helcat12

I suppose that depends on what you were used to in the UK.

I had a friend who was a beef farmer in a little village in the Derbyshire hills and I drove past their lovely, grass-fed cows every day.

The meat was properly butchered and aged, full of flavour and with a beautiful soft but meaty texture. When you cooked a steak or a rib of beef, the fat simply became crispy like beautiful, beefy bubbles of taste which melted in the mouth!
I have never tasted anything ever remotely as good here.

I was very disappointed after all the hype about Alberta beef when I had it.
The fat is just as wet, flaccid and well, fatty as supermarket beef in the UK and the meat itself lacks flavour and the texture is a bit flabby, too.

helcat12

You are supposed to burn it for fuel - haven't you seen Thunderdome ?

bats

Snotty cow.

helcat12

Not snotty, just saying it is a matter of comparison.

Rudeness is not necessary, unless you have nothing more intelligent to say.

mandymoochops

I don't think that feeding animals on grass is overly posh?

Our steers were pastured in the summer and fed hay / grain in the winter. It's a pretty standard meal or so I'm led to believe. Maybe we were missing the caviar out of their diet?

I will add we've never kept pigs so I don't know what they eat (although I hear it's pretty much everything?)

bats

Oh get a grip woman. Saying "it all depends what you are used to" and then prattling on about how you are used to this wonderful stuff from the south slopes of Bakewell where cattle feed on fresh daisies and gold leafed clover?
With the implication that the rest of us ate wet flaccid fatty supermarket beef?

You don't think that sounded rude or snotty??

scrubbedexpat133

Thanks will investigate

helcat12

It isn't posh - it is what cows should eat, I would have thought.

I assume one of the things about some beef must be things they add after the animal has been slaughtered.
All I know is that the beef direct from the farm was different and better and it hadn't had anything added to it at all.

Bats, you need to get a life and stop taking comments as a personal insult when none was given or intended.
Don't go into a pub and start drinking pints in case anyone spills any of yours, will you.

bats

Oh good grief.

mandymoochops

Strictly speaking nothing should be added to beef (maybe salt or sugar), abatoirs apparently commonly use a stretching process electrically to tenderise the meat, however the biggest factor in the meat texture / tenderness is age / breed / sex of animal used, and NOT (as is commonly believed) what the animal is fed on. Beef finished on grain tends to reach slaughter weight quicker - thats all.

Bats does have a life and to my knowledge is way too ladylike to be drinking pints in a pub - though stand to be corrected.

I don't doubt some of your knowledge regarding certain things Helcat - but whenever you comment on a thread about game / wildlife / hunting etc etc - your arguements - although well laid out - are mainly wrong.

And the more stoically you put forward these suggestions, the more silly you sound.

Edited to add that just read that there are vegetable enzymes ans other such scientfic stuff that causes my brain to go into hibernation, again to improve tenderness.

However if you are planning on raising a pig, you may as well raise some beef - you get more of a freezer full at the end of it, calfs are only about $40 to buy anyway

flashman

Not a problem if you'r married to a pig !

dbd33

If I may, Crusty, a farmer of my acquiantance, gives good beef:

http://www.pvrbeef.ca/

bats

Actually it the gluten in beer that stops me drinking beer, but you are right I would never ask for a pint. And no, I didn't take Helcat's comments as a personal insult, I just thought it was a snotty cow kind of comment.

Doesn't the way beef is treated after it's killed, ie how long hung, the cut etc make a big difference to the flavour?? We're supposed to be getting some local farm raised Jersey steer beef soon, so will see how that tastes.

Yep, pigs eat anything.

caretaker

I think they hang beef for about 4 weeks, and AFAIK it's more to do with breaking down muscle to make it tender than taste, but I could be wrong. Pigs will eat anything, but the farmer I worked for fed them pellets, grain, and chop because they weren't free range, but hundreds of them in pens in a pig barn. Unless you get to know a farmer who's doing small scale swine production and has them out in a yard that's how it's made. If they're selling it cut and wrapped instead of just trailering them to the stockyard the farmers put ads in the newspaper if they have to, to sell it.
Mandy, it's almost time for the 2012 hunting thread! I've been thinking about buying a license for the last few days now.

mandymoochops

You should start that one then