The flat iron steak is a nicely marbled cut harvested from the beef shoulder. When cooked properly, this cut is tender and juicy.
The best way to cook this cut is grilling or searing on a flaming hot grill or pan.
Season steak with salt and pepper. Sear one side on high heat for about 5 minutes and flip over. Grill until it reaches your desired doneness temperature (3-4 minutes). For rare, stop grilling at 115-120 F, medium rare 120-125 F, medium 135-140 F. Let rest for 10 minutes.
When paired with cowboy butter, this steak is out of this world.
1/4 cup fresh Asian pear juice or puree (optional) or pear
2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1-2 green onions, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
A pinch of freshly ground black pepper
Marinate for at least two hours in a ziploc bag or whatever you have available.
Prepare the grill. A gas grill will work but, according to Gregory, “Koreans prefer the char of charcoal.” Third choice is a broiler.
Drain excess marinade off ribs and reserve. Cook ribs, turning often with metal tongs. Depending on the thickness of the meat and the heat of the grill, this may take as little as 5 minutes, or as many as 15 minutes. Tend the grill carefully, watching for flare-ups which can be put out with a cupful of water.
Toward the end of the cooking process, pour remaining marinade over ribs, cook another minute to caramelize, then pull off to check for done-ness. Gregory’s tip is to cut a piece and taste it. The middle should look the way you like your steaks to look, which is probably not too bloody, and definitely not too dry.
Serve with rice, torn lettuce and a julienne of green onions, and a sesame oil and soy sauce dressing.
So easy that even Gert can make it, but you have to let it simmer for about 24h
4 lbs beef cubes
4 tbsp butter
Salt and pepper
3 onions sliced
3 tbsp flour
1.5L beef broth
2 beers (350mL)
4 thyme twigs
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp dijon mustard spread on 1 slice of bread
1 tbsp brown sugar
Dry beef cubes with paper towel and salt and pepper them well. In a large pot (creuset), heat 2 tbsp butter on medium fire. Brown a layer of cubes (do not overcrowd as they will boil instead of brown) for 3 minutes each side without stirring.
Once brown, remove and repeat with the remaining cubes. Reserve cubes in a plate and heat 2 tbsp butter on low heat then add onions with ½ tsp salt, cook for 15 minutes.
Add flour and stir well, cooking for 2 minutes. Pour the broth in while deglazing the pot, then add the beer, thyme, bay leaves, beef cubes and their juice. Raise the temperature and wait until it boils.
Lower temperature and let simmer, adding the slice of bread mustard face down, covering the pot halfways. Simmer for 24 hours, stirring now and then to avoid pieces sticking on bottom. Once cubes are tender, add salt and pepper to taste, even a bit of brown sugar.
Remove thyme and bay leaves and serve with mashed potatoes or even better with fries and mayonnaise. To add some colour, you could add chunks of carrots when you mix in the beer.
One of our favorite asian inspired recipes, is Zabuton steak. Zabuton is a japanese cut of beef found in the shoulder. Its name, loosely translated to ‘little pillow’, comes from the shape and tenderness of the steak, ressembling and feeling like Japanese floor pillows.
A little less sexy, we just call it Denver steak here.
Served with a Yakiniku sauce, rice and your choice of greens, this is the perfect recipe to satisfy your umami craving.
Recipe
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons mirin or sake
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce or chili paste
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1 Denver (Zabuton) steak
Salt & pepper
Preheat grill-oven to 225F
Season the steak on all sides with a blend of salt and pepper
Put the steak in the preheated grill and cook for about 30 minutes at this lower temperature
While the steak is cooking, make the sauce by combining the remaining ingredients except sesame seeds in a saucepan
Reduce the sauce slightly while the steak continues cooking
When the steak has reached the desired internal temperature of 125*, remove the steak and the saucepan from the grill and increase the temperature to 400*
Sear the steak on all sides for about 60 seconds per side
Allow the pan to get hot and the sauce to bubble, reducing slightly
Pull the steak from the grill, tent with foil and allow to rest for 5 minutes
Transfer the sauce to a serving dish and sprinkle generously with sesame seeds
Cut the steak against the grain and serve with yakiniku sauce for dipping
With input prices skyrocketing, low prices for weaned calves at the auction barn and an increased consumer interest in local food due to supply worries and high grocery prices, many cow- calf producers now try to market their beef directly to the consumer.
