Grass fed beef taste

Well....not to mention the fast, cheap and easy reason. It's faster, easier and cheaper for producers to fatten cattle on grain in a feedlot v. turning them out on pasture. I'm not sure I'd follow the argument that consumer's taste preference has driven the product to feedlots. How many average grocery store consumers have ever had anything but feedlot beef?

I have no problem finding grass fed beef locally . I attend the weston price chapter every so often. What harder is to find mini angus or some other mini beef cattle . I'm not a big steak eater , yet . How does hamburger taste ?

offgrid - the argument can go for store milk vs directly from the farm . I also think their is a lack of education by the consumer on how to cook grass fed , when to buy a side of beef , what part of the steer , etc . Maybe the local organic store needs to do a better job of labeling. I need to visit a whole food store to see what available in their stores . None near by .

Did you mean to say this? I thought it was the opposite, as grain has more energy, so can produce more fat.

Oops, I meant grass fed not grain fed have less fat. Thanks for catching that.

Finishing cattle on grain wasn't done simply to pack on the pounds before slaughter. Range cattle subsisted on grass alone. Then they were taken to market in a group. We call that a "Cattle Drive", but the cattle weren't really driven anywhere, they walked to market.

The cattle arrived with very little fat and not much marbling. The meat was dark, tough and stringy. It was discovered, perhaps by trial and error, that a few weeks on corn improved the flavor and texture of the meat. It is not my opinion that grain fed beef tastes better, it is a historical fact. Grain fed beef became the standard.

People also tend to prefer what they are used to. A number of years back, my wife and I had a couple freezers full of venison. That is the only meat we ate. Started out tasting a bit "gamey" but after awhile, I didn't notice it. We had company over, so bought some beef steaks. I thought they stunk when cooked and tasted funny. It is just that our tastes had adjusted to the venison.

Drew acknowledges the taste complaints with grass fed beef. His question is how to avoid it. The only way to be sure is to feed grain for a few weeks before slaughter. You sure don't want a freezer full of meat your family won't eat, just so you can "try out" the taste of grass fed beef. Just because some claim to have lovely, tender meat from grass fed beef, isn't an experiment I would want to invest in.

Fair enough; I took your statement to mean that consumer preference has driven producers to house thousands of cattle on CAFO feedlots and feed them nothing but corn laced with antibiotics and rendered fat for 2-3 months. That, in my opinion, has nothing to do with consumer preference.

Many smaller farms raise pastured beef that is not entirely grass-fed. I would be inclined to guess that unless they specify "100% grass-fed" then they probably do supplement with corn/grain, although I think that some producers may not remove their cattle from pasture/hay while feeding grain. I definitely think you need to ask. And again, here is where buying a sample of the product is a good idea - different farming practices will result in different tastes.

So here is my two cents. I do prefer grain finished animals raised on good pasture. I like that extra bit of fat that they get. This is an interesting slid that shows that using some grain in the finishing process keeps many of the benefits of grass fed beef vs feedloting.

http://www.csuchico.edu/agr/grassfed...its/index.html - You have to click on the pdf link to see the slid.

i'm no cattle expert but i also prefer grass finished beef. it won't taste like what you get in the store, which is the big advantage to me. the store stuff is about inedible, imo.

after reading michael pollan i learned that finishing beef on grain severely stresses their livers so in the end we are eating meat from sick animals. add in the butchering practices in packing houses and i feel the meat should carry toxic warning labels.

grass fed beef tastes the way beef used to taste when i was groiwng up. low and slow....

I never noticed the difference, we raise them on grass now, maybe a little grain when they are small sometimes. We have raised them on grain too. I guess I am not that fussy or have no taste! Sometimes it matters how they are processed, we have one processor that we no longer take meat to as it came back with an off taste, not spoiled just something not right and we had one customer who noticed it too-not worth losing a good customer to keep going there. Pam

We have raised our two calves (angus crosses) on a bahia dominant pasture for the last year and a half. We have a date for slaughter in mid october. We have given them a couple pounds of sweet feed daily to keep them docile. We are keeping a side and selling the other to friends. I planned on keeping them on pasture until the end but the friends mentioned that they prefer to have them finished on grain. We have never tried grass fed beef and they are afraid of buying meat they wont like the taste of. I have to admit this has crossed my mind as well. I am approx 60 days out right now. Trying to decide what to do. If I finish on grain, is the sweet feed good enough? Do I need to take them completely off the pasture while feeding them the grain? Just seems to make it more complicated.

I would not take them off pasture. If you did drylot (same as feedlot) them, you would have to supply them with some hay or other scratch for their rumen to function properly. So just leave them on pasture.

You can just increase the amount of sweet feed you are giving them. Some people finish just on corn, it has a lot of calories and not much protein (8-9%). Some finish using COB (Corn, Oats, Barley). Sweet feed would also work (lower calories, but higher protein 16%). The idea is that you are giving them more feed so they will put on extra fat (flavor) and give a good marbling to the meat. When you increase the amount of grain, do it over a period of time so you don't end up with problems (acidosis).

I have one that I"m finishing right now, giving him about 2lbs of sweet feed, twice a day, plus he's on pasture. The sweet feed just helps him put on some weight, and adds some marbling to the meat. It's still 100 times better that feedlot cattle.
P.J.

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You can continue with the sweet feed, increaseing it quite a bit for 45-60 days.

But Sweet Feed is more costly than straight grain. For economy sake, I'd switch to grain.

The first part of your post discusses the two extremes of quality (and by quality I mean 'state of being' not 'fatty is better') of beef.

