Grassfed beef is going mainstream!
Emeril Lagasse, best known for his wildly popular TV cooking show, is now promoting well-marbled grassfed ribeye steaks. The steaks are delivered to your door air-sealed from Red Marble Steaks, Emeril’s personal grassfed beef brand. No msg flavor enhancing spread needed on these steaks like what is typically required at steak restaurants that rely on cheaper, tasteless, feedlot sourced cuts.
Emeril promotes these grassfed yummies as only needing a dash of salt and pepper and a few minutes on the grill to bring out the very full flavor and natural juices. The catch?
Two bone-in steaks weighing 20 oz each cost $74.95! That’s a wallet biting $30/lb!
Even the healthfood store carries grassfed steaks for much much less. A tender, tasty grassfed ribeye from Grateful Harvest, for example, typically costs around $11/lb. Find a local co-op in your area that buys grassfed steaks in bulk and you can sometimes get them for nearly half the store price at $6/lb! That is a full 80% less than Emeril’s brand!
A local, grassbased farmer can supply grassfed steaks at much lower cost as well.
Why Grassfed Beef?
Why even bother to source grassfed beef?  Omega 3 fats, CLA, and Vitamin E, that’s why!   Beef from cows finished on CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) feedlots have little to no omega 3 fats in their tissues. Omega 3 fats are those heart healthy fats that Westerners are so deficient in. Grassfed cows, on the other hand, have high levels of omega 3 fats in their tissues – around 3% of total fat content!
CLA is conjugated linoleic acid, a potent anticancer and lean muscle building agent found in abundance in grassfed beef but not grain based, CAFO meat. Women with the highest levels of CLA in their bodies have a 60% lower chance of breast cancer than women with the lowest levels (Finnish study).
A third reason to seek out only grassfed beef is that animals grazing on pasture have 4 times the levels of vitamin E as cattle eating grain in confined feeding operations.
The best news is that there is no need to pay the gourmet price for a gourmet choice! Grassfed steaks just as delicious and nutritious as Emeril’s Red Marble Steaks are available from your humble local farmer!
Check out eatwild.com or contact your local Weston A. Price Chapter Leader for the list of grassbased farms in your area.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.
Sources:Â FastCompany, December 2010
eatwild.com
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Talk about being out of touch with what is happening in America today. Does he not realize we are in a recession? How discouraging for those who have no idea how and where to buy local meat products from sustainable grass fed farms, to think this is the price of healthy food. I have a friend who went to culinary school with Emeril… always the flamboyant, over the top, out of touch kind of guy. This promotes S.A.D. on many levels.
I’m glad to hear that Emeril is singing the praises of grassfed beef, even if it is $30/lb. A lot of people watch him for the entertainment value, but then may notice grassfed beef in their grocery stores for far less per lb. and will try it. Who knows, maybe Walmart will start carrying it! 🙂
No, no, no! I truly hope walmart-schmalmart doesn’t start carrying it, because you can be sure it will be an inferior product and not a true grass-fed variety. That will, in turn, give grass-fed a truly bad name.
Please don’t shop at walmart. All their junk is from China, or the most junky of the junkiest made-in-the-USA stuff. Not exactly quality and I wish they would have stayed out of foods altogether. People will buy their cheap boxed foods as long as they sell it. That’s a recipe for health disaster down the road. But, if it’s all about a buck . . . it’s either pay for GOOD foods now or pay a doctor later (who won’t be able to help you anyhow).
I am so lucky to have a good relationship with a farmer about 45 minutes from me. He is passionate about naturally raising his animals, and I typically get about a quarter share for between $7 and $8 a pound. He also raises pastured pork, has plenty of eggs from naturally raised chickens, and an organic garden to die for! He sends us recipes (he’s an amazing cook) too. I love my farmer. 🙂
I recently purchased half of a grass-fed longhorn steer. The fat is yellow. The broth from this steer is by far the best tasting (and smelling) broth I’ve ever made and talk about gelatin! A little salt and pepper is all that is needed or you’d be missing out. Go for the heritage breeds.