Consumers are often disappointed in the quality of their purchase. A better understanding of cattle production can help to select good breeders and avoid disappointment.
Beef production consists of three steps: cow-calf production (until weaning at 600-700lbs), the semi-finishing phase (until 800-900 lbs, or 500 lbs carcass) and the finishing phase (until 1400 lbs, or 800 lbs carcass).
Cow-calf production
Until weaning time, pretty much all calves qualify as grass-fed. Semi-finishing beeves on grass for the season, is as old a day and used to be known as stocker calf production. Under perfect conditions, a beef can gain about 300 lbs during the short season in Quebec.
Despite revolutionary claims, there is nothing new under the sun. For example, rotational grazing has been researched and widely practised since the fifties and continues to be used extensively on conventional cattle farms today.
While stocker calf production has been largely abandoned for lack of profitability, the grass-fed premium has led to a revival, and stockers calves are now increasingly sold directly to the consumers as grass-fed beef, baby beef or even grass-fed-and-finished beef in the fall. Many such producers do not even own cows but buy calves at the stockyard.
Green oats for semi-finishers in the summer
Beeves with a carcass that weighs about 500-650 are certainly not ‘finished’, even if they ate grass all their lives. Unfortunately, the finishing phase is important, and omitting the finishing phase leads to bland tasting, overly lean beef, poor profitability (or very high prices) and really has no positive environmental impacts.
The problem is that finishing beeves on grass (up to 1400 lbs) is terribly difficult and requires more than one season. Finishing beeves need lots of energy to sustain their metabolic functions (called Net energy for maintenance). At the same time, rumen space and digestibility put a limit on how much an animal can eat. Grass, and especially hay, are not very energy dense and pass the rumen rather slowly. On a cold winter day, a stomach full of the best hay will barely contain enough energy for maintenance. There will be almost no energy left for growth. Only on lush spring grass will growth resume.
There is no pasture in winter.
So while the beeves are parked out there in winter hardly gaining any weight, they are consuming tonnes of maintenance energy, they are belching and shitting and farting, and thus releasing copious quantities of potentially harmful waste products in the atmosphere for nothing. We are talking about forests and forests of CO2 equivalents. And like old cows, slow growing beeves develop yellow fat which is a quality problem.
We did not want to grow lower quality (unfinished) beef, park beeves for winter or grow beeves on a conventional diet consisting of energy-dense corn or barley, and ionophores (a class of antibiotics), growth hormones and growth promotors, so we needed to come up with a solution.
For years now, we have been recycling vegetable cuttings from a local vegetable cutting plant. These vegetables help our beeves grow at acceptable rates, even in winter, and at a very low cost to the planet.
Basically, we get the goodness of grass-fed beef, combined with the superior quality and improved economic performance of finished beef (that is why our prices are lower!), and all that at while increasing the sustainability of our operation.
An 800 lbs carcass to the left
Over time, this increased economic performance allowed us to invest in high-end genetics. Cattle that are more performant, convert feed into pounds of meat more efficiently, so there is less waste, and increased growth. Good genetics can help improve quality, and eliminate common health and conformation problems, so animal welfare is increased as well. Improved docility makes cows easier to handle and reduces stress and increases safety for everyone involved.
We count on building our genetics program for years to come and hopefully we will make a small contribution to future lineages of more performant cattle that will make life better for all producers while reducing waste. Our regenerative farming dream is not about bashing conventional farmers, but about breeding cattle that are more sustainable by nature, for generations to come.
We love selling females for reproduction, but we do not really like to sell bulls. Yet, it is impossible to avoid having some really nice beasts that deserve more than to end up on someone’s plate. Let the superpowers of these bulls surprise you! You will never go back to buying a cheap bull! Bulls will be semen tested before sale. Our growing bulls never eat grain.
2023 yearlingbulls (picture of reference sire, bulls are born in May 2022)
Come and see them!
