Eat a Country Steak
It’s farmers market season. If you’ve never tried a country steak, you’re in for a treat and a revelation.
Meat that you get directly from the farmer tastes better than what you get at the grocery store.
It’s true.
Massive corporate processing houses (slaughterhouses) and grocery stores are required to use a lot of bleach and other cleaning chemicals to keep surfaces clean.
That’s exactly how the meat ends up tasting.
While smaller processing houses use similar cleaning techniques, care is taken to preserve the texture and true flavor of the meat. That’s the beauty of small, family processing businesses.
If you’ve never tried a country steak, you’re in for a treat and a revelation.
You’re going to find that some of the farmers that come into a city for a farmers market are going to charge some pretty steep prices.
Those prices may be justified and they might not be.
We have a farmer at our farmers market that drives a very fancy rig to carry his freezers of meats and grills. He comes to market with great fanfare and hangs up expensive signs with expensive prices.
His frozen meat is wrapped in white paper stamped with the weight and cut. You can’t see what you’re getting. Once purchased the small white packages are slipped into expensive twisted rope handled thick white shopping bags showing off the name of their business in bold typeface on both sides of the bag.
He also makes “sliders” that look like mini burgers, four ounces of his ground beef, plain or seasoned. You can top it with micro-greens. One slider, five dollars. Three of them might fill you up, or at least take the edge off being hungry.
Teases really.
He sells his ground beef for ten dollars a pound. He told us once he sells 250 of these sliders each market day. Not hard math to do.
He also offers complicated recipes that to me seems like it would hide the taste of the meats and show he has no clue what the other farmers might be offering as accompaniments.
This farmer also puts out a weekly newsletter to his customers that describes every aspect of his farm life, including the costly mistakes he makes, the half million-dollar farmhouse renovation and his new expensive equipment.
Who do you think is paying for these things?
Then you’ll have the farmer who comes to market with his freezer in his pickup truck and uses a chalkboard to list his somewhat reasonable prices. He’ll tell you how he prepares his meats and maybe the sides from the market he enjoys with it.
His meat will be shrink wrapped in plastic, much like what you see in my RTIC cooler photo above. He’ll be counting on you to have your own shopping bag and if you don’t have one, he’ll slip his product into a recycled plastic Lowes or Kroger bag for you.
Which meat is going to taste better?
You won’t know until you try both, but my experience has been that the humbler of the two examples is going to have the best product.
Here’s the “Good to Know” part:
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions
Meat is something that you want prepped to perfection, and that starts with how the animals are raised. Example questions:
Where did the meat come from? Is it truly local?
Were the animals grass-fed?
Do you add grain to the mix of feed? If yes,
Was the beef finished with grain?
What conditions did the animals live in?
How do you keep your meat frozen?
Any farmers market rancher will be able to answer these questions without hesitation. Grass fed beef is leaner and in my opinion not as good as beef that also gets grain like corn. Grain feeding produces marbling and flavor.
Grass fed beef can be tough if you cook it too much, medium rare is the only way to enjoy this.
If a cow was “finished” being fed grain, you’ll have pretty good flavor and marbling - that’s what you want. One of the farmers we buy from feeds grass and grain all along and this produces a fatty cut.
Bring a Cooler
Unless your farmers market trip is the last stop of the day, you’ll want to invest in a decent cooler that will keep your meats frozen and fresh until your return home. Pack your cooler up with fresh ice or ice packs. I use an RTIC cooler with ice packs when I shop at the farmers market.
Go Early if You Want Specific Cuts
Sometimes, people already know what they want from meat at a Farmers Market. They have specific vendors and desired cuts of meat in mind. However, customers must remember that markets are fair game, and most vendors aren’t going to be able to hold onto choice cuts for customers.
So, if you want something specific, remember how the early bird always catches the worm. Make sure you are one of the first customers of the day and you’ll get the cuts you want.
Some farmers will offer bulk buying meaning you’ll be signing up for a whole, half or quarter of a beef. You’ll see terms like: All prices and weights for a whole, half, or quarter beef are based on hanging weight, and include cutting, wrapping, and freezing. Beef take-home weights are approximately 25-35% less than carcass hanging weight due to trimming and deboning. This means just what it says.
Very informative! Thanks. I always prefer buying from someone with the least bells and whistles.