Note: We are working on getting set up to take orders on HALF a Grass-fed cow from Hastings, delivered to the Windmill Market for you, so stay tuned!
Grass-Fed Beef versus Grain-Fed Beef
If you've wondered about grass-fed beef, here's the skinny on price, quality, taste, and cooking.
By Kim Cross, Cooking Light Magazine, April 2011
A large herd's worth of beef cattle has passed through the Cooking Light Test Kitchen over the past 24 years, almost all of it standard-issue, grain-fed supermarket meat. But with beef, as with everything in the American diet, change is afoot. Shoppers are seeing more and more grass-fed beef in regular grocery stores, along with meat from breeds marketed as special (like Angus), and meat from organically raised animals. The local/sustainable movement has been singing the praises of the grass-fed cow, while the grain-fed industry has been under attack by food activists. The grass-fed cow, which eats from a pasture and is not "finished" on a diet of grains and supplements for rapid weight gain, is said by its promoters to be better for the planet (less energy goes into growing grass than grain); better for the beef eater (less overall fat, and more omega-3s and other "good" fats); and better for the cow (critics decry feedlot practices as inhumane). In this article, though, we're looking not at meat politics but at three things that most cooks are acutely interested in: price, taste, and nutrition.
