Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat

I'm a serious home cook with several years of experience cooking exclusively with pastured proteins. I purchased this book when I first made the switch from conventional to grass-fed beef and bison in hopes that it would provide general principles for cooking various cuts of pastured animals as well as a diverse set of recipes demonstrating how those principles can be put into action in various cuisines. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but this book failed to deliver on both of these fronts. It's immediately apparent from leafing through this book that its author is not a chef. This isn't necessarily a problem; there are lots of good cookbooks written by non-chefs that are filled with tasty and diverse recipes (Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, Michelle Tam's Nom Nom Paleo, and Melissa Joulwan's Well Fed are great examples). This just isn't one of them. Don't get me wrong... there are some decent recipes in the book They're just outnumbered by page after page of variations on the same formulas.For example consider the first set of recipes in the book (which concern making broths). In an ordinary cookbook, this chapter would have taken 2 or 3 pages since each recipe essentially follows the same basic formula: 5 pounds of meaty bones, water to cover, a bit of vinegar, and aromatics plus parsley. There's no real need to have a separate page-long recipe for beef, bison, lamb, chicken, and turkey broths. The broths themselves take 12 to 14 hours to prepare and are not nearly as flavorful or nutritious as one could make in an hour or two in a pressure cooker. Pressure cooking preserves nutrients and extracts tons of gelatin from bones, which eliminates the need to add vinegar. It also keeps fats from oxidizing because of the reduced cook time.All of the recipes in the book follow the annoying formula of listing every ingredient with all of the modifiers possible. Everything is organic, pastured, whatever. I have no objection to the author insisting on these sorts of ingredients - indeed, it's crucial that he does. But it would have been nice if Fishman simply made a disclaimer up front that all vegetables, herbs, and spices are organic, all butter is pastured, all salt is unrefined sea salt etc. instead of ramming it down our throat on every single page. A typical recipe from this book might call for organic yellow onion, organic garlic, organic Italian parsley, organic thyme, organic unfiltered extra virgin olive oil, organic extra virgin olive oil or pastured butter, and freshly ground organic black pepper. It's overkill. We get it, Stanley... buy organic. Keep it pastured. Make a disclaimer and let's move on with our lives.This stylistic quibble aside, the majority of recipes seem to be variations on a very basic theme. The "typical recipe" I outlined above is typical not only because of its absurd reassertion of its organicness, but also because the ingredients listed are essentially the backbone of every recipe. The result is a poverty of variety. This might not be apparent when looking through the names of recipes, since there are a ton of recipes claiming to represent various cuisines (French, Chinese, American, Polish, Hungarian, Scottish, etc.) but closer examination reveals them to be similar. Virtually every recipe begins with marinating meat in unfiltered organic extra virgin olive oil (UOEVOO). Fishman insists that UOEVOO is the key to creating tender pastured meat because it purportedly contains tenderizing enzymes that are removed if the oil is filtered. I have never seen this claim documented and Fishman never states what particular enzymes are supposed to be at work (or how they work). I also have not found an UOEVOO marinade to make an appreciable difference in the tenderness of the resulting meat. Fishman's narrow focus on the enzymes supposedly contained in UOEVOO leads him to ignore other well-documented natural sources of tenderizing enzymes such as papain in papaya, bromelain from pineapple, and actinidin in kiwifruit.But back to the lack of variety in the recipes. "Steak in the Style of Ancient China" sounds like an exotic dish, but it's really just a ribeye (marinated in UOEVOO) sprinkled with sea salt and pan seared in duck fat. (This doesn't exactly scream "Ancient China" to me, but whatever). A "Steakhouse Style Steak with American Flavors" is an UOEVOO marinated steak, salted and peppered, and cooked in butter. Did you catch that? It's just steak coated in olive oil and cooked in butter with salt and pepper. The more complicated steak recipes are typically just meat marinated in UOEVOO and aromatics (occasionally with herbs) and then cooked simply. "Polish Hungarian German Onion Steak" is a real mouthful to say, but it's just steak and onions marinated in UOEVOO and then cooked in bacon fat. "French Style" steaks are marinated in UOEVOO with carrots, celery, and onion plus thyme, parsley and bay leaf. "Italian Flavored" ones are essentially the same, but with no bay leaf or thyme and an addition of rosemary. The only difference in flavor profiles between steak "with the flavor of Old California" and "Portuguese Beef in the Style of Migas" is that the former contains oregano. I guess oregano adds five thousand miles of flavor. Steaks aside, "Romanian Roast Beef" consists of a beef shoulder roast marinated in UOEVOO and Italian parsley, garlic, onion, and black pepper. What makes it Romanian? Maybe it's the bacon that you top the roast with. I have no idea. The "Exotic Yankee Pot Roast" is exotic because it uses leeks instead of onions. "Spanish Style Pan Roast" is a roast cooked with salt, pepper, garlic, butter, and EVOO. What makes it Spanish? The cast iron pan you cook it in (apparently).I should be clear that these are not inherently bad recipes. If you properly follow the instructions, you'll almost always end up with something that tastes good. (This isn't exactly high praise. There are plenty of other books out there with recipes for more flavorful [yet still WAP/Paleo friendly] meals). The real problem is the lack of variety in terms of seasoning and flavor. There are a few dishes that stand out from the background in this regard but they're few and far between.Discussion of more techniques would also be appreciated. When pan cooking steak, for instance, one can develop a flavorful crust by continuously basting the meat with butter, thyme, and a clove or two of crushed garlic. This technique is commonly used in restaurant kitchens and its absence from Fishman's book is curious. Another nice technique for pan-cooking steak is to get a cast iron skillet ripping hot and to sear your steak while constantly flipping (every 45-60 seconds) until it's done. This develops a good crust while insuring that the interior doesn't overcook. Grass-fed steaks also benefit from mechanical tenderization prior to cooking; a quick once-over with a Jaccard tenderizer will shorten the muscle fibers and reduce shrinkage when cooking (which helps to keep the meat more juicy during the cooking process). Smoking meat at low temperatures is another useful but undiscussed technique that adds flavor and helps to break down tough collagen over longer cooking times. Properly smoked ribs or brisket from pastured cattle or bison are fantastic. (Smoking is discussed in Fishman's other book). Additionally, it would have been nice to see some recipes that employed a pressure cooker, since their hot and moist cooking environment can cook tough cuts of pastured meat (shank, short ribs, chuck roasts) while also keeping it tender and juicy -- and in a fraction of the time that it would take to do a traditional braise in a crock pot or oven. The omission of pressure cookers probably reflects the prevailing (but mistaken) view of the Winston A Price Foundation about the impact of pressure cooking on nutrition. Hopefully WAP will see the light someday soon and lose their prejudice against this useful and nutritious method of cooking.The one useful tip I got from this book was to incorporate organ meat sausages into ground beef applications to hide their flavor while getting their nutritional value. It's a clever way to add vitamins to meatballs and meatloaf (I keep my burgers liver-free). But for me, this trick wasn't worth the price of admission. If you're just starting out and haven't had much experience cooking various cuts of meat -- pastured or otherwise -- this book is an okay introduction and has some decent recipes. But there are better books out there for learning how to cook meat (e.g. The Complete Meat Cookbook by Aidells and Kelly). Don't freak out because other books don't focus on pastured meat; so long as you use your senses as you cook, control your heat, and (for larger cuts) keep an eye on the meat's internal temperature, you'll do fine using recipes designed around conventionally produced meat. If you're not a beginner in the kitchen, I'd skip this book entirely.

