Grass Fed Beef vs Grain Fed Beef (What's the Difference) | The Bearded Butchers

[Music] we're back it's time for another video this time it's going to be grass-fed beef versus grain-fed beef scott's going to do some explaining about the differences between the two and then we're going to move these onto our processing floor and show you some comparisons so take it away that's right and one of the reasons why we're out here we're back on the slaughter floor is we roll these out of the cooler and um we get a lot of questions about the dry aging process we wanted to roll these back out we wanted to re-weigh the carcass after the dry aging process to talk a little bit about what dry aging is why we use it why um it's no longer an industry standard so the reason why we use it is you basically have three things that happen with the dry aging process number one you're going to get the enzymes begin to break down the the muscle fiber so the meat becomes more tender number two you're gonna have some of the moisture evaporate from the carcass flavor becomes more robust a little bit more intense and number three you get a safer carcass and the reason being in that air chilled environment for the period of time that we hung this carcass there's a lot of research out there that supports the fact that we do not have um e coli or salmonella present at the other end of the the process so in other words when these animals come off the harvest floor if we had a pathogen like e coli or salmonella present on the carcass which we have zero tolerance for any fecal matter or contamination to enter our cooler but it was an unseen particle you couldn't see it when it goes in that air-trailed environment it simply can't survive for that period of time at those temperatures and that's supported by the fact that we have never had a positive e coli or salmonella with all of our sampling done here so um yeah basically three things happen uh you get a more tender beef a more flavorful beef and a safer beef but um while that process happened we talk about the intense fish intensifying the flavor moisture's evaporating out of the carcass so we wind up with a lighter carcass that's one of the reasons why industry no longer does this um and in speed too so this these particular carcasses were actually butchered um almost three weeks ago were at day 19 and we did hang them a little bit extra long just because we wanted to for the sake of this video we wanted it both side by side and we just had that opportunity so they hung for a few extra days which is fantastic um basically day zero to day seven is the most dramatic change we'll never touch a carcass before day seven seven through fourteen you have a much more gradual curve and then it continues through 14 through 21 days we rarely ever hang past 21 days the carcasses each lost about 17 pounds while they were in our cooler that moisture evaporated out of them we do what's called hot carcass weight so as soon as they're slaughtered they're weighed that's how we pay our farmers it's actually a legal standard that you weigh them just after they're harvested and then they go in the cooler and so 17 pounds lost from each carcass this one began at 407 hot uh carcass weight now weighs 390. that's about um five percent or so of the carcass evaporated this one weighs 266 and it now weighs 249 so again 17 pounds or about six and a half percent of this carcass just poof so that also drives the price up a little bit we talk about premium prices we pay our farms now it should be noted wayne county's own cattle here we had one from the grain fed farm which is in wayne county about 15 miles away this comes from green vista farm worcester ohio about 12 miles away we're going to talk a little bit more about the different farming practices just looking at the carcasses you can obviously see a big size difference obviously different things go into it breed of cattle and then we're talking about the feed source so grain fed versus grass-fed and then you can maybe see just a little bit different color of the carcass this one's going to have a little bit more yellow fat obviously a leaner carcass so we're going to get a little bit more of those details as we run them through the processing floor we're going to talk about why we do both varieties of cattle what makes them different and it's really just about what works for us and the customer being our boss they've kind of uh this is kind of something that they wanted so we we produce it here white feather meat so let's get them into the processing floor and talk a little bit more about the differences never miss a monday it's time to move these onto those hooks now that we're back in the cooler i'll talk a little bit about the coolers and the dry aging process so this cooler um it uses low flow evaporators those are something that keep the air moving around in here and we hold it at 35 degrees which is the optimal dry aging temperature as you noted the grass-fed carcass by weight lost 17 pounds compared to the grain fed which also lost 17 pounds you may wonder why the grass fed as a percentage of its beginning weight loss more it's because it has less fat cover that fat is actually going to hold more of the moisture in so with the with the leaner animals you typically get a higher percentage bison for example we actually don't hang them quite as long because they just they'll dry out too much because they don't have that protective fat layer around the carcass you notice also seth leaves me with a bigger carcass he needs to do a little more working out than i do let's get them cut up we'll get them pushed out on the floor and let's do some comparisons the customer is our boss essentially we um here at white feather meets make sure that for our retail store we give the customer the value and what they ask for so about 10 years ago customers were asking about grain-fed beef so we at the time were a custom meat processor