Bubbyswhollycow’s Weblog

With the end in sight for steer number 1, here is what remains in the freezer:
8lbs of short ribs, 10 or so lbs of kabob meat (which is going into some spicy Bart’s Chili tomorrow,) 30lbs of soup bones, the tail, the tongue, the liver. That’s about it. We went to make marrow bones and some diligent porter had thrown them out. These ofal parts are small. The tail is going into oxtail soup, so I will use the bones for beef stock. Usually I would make veal stock, but I guess my veal days are over. The tongue is going to be brined and smoked next week (I keep saying that, by the way.)

This first steer has been an incredible cooking experience. Going forward, I feel confident that the whole steer is a great way to cook beef. A certain regard for the entire thing is an amazing chefual experience.

Ken Jaffe Sent us photos of his beautiful cows… Check them out!

It has been a very sad thing, having to serve regular old burger for the whole week. Today we received farmer Ron’s PA-raised grass-fed beef. This couple hundred pounds of burger will get us through til next week when we get Ken Jaffe’s steer in again. It may be superstitious, or just new-relationship giddiness, but I prefer dealing with Jaffe, mostly because we are going to be dealing with him (it seems) for a long time. He’s like Bubby’s cowboy girlfriend. No offense to Jaffe. Besides immature boyish feelings about our new-found steerman, Jaffe’s beef is really amazing. His animals are happy, and having laid eyes on them in their happy field, they really gleam with good health. Not that the PA beef is going to be less good, but the Jaffe, NY beef comes with less attitude, and more of a relationship.

As Pollan would say: Shake the hand that feeds you. Some hands shake better than others.

Sad to report, there was a lot of arguing, debate, discussion, and good old jumping up and down about what to do with the two little briskets from our first steer. The cuts are dwindling: the rib eyes will be gone by this weekend, the strip loin: gone, same with the tenderloins. The briskets were, as reported here, a hot topic.

One factor is chef ego. I did not feel like discussing the preparation of the briskets that much. Gerry was fretting and frothing at the mouth for grass fed barbecue brisket, so as to see how it behaves: “I say babecue both of them so we can really see how they behave.” “I know how they’ll behave,” I lied. “We can do one barbecue and one as pot roast,” I demurred. Maybe you wouldn’t call it that.

So, of course that’s what we did. A pot roast on Wednesday, and barbecued brisket last night.

They were both excellent, according to all reports. I did not get a chance to try either first hand, but Gerry did, and I will relay what he said as best I can: The pot roast was good, but too juicy to tell the difference between grass-fed and regular meat. The barbecue was out of this world, he said.

One big difference in the grass-fed brisket is the fat content, especially in the deckle. thats the very fatty and odd piece of meat attached to the much leaner and more substantial part of the brisket. The deckle was about an inch thick, as opposed to the usual 3-4″ thick on a regular commercial brisket. There was hardly any fat in it, but the structure was wide grained and juicy. The lean was very lean, with no visible grain, and it tasted like something (and I quote Gerry here) “other-worldly”. Ok Gerry. Come on back to earth, dude, there’s barbecue sauce on the corner of your mouth.

On Saturday, Farmer Ron from PA will deliver us 200lbs of chopmeat. He is a typical farmer in that, from our city point of view, he is a pain in the ass. He deserves, no doubt, to cast himself as an expert in the field of grass fed beef. He has, as he points out, been in the beef business since he was five, when he got his first cow. He’s finished n grain, he’s finished on corn, he’s finished on grass. I suggested that he may know how to grow beef, but he does not know how to cook so well, and that I would be happy to talk to him. His advice for cooking was to cook on a very low temperature. It is true that one does not want to overcook this meat; it tastes very dry hen you do. But starting meat in a pan that is not practically smoking is a sin, as there is no way to get a good crust on the meat in a cool pan. Farmer Ron seemed somewhat open to the discussion, but, as he said, he has thrown out a lot of meat learning to cook it. We have thrown out zero meat here. That sounds arrogant, and it probably is, but once again, it is the object of this blog to be helpful. No one wants to eat a steamed burger or steak.

As far as the farmer attitude goes, it is understandable. For nearly a decade, farmers have been marginalized, overly regulated, and pushed aside. This country used to be 83% agrarian. Now it is 2% agrarian. This seems like a dangerous state of affairs. These small farmers are the unthanked angels who have protected our farms and husbandry as best they could. Until ten years ago, they had to sell for less than they probably had into their goods, or at least at a meager subsistence. Now, it is understandable that the farmers would want to gloat a little: see, you needed us after all. And they are right. But there are those out there who would rather have used those little farmers all along, but they were impossible to find, and when one found them, they were too small to deal with for a restaurant, and too paranoid when the conversation started to roll. Goodwill is what is required for the relationship between small farm and end user to thrive.

So, farmer Ron and his pedantic burger will be here Saturday. Whew. It feels really crappy serving regular, prime, grade A meat. It just does.

Saturday I went to the farmer’s market at Union Square to see if I could source some ground beef to get me through until June 9th, when we will take delivery of a burger steer. The farmer, who I have spoken with before, is always throwing out warnings about the ethics of cow farmers, and that there is no way to get 20% fat for an 80-20 burger mix. He said he would not be able to provide us with ground beef for any less than the $7 a pound he was charging, and that, in fact, he was about to raise his price due to the fact that some late frost made the pasture freeze and he was supplementing with hay. He did, he said, know an Amish farmer who may be able to supply us with 200lbs. He called this morning and we have 200lbs coming next Saturday, so I will be out of grass fed ground beef until then.

It is my hope that when we get into a rhythm, we will not run out again, but this is a hope that will have to be brought into reality with a steep learning curve. It takes weeks to re-up on fresh beef.

Our man Ken Jaffe is already lining up animals 4-6 for us. Number 5 and 6 will be slaughtered together, and we will take delivery of them both at the same time. This already puts us well into August. That is working very far in advance for us.

We are going to run out of burger by Saturday, and the burger steer won’t be here until June 2, so we may be out of grass fed burger for ten days. It feels almost embarrassing to serve the grade A, prime, excellent Ottomanelli burger that Bubby’s has always served after having this other excellent, juicy, flavorful grass fed burger for the past week. Honestly, I have never felt pride about a burger the way that I have felt seeing these sweet grass burgers flying out the door. Pride and humility aside, the practical issue of creating a steady flow of burger has proved to be a challenge when attempting to coordinate whole steer usage; I am still not sure how it will go. It seems like I should be seriously thinking about #4 already. We have the freezer space for it, why not use it?