The WSJ on steak, and why our steak has become what it’s become. In short, back in 1926 the USDA introduce “grading” to beef. And how is it graded? Fat.

How did the USDA separate the good beef from the bad? There was one thing everyone from ranchers and cowboys to butchers and USDA graders could agree on: fatter cattle tasted better than lean ones, so long as they weren’t too old. So that’s what they looked for: plump, well-fed cattle. They looked for fat on the ribs called feathering, and fat on the flank called frosting. If there was a great deal of that fat, the beef achieved the highest grade, Prime.

So, like any business, you look for ways to maximize your product and minimize your costs.

It’s the cattle industry that has changed. In the 1950s, cattlemen began sending their cattle to feedlots to get fat. A feedlot is a vast sprawl of fenced-in pens where tens of thousands of cattle eat grain—usually corn—out of concrete troughs. Soon after, cattlemen started using growth promotants—hormones and steroids, basically—to get cattle fat faster, and fed them antibiotics so they could eat corn in amounts that, under normal conditions, could kill them.

By the turn of the century, a new drug entered the scene: the beta2-adrenergic agonist, a muscle relaxant used in humans to treat heart and respiratory disease that makes cattle gain more muscle. And the corn cattle now eat, not surprisingly, has also taken great strides in efficiency, having been hybridized and genetically engineered to pack more fat-producing starch. More recently, we’ve been feeding cattle something called dried distillers grains, which is the muck that’s left over after corn is distilled into ethanol.

The result has been astonishing. In the 1950s, a cow was about two years old by the time it got fat. Today, it can be as young as one year old. An average carcass now yields 40% more beef than it did just 30 years ago. In short, the beef industry has experienced a tectonic supply-side shift. Production has become vastly more efficient. In 2009, beef cost 30% less than in 1974. Yet the average American is eating 20 pounds less of it per year.

But does more fat equal more flavor? Not necessarily. The article makes a good point: consider your wild game, which is amazingly lean but amazingly flavorful (and perhaps too flavorful for some). Yes, fat matters to some extent, but like all things there’s a limit and you can have too much of a good thing.

So what does the article say is best? Grass-fed beef, instead of corn-feedlot-based beef. But trying to find such a critter can be tough and expensive, and even then it’s no blanket guarantee for awesome beef. That’s one reason I’ve been enjoying doing my meat shopping away from the local grocer. At the local grocery store, who knows where or what the meat is. But if I go to a local butcher, I have more control. Furthermore, I can talk with local ranchers, or even kids selling their 4-H cattle at auction and get just what I want.  The article gives some guidelines:

The most important question to ask is age at slaughter. For flavor reasons, be wary of steak from a cow younger than 20 months. Ask how much the cow weighed when it was slaughtered, because any cow weighing less than 1,000 pounds is almost always too lean to be delicious. Ask about the breed. Be wary of “Continental” breeds, such as Charolais or Limousin, which do very well in feedlots and terribly on grass. Look for British breeds like Hereford, Galloway and Angus. And if you should find grass-fed Wagyu, buy it.

So the water buffalo is back from the butcher. It was aged for about a week, then processed into the usual parts and cuts that you’d get out of wild game processing: roasts, ham steaks, backstraps, stew meat, hamburger, link/smoked sausage, breakfast sausage, ribs. Stuff like that.

Since water buffalo is close to beef, we figured to go with beef-based recipes.

First thing we did was a roast. Took a 3# bone-in roast and put it into the crock pot for about 8 hours (on low). The recipe was a basic beef style recipe, with carrots and potatoes and the like. Wife has the full recipe written down, not available to me at the time of this writing. It turned out great. Very tender, flavorful. Quite nice.

Second thing was pan sausage. I had the butcher make some breakfast/pan sausage. So it was 50% ground up water buffalo with 50% pork, then the butcher’s spice blend. Even with the added pork (thus fat), it cooked up very lean… little fat in the pan, but since we cooked it on a non-stick surface there was no need to add any fat/oil to keep it from sticking. Tasted very good. Oddly, the kids didn’t like it as much, seemed to be the smoother texture vs. the feral hog pan sausage we get. Personally, I liked the flavor a lot more than the hog sausage, and so did Wife.

Third thing we did was backstraps. The backstraps on this guy were huge, so all they were done for processing was to just clean them up and cut them into a manageable sized piece… probably a pound in weight, certainly not more than two pounds, and probably about 2 inches thick at the thickest part. I let them marinate in Stubb’s Beef Marinade for about 24 hours. I like that marinade because it’s got a good spice, a little heat, soy sauce based, very delicious. I put them on the grill. Now the trouble is my Weber grill is dying so I can’t do much for heat control *sigh* and have to do it via amount of coals. I put charcoal in both side baskets and let it burn down. Temperature was probably 400º… a little too hot, but I couldn’t do much about it. Threw a few small chunks of mesquite wood on the coals as well. Let it sit for about 90 minutes, temperature eventually dropped to 325º or so. Internal temperature on the meat got to about 150º, which is “medium”.  Took it off, let it sit for about 15 minutes, then slice it against the grain. The flavor was good, certainly a “medium” meat. The marinade didn’t do much; we thought it would have seeped deeper, but I guess the meat is too tight. Certainly the meat didn’t dry out, even after 90 minutes… hopefully that marinade helped in that regard. The meat tho was kinda tough… it’s that “chew” that I was talking about. Still, it was good enough to eat and fill your belly.

“Low and slow” has to be the way. The crock pot was low and slow, worked out great. The BBQ wasn’t low and slow (tho slicing against the grain is a must). I figure next time maybe 250º-ish, 6-8 hours. Certainly tho the meat will have to be wrapped in foil. My thinking is a good dry rub for 24 hours. Put it in foil but leave the foil a little open the first hour. After the first hour, baste in something like apple cider vinegar with some sliced white onion and other spices if desired. Then close up the foil… gotta keep in the moisture. Try to not poke at it too much, but ensure moisture stays in the foil. Keep it low and slow for 6-8 hours. Will it work? Don’t know, but it’s certainly the next way to go.

Anyway, it does taste good. The kids certainly love it. The leanness is awesome, but given the different muscle fibers and grain it’s certainly needing some experimentation for how to cook it.