My First Experience with Grass-Fed Beef

Ever since watching the movie Food Inc., I’ve been interested in trying grass-fed beef. Living in Alaska, I was a bit unsure of how easy (or difficult) it would be to find up here. Those thoughts had largely drifted to the back of my head until I read a post last week over at Get Fit Slowly about grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef and dairy products. I decided it was time to get off my rump and see if I could find any grass-fed beef locally. So I did a little research, and found a farmer’s market in Anchorage that runs every Saturday during the summer that offers grass-fed beef.

On Saturday morning, we rounded up the family and all headed to the farmer’s market. It was pretty small, maybe a dozen vendors there tops. And there were actually two that were selling grass-fed beef (and pork). They both also offered the whole deal where you can buy a full (or half) cow or pig for a much lower price per pound, but we weren’t quite ready to make that kind of commitment yet. We figured we’d just buy two steaks to give it a try and see how we liked it before we even thought about buying an entire cow.

The first thing that struck us was the price – we got 2 porterhouse steaks for $16.99 per pound, which worked out to just over $28 total. That’s crazy-expensive compared to what we pay for steaks at Costco, but I at least somewhat justified it by telling myself that it’s still well under what most restaurants charge. Maybe it’s just like this in Alaska, but pretty much everything else we bought at the Farmer’s Market was just as crazy-expensive – we got a small carton of strawberries for $7, 3 small packages of various cheeses for $15, and our one reasonable purchase of the day was a (very large) zucchini for $2.

We wanted to eat the steaks while they were still as fresh as possible (we were told by the farmer that the cow had just been slaughtered on Wednesday), so we grilled them up last night, even though it was pouring rain, and the grill is on our uncovered back deck. Here’s how they looked just after going on the grill:

The steaks had noticeably less fat that what we usually buy at Costco, though to be completely honest, not as much less as I would have expected based on what I’ve heard from those that sing the praises of grass-fed beef. Once they were cooked – surprise, surprise – they looked pretty much exactly like “regular” grain-fed steaks:

As far as taste goes – well, hand-in-hand with the lower fat content, came a steak that didn’t taste quite as good as what I’m used to – but I also know that it was healthier for me (why does fat have to taste so good???). And even though it was crazy-expensive, it felt good to buy from a local farmer that I know is raising their cattle in a much more ethical manner than the massive feed-lots they showed in Food Inc.

If you are a meat eater – have you ever tried grass-fed beef? What did you think of it compared to grain-fed? Are all farmer’s markets so crazy-expensive, or is that simply another one of the “benefits” of living in Alaska?