I’m glad to hear grass-fed beef is making a name for itself in more circles! I think people will have sticker shock in restaurants, but it may encourage them to look for farms raising beef properly and purchase it that way.
I hope that eventually all beef is raised on open pastures again and the prices normalize for the average family because EVERYONE has a right to it.
~ Lynn
I saw a preview of the Top Chef reunion show where they have a minor discussion about grass fed beef. Colicchio says he uses local farmers but he doesn’t specifically agree that he uses grass fed meats. It’ll be interesting to see the whole conversation next week.
I am getting ready to “invest” in a portion of a grass fed cow. My local butcher will have it delivered to him and he will process it however we want the cuts of meat. He is advising against steaks, however I don’t think he is a big grassfed beef advocate. PLEASE advise me on how I should get this cut. He’s telling me that I will be unhappy with steaks…but I love steaks!
I raise chickens for meat so I understand the differences in the texture and taste of meats. My chickens are awesome and I can’t eat mushy, flavorless grocery store chickens any more!
HELP!
Sounds like your butcher knows very little about grassfed steaks. You will be unhappy if you cook them the same as the factory meat, but if you cook them right you will love them! Grassfed steaks have so much more flavor, and the texture is so much better. I also hate the mushy texture so typical of factory meat.
I ruined the first grassfed steaks I cooked, but I learned how to cook them, which led to my publishing my cookbook, Tender Grassfed Meat.
Stanley, I wanted to sign up to receive your blog, but I’m not a member of FB, so do you have an e-mail version? I could find nothing on your site showing how to “sign up” or whatever.
Thanks.
One of the farmers near me sells cows for less than $4 a pound, that’s total with payment to her and the butcher. Organ meats are $2/pound, everything else is $1/pound. The biggest issue I think people face with that sort of thing though is that it’s an investment. It may be cheaper in the long run, but a quarter cow is close to $500. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford that, no matter how much it costs per pound. Even when they do manage to save enough, it’s usually at the expense of not paying other things, such as credit cards or student loans.
We live paycheck to paycheck and indeed a side or quarter beef is one of the best investments you can make! Our quarter of organically raised, pasture finished beef cost $310. Once you have it, you don’t have to buy the grocery store crap and you have wonderful cuts of meat that one on a tight budget cannot usually afford. This year I plan to get a whole side. How I pay for it is I keep a meat money envelope and when I have extra money or if I babysit, I stash the money in there. It doesn’t take out of our food budget so it isn’t a whole lot at once. When we get our tax rebate, we will put more on it since it will be a bigger investment this year. It is a good one though, delicious too!
I agree! Talk about turning people off to grassfed meat! For shame Emeril! Oh, these celebrity chefs! They have such Big Heads! Ina Garten’s recent refusal, then turn around, about meeting a request from Make a Wish, just turned me off to her completely. I am not a fan of Emeril, and this didn’t help! We need somebody on the TV Food Network cooking traditional foods!
Jamie Oliver isn’t doing too bad I’d say!! Have you seen Jamie at Home? He shows how he takes battery caged chicken and gets them healthy enough to be free range…REAL free range… his yolks are practically orange in colour! Great guy to boot! =)
emeril is a cartoon character. i can’t take a thing he says seriously. this price tag will scare the chile out of most people and lead them to believe that they can’t afford grass fed meat. what a pity. why can’t they give shannon hayes her own grass fed show?! she is an intelligent, amazing speaker and a real person with the “chops” to back it all up. emeril should continue cooking crawfish gumbo and stick to what he knows best (whatever that is – making money i guess). BAM! there i said it.
This may not be a good thing in the long run. Who will spend that kind of money? And it may actually turn people AWAY from grassfed beef. They will think they just can’t afford it and stick with storebought stuff. Sometimes I think Emeril has his fingers in way too many pies!!!
That’s very true. When I first started out, I was stressed about the cost of grass-fed meats in comparison to regular store-bought meat. But, then I stopped buying processed foods and found out I had more than enough money to go grass-fed and organic. With guys like Emeril trying to jump on the bandwagon and make a profit, they make the whole grass-fed concept a circus and detract from the real meaning: a healthier, happier, and more nourished way of eating!