so we were processing beef for green vista farm in worcester ohio and that was about the time that they started up their grass-fed beef operation about 10-12 years ago so we began harvesting the grain-fed beef from their farm so that our customers had essentially a healthier option because when you're talking about grain fed versus grass-fed now ethically these animals are raised very similar in the sense that they they're both raised beginning on pasture i mean all cows drink milk as babies so basically they start out the same way as baby cats born on the farm out in the green pasture and then what happens is um on green vistas farm they are essentially an organic farm we're talking no spray no pesticide no herbicide use locus fence posts so they're non-treated all this all this stuff so that what we have is an animal that's that's only ever ate grass in its entire existence now the customer was seeking that out because number one they wanted an animal that was guaranteed guaranteed to be free of any pesticides herbicides you know any chemicals number two there's a belief system out there that animals like cows ruminating animals are only supposed to eat grass so we like to say it's kind of like olive oil versus butter when you have the 100 grass-fed beef you're going to have more of that olive oil version you're going to have a little bit better balance of your omega-3 and 9 fats to your omega-6 fats basically just a healthier option there's argument for the environment as well the animals that are raised out on pasture if you think about it you know you don't have um you know manure on the feed lot it's just going right back into the grasses and it's very important too to mention that the grasses that you use cannot just be any old thing that grows up in the backyard or the back 40. jonathan berger green vista farm has a background in soil and water converse conservation so he had a a good basis knowledge for starting his grass-fed operation what happened um was he did all the research to plant the right grasses on his farm and then you know to answer the question you may see it in the grocery store why is grass-fed beef more expensive than grain-fed beef should be easy enough to feed a beef grass right you just grass is free well that's not entirely true one to go back to that statement that you have to plant the grasses and manage the grasses so that you get the right grass things like fescue can off-flavor the beef and you'll get a beef that doesn't have it's not palatable it just doesn't taste very good think in the sense where if you you know if you eat an organic uh granola bar for example and it just tastes disgusting still granola bar you could have the same thing with beef if they're not raised with the right management so grass-fed beef take longer to finish than grain fed beef it's actually cheaper and more efficient to feed an animal or finish an animal out on on grain than it is grass here are the primals that we talked about we have a tenderloin we have a strip loin we have the rib eye section we also have a sirloin so these are going to be what we do our comparisons with we'll do the same thing on the grain fed half as we did with this grass-fed half and then once we have everything out here on the floor we'll cut each individual primal section into stakes so you can see a side by side also while i have you here a lot of people ask about the pecan steak they want to know where it comes from and what it is so this is the sirloin primal right here this whole piece located right on the top of this primal is this portion right here this is the pecan so there's a seam right here and if i pull this apart you could basically do with your fingers if you wanted to i would remove the pecan which is technically the sirloin cap from the remaining portion of the sirloin so just wanted to let you guys know the ones that have been asking pecan this is where it comes from now you know okay now on to the grain fed beef it should be noted the only difference really between our grain-fed beef and the grass-fed beef as far as that transition from the pasture where you know it's it's drinking mama's milk is the 100 grass-fed beef which does carry a third-party certification they're certified 100 grass-fed by the american grass-fed association when we go to the grain-fed beef really the only difference ethically like i mentioned there are never any steroids antibiotic use or growth hormones in either of the varieties what you do then is you take and you just allow this animal to begin eating grain so it's not transferred to a feed lot it's simply just presented with the option to eat grain along with the grass and then as it gets closer to um slaughter weight it's fed more and more grain still continues to eat the roughage which is like your your grass or your hay while it's eating as much grain as it wants so really what happens is you get a lot more energy into this carcass and that's that's essentially why they get bigger on why they get more fat on them now we cut a little bit different styles for different customers the grass-fed customer typically that's somebody that's seeking out um the beef that's a healthier version or a perceived healthier version so they're going to be looking to they eat a little bit different in other words they're not going to look for that big you know 32 steak we don't really even cut the tomahawks as much out of the grass-fed simply because that customer typically doesn't want that type of cut so as you see us go through the grain fed a little bit different style little bit bigger cuts it's a little bit more for that person that really likes to put it on the grill see that flare up and just get that nice beefy mellow texture the buttery flavor that you get from the grain that's been added into this beef diet beef are essentially the standard across the u.s a lot of grass-fed beef can have a both domestic and international source