The third and fourth paragraphs contradict each other in that in the third your taste changed and accepted the venison as the norm but in the fourth you assume the families taste will not change if a beef is purchased that is not that families norm for quality.

IMO - and we have raised our own grass only fed beef for years now - the most noticeable difference from grass finished beef and store beef is the texture. Store beef has a greasy mushy texture. Grass finished does not.

Now grass finished beef is rather variable in quality due to all the different factors that come into play - breed of cattle, pasture type and quality, time of year butchered, age of cow, how killed, hanging time, etc. Find a combination that works for you and go with it.

And want to reiterate what someone said earlier - giving a grass-fed animal ANY amount of grain negates the health benefits of grass-finished beef.

I grew up on beef that we raised on our place. Grass fed-some grain very rarely. Range pellets if needed in the winter along with hay and winter grass. Sometimes we might finish a calf off with feed before slaughter, sometimes not. Never have noticed a difference in taste between any of them. They were all far superior to anything you buy in a store. I think that like any subject, some folks tend to be a little wacko about the "this calf only had new growth alfalfa that had been fertilized by virgin chickens" LOL! To me, its more of a common sense thing. I am not going to give any animals of mine growth hormones. Antibiotics to treat an illness not just as a cure all. No antibiotics anywhere close to slaughter time, etc. Any feed will be simply to supplement if pasture is getting scarce. Good quality hay. To me its all about the taste. If you like the taste then do the same thing again if not make changes.

I was explaining the historical fact that grain finishing cattle wasn't some idea dreamt up by the grocery stores as suggested earlier.

If I'm selling beef, I could supply grain fed beef that will be more tender and have a taste that the consumer is accustom to. If I had a strong conviction to grass finished beef, I could supply my customers with enough free beef that they could accept the changes in taste and texture, they would be more likely to accept the taste of the beef and might purchase grass feed beef without noticeable changes in taste and texture.

I was explaining that since I couldn't afford purchases of beef, we ate just venison. We became accustom to the texture and taste. Beef smelled different. The venison, like grass fed beef was dark and dry. When most people grind up venison to make hamburger, they add ground beef fat or pork sausage. Why? They do it to get away from that non-grain fed taste and they want the fat to moisten the meat.

What you call greasy and mushy may be the norm for many. What you see as healthy beef may be odd tasting and dry and tough.

No doubt that if we reduced the amount of fat in our diet, it has health benefits. No one is saying I should be on a diet of beef fat. But I do believe that the public isn't ready to accept the tougher beef with a "strange" taste as a way to reduce fat from our diets.

The custom in this country is to eat trimmed beef and drain the grease from the meat before serving.

We can have a different discussion on the health benefits of grain fed beef verses non-grain fed beef. But that isn't the topic here, is it?

The OP wants to know what he can do to reduce the "off" taste in non-grain fed beef.
I doubt that there are different pasture grasses that will improve the taste to anything similar to grain fed beef.

The only way I know of to get that familar taste is to pour the grain to them.

Cliff wrote:
That is not true. Please look at the slide:

http://www.csuchico.edu/agr/grassfed...its/index.html

Feeding 1/3 grain and 2/3 grass resulted in 1.04% Omega-3 Fatty Acids vs 1.12% for grass fed and 0.71 for grain fed. So finishing with a little grain, does not negate the benefits of a grass fed animal. So rather than spouting beliefs, lets look at facts....

There are some topics that become a religion to some people.

Those that embrace organic gardening and cannot accept even the smallest amount of any chemical compound, while accepting all "natural" potions without question.

Some accept raw milk as a healthy food, while some see it as superior to anything else in the world, a cure for every health concern, rejecting every proof to the contrary.

Others see a livestock guard dog as a key factor in the success of every small homestead and anyone that expresses a conflicting view is banished from further communication.

The anti-NAIS group will absorb none of the truth that dispels their concerns, while swallowing whole all wild and crazy fact-less rumors.

And so it is with some grass fed livestock advocates. We see that even a small amount of that evil grain is a sin that can get you banished from this denomination and the punishment for such a sin is a complete loss in any health benefits from the grass diet.

But the reality is that grass fed beef is cheaper if you have the pasture and don't have the grain fields. It is also true that without grain, you'll have a slower growing animal, with less fat. Less fat and slower growth results in a dryer, tougher meat every time. There is a noticeable taste difference. Many people "get used to" the different taste and texture. Many don't.

If, as the original post asked, you want to select a grass that minimizes the "grass fed" taste, I think you are out of luck. Perhaps a high protein ration of alfalfa or pasturing a corn field will increase growth rate, allow some fat to develop, but for a sure bet in the grain fed taste, you'll need grain.

Well said Haypoint. It is like someone told me once, that a sheep that ate Poison Ive was not worth anything, you could never slaughter and eat it. It was just totally ruined. Well, the truth is that Poison Ive is fine for sheep to eat. No problem at all. But you could never convince him of that. I'll just have to enjoy my grass fed -corn finished beef next month and enjoy most of the health benefits of it being grass fed, while enjoying the extra bit of fat from the corn finishing.

You make some excellant points, Haypoint..........I agree that the main difference is that people are not use to the flavor of grass fed. I love it, and I make sure to give any new customers some packages of grass fed Dexter, before they commit to buy a beef from me. I like add a little sweet feed for the finish, and I know that this doesn't negate the benifits of grass fed, because they still don't get antibiotics, growth hormones, or any other artificial means of making them get fat fast...........I do take custom orders and if they want strictly grass fed, thats what they get. It's a win = win situation and I feel good about the beef I produce, and feed my family.

__________________
given the oppurtunity, a cow will always take the wrong gate...Baxter Black
www.newdaydexters.com
Irish Dexter Cattle for sale..............