I'm very grateful to have learned the many techniques available to produce tender grassfed beef. I have to say that while some of the roast recipes have been uber delicious and tender, I am still challenged with steaks. We got our steaks cut at 1 1/2", and I wonder if we'd have more luck with a thinner cut. Using unfiltered olive oil marinade for 24 hours and even using the meat tenderizer tool, my steaks are still tougher than I'd like. The flavor was very good, but I long for a more tender steak. Anyway, this book is still worth the investment. The recipes are pretty easy with very good flavor and you will learn some very interesting and delicious ways to tenderize grassfed beef.

I enjoyed this book and found it very informative and I consider myself knowledgeable about grassfed beef preparation, my wife and I buy grassfed meat whenever we can for the health benefits(the list is long and quite surprising). It is a little more finicky about temperature and length of cooking time due to the nature of meat that is developed as nature intended, it is quite different than corn finished or corn fed beef in texture, fat composition and amount of fat, and of course the taste. So, for those considering introducing more grassfed meat I recommend this book wholeheartedly. It is spot on and even though I have been cooking and experimenting with cooking the perfect grassfed piece of meat for a long time, I learned some great techniques and lots of good information that I otherwise would have never known.

I read an article by the author writing about goose but it doesn't seem to be in the book. Other than that, the book is fine.

I recently purchased this book because I have recently murdered a few pieces of 100% grass fed beef. This book is a life saver. The recipes I have tried have been delicious and the meat is tender & succulent. I love his resource section because now I can find great products easily. This book is a perfect fit into my life style and it compliments nicely the Essential Easting series of books by Janie Quinn which I use everyday. To sum things up-Life is good!!! The only problem I have now is that my family likes my cooking more than going out to eat.

This cookbook is full of exceptionally valuable information on how to prepare grassfed meat. My wife and I switched from grain fed to grassfed beef recently and finding good information on how to prepare this wonderful beef is difficult. If you cook grassfed beef the same way as you would grain fed beef, you'll destroy the wonderful meat. This cookbook provides excellent techniques on how to prepare the beef as well as excellent techniques for preparing beef broth. It is the best of the cookbooks for grassfed meat that we have been able to find.

I guess i was expecting more. Author seems in search of the perfect steak, and that requires specific combination of times and temps for the different cuts from each species. That describes most of the recipes. While great if you can afford it, I got a lot more out of "Long way on a little" by Shannon Hayes. Hayes will stay in my kitchen. This book will not.

I've had this book for several months now and have had no luck! I've rested the meat on the counter to come to room temp (2 hours), soaked it in buttermilk overnight, put the olive oil on it and let it sit..all shoe leather.The steps in this book takes planning, you just don't pull a steak out of the freezer and think you can grill asap..I don't think this book helped me at all. There must be a better way to enjoy healthy beef..I already know "why" I should this way, just tell me how to cook it.