it should be noted again that our beef came right through the back door we slaughtered them here we're blessed to be in an agricultural rich county here in wayne county where we can draw from these different farms and we walk them right through the back door and that's so that we can source the correct product for the customer that comes into our retail store um if you were cutting this style for you know different custom applications you really have not nearly as much control over the source or the beef that you bring in the back door but for us we bring in and you know so we we bring the animal in the back door and then you know we have to to adapt the cutting style for the customer and for the season too because obviously here in ohio we have four seasons so we're going to have you know for example roast stew meat those sort of things you're going to be cutting in the fall through the winter you're going to do more of the beef patties the grilling cuts through the through the the spring summer months so we're always cautious of you know how we cut an animal because whenever we bring in a whole carcass we then have to sell every single ounce off of that carcass so that we have you know obviously we remained profitable so it can vary by season it can vary by um the variety whether we're doing 100 grass fed or 100 100 grain fed so here's all the primals grain fed tenderloin grass-fed tenderloin you can see the difference in color and size between those two sirloin here's the grass fed here's the grain fed there's that pecan that we talked about this is the whole what why you got to be interrupting my videos getting so close to lunch how about i go fire up a grill and we'll put the pecans on how's that sound that's a great idea so scott's gonna go fire up a grill i'm gonna pull the pecan off of the grain fed and the grass fed we're going to slice them we're going to put them on some skewers we're going to sprinkle them with a little bit of that beer to butcher blend seasoning and we're going to try them here at the end of the video so great idea scott my belly's starting to rumble so all right moving on rib sections grain fed grass-fed this one you may i know you can't tell in the video but it's kind of hard that's because we have a little trick we put it in the freezer and we freeze it just a little bit so that when we slice this it it's going to have this a real nice uniform consistency and it doesn't smash inside the vacuum steel pouch there isn't as much fat on this to to hold it uniform so just a little butcher's tip a little trick throw it in the freezer that way it makes it easier to slice strip section grain fed you can see the the back fat on this one versus the grass fed super lean has a little bit of that maybe yellowish tint to it so laying side by side here on the table you can definitely pick out which one is grass-fed and which one is grain fed by the size by the color now let's get these sliced up into individual steaks so check back it's time to start slicing and dicing victorinox eight inch breaking knife works pretty good especially since these primals aren't super huge if they were bigger i'd probably use a ten inch but um gonna cut these about an inch and a quarter we'll just move our way down through here we'll cut the grain fed first which is what i'm on and then we'll move to the grass fed and then we'll move from the rib sections through each primal and we'll do the comparison of each there's the grain fed let's get these all laid out on the table it's time to cut the grass fed you can see i mentioned tightening that up in the freezer that way it keeps its nice uniform shape and when you vacuum seal it it doesn't smash those edges down but you can already see the difference here marbling difference size difference and color you know we thought doing this video would be great to educate people and the best way to do this is just to get both animals out here both carcasses and get them side by side there's the rib section let's move on to the strip grain fed strip steaks it's the new york strip those are some dandy's nice fat cover on them so here again we'll start with the grain fed first and then we'll move to the grass fed get down here to the end there's always one stake left that it's kind of a mediocre we don't save it as a stake for our retail just because it has a gristle line going through here if you go to the grocery store keep an eye out for this you want a steak without that gristle in there see how this one no gristle this one runs right here that's that very last steak where it meets a sirloin we choose to turn this into kebabs or stir-fry instead so just a little tip when you're at the store you may want to keep an eye out for that if you want the best possible eating experience that you can have so there's the grain fed i'm gonna run out of room in a hurry grass-fed strips now if you look at the difference between these two you can really see the comparison difference there very lean darker red versus that cherry red with the marbling and the back fat on there big difference the other thing too that you can see is on the grain fed beef it was a larger framed carcass so it did produce a few more steaks per side compared to the grass fed so keep that in mind if you go to the local processor you've been eating grain fed beef your whole life and you always get 12 strip steaks back every time he cuts then you deliver him 100 grass-fed beef and all of a sudden you get one two three four five six seven eight don't call him and say i only got strip steaks this time because a lot of it has to do with the animal that you delivered to him so another butcher's tip who doesn't love a good fillet now keep in mind it's not gonna have the flavor that a another steak like the ribeye would have if you're going for tender there it is you get that up next to a ribeye you can see the fat difference personally i choose a rib eye over a filet