SAV America (ET) x Coleman Donna 2302 RESERVED
Colburn Primo (ET) x Coleman Donna 2302
PVF Blacklist (ET) x Tar Donna 614 RESERVED
Myers Fair’n Square (IA) x Donava Blackbird 1H
Musgrave Crackerjack (ET) x Maya 247 D
It is time for us to let go of three of our proven herd sires: PJ Henry 1H, a enticing tank, DOR Raindrop 1J, an excellent heifer Rainfall son, and DOR Puddles 3J, son of N Bar Emulation.
Reference bulls for 2024 yearlings
DV Growth Fund (IA)
Colburn Primo (ET)
Connealy Emerald (IA)
SAV Raindance (IA)
SAV Territory (IA)
Girl power
We have some nice heifers for sale in 4000-40000$ price range. Come and see us.
This is an easy recipe from Josée di Stasio that is just so delicious and perfect for a winter feast.
4 lbs beef osso bucco, blade roast or cross-rib roast 3 tbsp vegetable oil 3 onions, quartered 6 big carrots in big pieces 4 garlic cloves, crushed 3 cups beef broth 1/3 cup Tamari or soy sauce 2 tbsp tomato paste (ketchup works also, trust me) 1.5 tbsp brown sugar 2 inch piece of ginger, sliced 4 star anis
Preheat oven to 325 F. Salt and pepper your meat pieces. In a Dutch oven, color the meat on all sides on medium to high heat in 2 tbsp of oil. Remove from pot and add remaining oil along with carrots and onion and sauté for 5 minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking for about 1 minute. Place meat on veggies, add stock, tamari, tomato paste, sugar, ginger and star anis. Bring to a boil, cover and bake for approximately 3 hours or until meat comes off bones easily. After an hour of baking, turn the meat around and make sure the stock level covers about half of the meat. Enjoy with mashed potatoes!
Some lesser known cuts of meat deserve more attention…
The pear, a very lean muscle from the beef thigh that gets its name from its pear shape, is great for cutting into brochette cubes and marinating, slicing into thin steaks and cooking in butter in a cast iron pan, or… to make tartare.
In fact, the pear is the ideal cut for tartar: lean, not much to trim off, and very flavorful!
A pear weighs about 3lbs, so you can take what you need for your tartare, cube the rest and marinate (no more than 4 hours if using vinegars or alcohol). Here is a great marinade for pear brochettes:
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon onion powder
2.5 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Freshly ground pepper
This way, you get two meals out of one cut!
There are many different variations of tartare, but here’s two of our favorites… Both start the same way- Dice the pear by hand with a sharp knife to get the texture you desire.
The first variation is asian fusion tartare: for 1.5 lbs of pear, you will need
1 french shallot
half a bunch of cilantro
1 lime
1 teaspoon grated ginger
3 teaspoons light soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon sambal oelek
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds. Chop the shallot and cilantro finely, zest half the lime and squeeze to get a tablespoonful of juice. Mix lime, soy sauce, maple syrup, sesame oil and sambal oelek together. Add meat, shallot, cilantro and lime zest. Plate and sprinkle sesame seeds. Enjoy with a spicy mango salad!
The second variation is more of a classic Belgian tartare. For 1.5 lbs of pear, use
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon capers, chopped
1-2 french shallots, finely diced
1 tablespoon gherkins (Maille)
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
Worcestershire sauce to taste
1 farm fresh egg yolk
3-4 tablespoons homemade mayonnaise.
Mix all together, season with lots of salt and freshly ground pepper and enjoy with slices of baguette you drizzled with olive oil and toasted in the oven.
Not all parts of a beef are equally tender. Some parts are only useful for ground beef, some parts make excellent slow roasts. Others are a little less tender, but more tasty. Some parts that are unspectacular on their own can become mind-blowing once smoked or marinated.
The ribeye, tomahawk and ribsteak are ways of cutting from the prime rib, the most delicious and expensive part of a beef. They are the ideal steaks.
The tenderloin is the most tender, but not the most tasty, part of the beef.
The round is less popular, not so tender and contains no marbling. We use it for jerky, smoked meat, etc.
We consider the tri-tip as the best kept butcher’s secret: use our special tri-tip rub for a spectacular eating experience.
