY Strip, a Sirloin and a bag of dog bones heavier.

Here's what you need to know (4 paragraphs into the post and finally useful information): grass-fed beef is lean. VERY LEAN. Do you know why they feed cows corn? Because it makes them fat and gives them the marbling Americans have come to expect in their beef. Delicious. Yes. Good for you, the environment, the cow? Not a chance.

Don't buy grass-fed beef and expect to prepare your favorite steak recipe and get the same results as Morton's. This is literally a different breed of cow. My recommendations:

1. Cook it a half temperature cooler than you normally eat it. Like your beef medium-well? Go medium. It's really going to help.
2. Embrace marinade. I'm a steak purist (no steak sauce, no seasoning other than salt and pepper), but grass-fed beef screams to be soaked in some sort of acid to help with tenderizing the meat.
3. Use your usual seasoning. Then double it.
4. Fried onion rings are your friend. OK, that doesn't have anything to do with making the steak any better, but onion rings are awesome.

I only cooked the strip steak so far. I think with the sirloin I am going to make a Venezuelan pulled beef dish I became addicted to in Boston. My thought is the slow-cooker and the grass-fed beef are going to be great friends. I'll let you know how it turns out. Until then, enjoy my steakhouse dinner recipes.

Recipe of the Week: Steakhouse Dinner At Home