Funny tasting beef

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

We had a black angus steer butchered last year and the meat tasted very funny.The hamburger was almost unedible. We put him up and grain fed him for a month. He was 1 1/2 yrs old and maybe 700 lbs. The steaks and roasts were pretty good,very tender, but did not taste like store bought.The butcher we used has an excellent reputation. What could have caused the meat to taste weird? It did not taste rancid or spoiled.

-- (hollyhock61@yahoo.com), January 30, 2002

Answers

I think it probably tastes different because it was home grown. Nothing homegrown tastes the same as store bought. We butchered a Jersey last year and it didnt taste like store bought meat either. I didn't care for the taste of the hamburger, but the steaks and roasts were fine. The liver was very good.

-- Jo in PA (farmerjo02@yahoo.com), January 30, 2002.

I am curious to know why you would want your meat to taste like 'store'bought' anyway? Isnt that one of the main things we are trying to avoid??

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), January 30, 2002.

What exactly did you feed him and what was he getting before the month on grain? Fishmeal is a real no-no but is used as a protein suppliment anyways. 1.5 years and 700 pounds?????? Shouldn't he have been closer to 1100 or even more?

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), January 30, 2002.

I have purchased two pigs from a friend who raises them, the first was great, the second has not been. We have not liked this one at all (sure a lot to eat up though) I really believe our pig was switched on us, for an older animal. Several years ago we had a butcher switch part of our beef cow. You could tell when you looked at the cuts the fat was old yellow looking , with old yellow bones. The rest had nice white fat and white bones. Even the hamburger from this "cow" was tough. I grew up on home raised pigs and beef so I know what the taste and look should be. I hate to say it, but some places switch your meat. Also if the area it is hung and cured is not clean and fresh you can pick up off odors. Denise

-- Denise K. (Rabbitmom2@webbworks.com), January 31, 2002.

Not tasting like store bought is to be expected. Even a month on grain is not going to erase the taste of whatever he was raised on before that. When you say the roasts and steaks were fine and the hamburger unedible, that sounds like something got into the hamburger, though. Otherwise they should have tasted the same, wouldn't they? If it were a disinfectant type flavour that you could identify that would be a clue. If it's just an off beef taste, it was probably just what you raised him on.

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), January 31, 2002.


I agree some unethical butchers switch (and steal pieces) meat around, but just as a note of interest,yellow fat can also mean it was not fed grain. Grain-fed animals have white fat, what most people are accustomed to seeing; grass-fed cattle have creamy-yellow fat, which is much much healthier.

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), January 31, 2002.

Did the butcher "season" the meat by letting it hang for a couple weeks or more? If so that will definitely give the meat a much different taste. Because it tastes so different than store bought (unless you are old enough to remember what meat used to taste like) some people think it is bad.

-- beckie (none@this.time), January 31, 2002.

Couple of aspects:

As noted, the steer should have weighed in at over 1,000 pounds at that age. Might he have been a runt who never really grew properly? What was his hanging weight?

Graining before slaughter is intended to put marbling within the muscles. What did you feed and how much per day? How much of it did he utilize? Were unprocessed kernels showing up in the manure? (Put a shovel full in a bucket of water, stir and pour off the liquid. Take a good look at what is left.) You may not have fed him enough, long enough, and in a form which is readily digestible and convertible to fat. Also, allowing the steer to wunder around on pasture somewhat offsets the intent, which is to tenderize the meat. Some people pen confine for the final feeding so it doesn't get exercise.

Since the best cuts tasted OK and the hamburger didn't, I'm going to take a slightly educated guess and say one or two (or both) things happened. The first is the hamburger was far too lean. If there wasn't enough excess fat cut off of the better cuts of your carcass, surely the processor had some on hand from other carcasses he could have added to the mix to increase fat level. The other is best cuts are normally slow cooked while retail hamburger is normally fast cooked. Fast cook pasture-raised hamburger and you can expect it to taste poor. It simply doesn't have the fat content to give that taste most are accustomed to. It should be either slow cooked or used in something like meatloaf.

The amount of yellow fat is somewhat determined by breed also, particular a carcass with any Jersey influence. In France beef with yellow fat sells at a premium since the yellow in it is the same stuff (?) you get from carrots. A carcass straight off pasture is more likely to have yellow fat, but certainly not a guarantee.

And yes, I have heard other people swear they didn't get back the carcass they took in. I've also heard the owners and employees of custom processors eat very well.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), January 31, 2002.


P.S.:

Last year I carried a steer to the local custom processor for someone. As soon as we turned off the road he knew where he was heading and started bellowing. He absolutely didn't want to get out of the trailer - had to use a stock stick on him (something I flat out hate to do, but there are times when nothing else works). I am 100% convinced he smelled death there and knew his fate.

Cattle like this can end up as what are called 'dark cutters', from the excess adrenaline in their system.

Better would have been for him to have been dead before he realized it, such as head down in a feed bucket on the farm. With a front end loader it can be raised, gutted, skinned, deheaded and taken in as halves to the processor to hang to age and then cut. (The processor will probably want the hide since he sells them as part of his fee structure.)

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), January 31, 2002.


This reminds me of an incident in Kotzebue Alaska, just north of the Arctic Circle back in the late sixties. A friend determined he could make money selling fresh eggs as most of the eggs in Hansens grocery store were boat eggs, i.e. came in on the fall boat and were kept over the winter. Even socalled airfresh eggs from Anchorage were at least a month old. This friend set up a poultry operation in the upper story of a two story home. He lived in the bottom, chickens would help with the heat he figured. Bought all the equipment and baby chicks and did a lot of word of mouth advertising about how great the eggs would be. When he delivered his first batch of eggs to Hansens, they went like hotcakes even though the price was exorbitant. The second batch went a little slower. By the end of the week the eggs were not selling at all. When he started querying the customers, many of them eskimo, the response frequently was that they didn't look right in the pan and they tasted funny. Within a month he had shut down the production, butchered the chickens for meat and hauled the equipment to the dump. I guess taste is determined by what one is used to.

-- David A. (mncscott@ak.net), January 31, 2002.


David:

What you described would seem to be a classic case of saying this, and only this, is going to be my market. In his case, fresh eggs. All he needed to do was to store the eggs for a month or more and then sell them for maybe 80% of the cost of eggs flown in. Say storing them for 40 days the first month, 37 days the second, etc., gradually changing their taste to fresh.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), January 31, 2002.


Thank you for all your answers. This was the first steer we had ever raised and had butchered. I would like to try it again. We have 1 steer and 2 baby bulls soon to be steers. I like to know what I am eating and that my animals have been treated as humanely as possible. It did take me a while to get use to country eggs but I don't think I could ever get use to that hamburger. It was just too yucky. Maybe the butcher did do some hokey pokey. I'll try another and a few other suggestions. Thanks again.

-- (hollyhock61@yahoo.com), January 31, 2002.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