Beef cooking basics
The process of raising flavorful and tender beef doesn’t stop when the cattle leave the pasture. Cooking strategy matters. A lot. There are two rules:
If the temperature of your beef changes too rapidly during the cooking process, it can cause the meat fibers to contract, which will make your meat tough.
A rapid temperature change will also cause moisture to be escape from the beef through condensation. Moisture is a key component of beef tenderness.
Before cooking
When thawing beef, always remove the original wrapping paper, cellophane, or butcher paper to prevent the tastes and smells of the packaging from leaching into the meat. It is also a good idea to rinse your frozen beef immediately after removing it from the packaging to remove any ice that may have absorbed the flavors and smells of the packaging.
Remove your steaks from the refrigerator an hour before cooking so your steaks can warm up to room temperature before they are thrown on the grill.
Korean style shortribs
Grilling
For best results when grilling, begin by searing the outside of your steaks to create a crust to lock in moisture. Then turn the grill to low to finish the cooking process on low (slow) heat to prevent excessive moisture losses and protein fiber contraction.
Beef bacon is mindblowing
What determines eating quality?
High quality lean beef requires slightly lower cooking temperatures and slightly shorter cooking times than marbled beef, yet marbling in itself is a poor indicator of quality. Continental beef such as Limousins and Belgian Blues are less marbled. Angus is marbled and Wagyu is extremely marbled.
Age is also a poor indicator of quality. Slow growing animals do not taste better.
Eating quality depends first and foremost on whether a beef is properly finished. Properly finished beef has lots of microscopic fat and a fat cap is present .
Most beeves finish around 750-900 lb carcass weight (500-650 lbs of meat). Males from large breeds such as Charolais, Wagyu or BBB should exceed this range. Females from small breeds such as Galloway or Highland cattle can be butchered at slightly lower weight.
A lot of direct marketed and especially grass-fed beef is butchered at much lower weights (unfinished!). This type of beef is sometimes referred to as baby beef. All we can say is that it is hard to give good advice on how to cook an inferior product.
Dry aging is another very important determinant of eating quality. Direct marketed beef carcasses are usually hung for 2-3 weeks. For dry aging, a fat cap (finished beef!) is important to prevent waste and spoilage.
Some parts of beef, such as the rib primal and New York strip can be aged longer. Water loss during the aging process and enzymatic reactions in the meat are in large part responsible for a more concentrated taste and a more elevated price tag.
Grass-fed beef is said to have a better composition of omega-3/omega-9, CLAs. It is said to be better for the environment, better for animal welfare and even to sequester enough carbon to mitigate its impact on climate change. On the other hand, grass-fed beef takes much longer to finish, thus ‘wasting’ precious resources and emitting more greenhouse gasses per pound of meat produced.
Since grass is their staple, we do all we can to make the grass grow better: think of timely stand renewal, managed intensive paddock rotations and environmentally sound manure management.
After a pregnancy of 9 months, all our cows calve when the deer fawn in the spring. In the fall our beeves are weaned. They weigh anywhere from 600-800 lbs.
The cows return to the field and eat hay, while the calves spend the winter in a three-sided barn, protected from the elements, eating grass silage (fermented grass) and recycled vegetable cuttings. We try to keep them growing at 2.5 lbs/day, about half the rate of growth of conventional feedlot cattle.
Come spring, these beeves now weigh about 1200 lbs. We need another season of pasturing (with added vegetables) for the beeves to be ‘finished’ and yield an 800 lbs carcass. Those that stay for part of the winter will reach around 900 lbs carcasse weight and they will get better as we go. As the grow, the growth rate goes down, but microscopic fat, marbling and fat cap increases. Finishing beeves is the most important part in terms of eating quality. Read more about this here.
Our grass-fed-and-finished beef takes about 18-24 months to finish, compared to 12 months industry standard for conventional feedlot beef with hormones. No wonder that it is a little more expensive.
Since the environment and climate are among the most important reasons for choosing grass-fed beef, it is within our mandate to improve the efficiency of our grass-fed program. The addition of vegetable cuttings and our quest for top-notch genetics are integral parts of our commitment to sustainable agriculture: improved efficiency means less waste and less GGEs.