but like we like to say whatever floats your boat cuts like butter comparison between the two there again has that darker red versus the lighter cherry red with the marbling in there grass fed's a lot leaner let's just get them laid out side by side all right scott mentioned pecana and that's a great idea because that's what we're going to eat for lunch so right here there's the seam you can get it started with the tip of your knife then use your fingers to kind of pull it apart and this latonya it ends about right here you can see actually see a line right there so can't really go much further than that and that's this is going to be just fat right here there's no there's no meat so we're just going to go ahead and take this off like that this we will cut into sirloin steaks and this we're going to slice it put it on skewers season it up i think we'll use some bearded butcher black seasoning today that our favorite rub for steak which has the coffee in it and the molasses the meat candy put some of that on there we're going to cook these up for lunch so we're going to start up at this end and we're just going to cut down through here on these pecans about an inch to an inch quarter thick all the way down to the end then what we're going to do is we're going to fold them kind of like that stick a skewer through them and grill them so there's the pecan let's get started on the sirloin now when you come into our store you can buy whole sirloins or you can buy half sirloins and by a half sirloin what we do is we save these little chunks no gristle in them and then buy a whole sirloin we simply just cut all the way across the whole primo and you end up with a piece like this so a lot of it we do is for our specific customers needs and maybe they can't eat that big portion so we like to offer it in both options whole or half onto the grass fed you can see how much smaller the pecan is on the grass fed so pecan pecan we've we've figured out that we believe it that you say it kanya kanya like that that's that's what we're rolling with brazilian cut starting to gain popularity here in the united states see how much smaller these are very lean all across the board the stakes are pretty similar with the leanness and the fat cover grain fit versus grass running out of room on my table spencer shuts cut a couple more of those half sirloins and a couple whole sirloins any of the pieces like this you can see how uneven that is thin on one side and thick on the other that we will cut into kebabs along with the rest of our little scrap pile it's time to give you an overview of what's on our table the primals that we talked about the ribeye the strip the sirloin pecan the tenderloin which you cut into fillets they're all all out here on the table this was actually very good for me because i see them both but i never see them really side by side as i'm cutting them so it's been kind of cool to see the differences and i hope you've enjoyed it as well starting down here rib eye grain fed grass-fed very different you can you can tell that size-wise fat we've talked about that marbling fat cover color of fat color of meat all that you can see the the differences there moving on to the strips same thing grain fed grass fed very very different moving over here we have the tenderloin which we cut into the fillets grain fed versus grass-fed the pecan grain-fed grass-fed and then what we're left with is the sirloin half sirloins whole sirloins so and this pecan is going to be our lunch stick around for that portion like i said we're going to throw them on some skewers and put some seasoning on we're going to get them grilled up but hopefully you guys have enjoyed watching this unfold and seeing the differences between these two um same species they're just raised in a different manner now if you went into wagyu or even prime usda prime grain-fed beef you're gonna see even more of a contrast with you know let's say a rib eye some people are probably gonna say well i raise angus beef in the midwest and i can produce a steak better than this one you certainly can however this has not been graded prime so keep that in mind we do have those cuts available something's just full of marbling there again but we wanted to keep this comparison you know somewhat close but not not just completely drastic one way and then the other somewhere in between but uh we think we picked pretty two of two pretty good carcasses for that and so stick around we're going to get some of these pecans seasoned up we'll get them on the grill we're going to taste them it's pecan time we had a chance to break off the floor come out here just outside of our processing room and we've got the treasure fired up we're gonna cook some of these pecans first off beard butcher black i've got the shaker don't forget it's also available in the bucket to refill the shaker so anyways we're just going to go ahead and get started and we like to season these pretty liberally and just get a nice nice coating on them you can pre-season them let them sit you know overnight in your fridge if you'd like but since we just broke these out of the animals we want to go ahead and just get them started now plus it's it's lunch time at white feather meets and we're kind of hungry so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to fold it like this take a skewer poke right through the center of the opposite side making sure i don't stick it through my finger and then just go ahead and get another one started you may think i'm over seasoning but i'm really not because this seasoning you can't really over season with it but you can under season so just a little tip for you there got the first skewer built just like that so i'm going to go ahead and hand these off to scott that's where i come in he's going to get him on the grill we're going to um smoke for about 35 45 minutes we've got the traeger 885 set up um did you what kind of pellets bro we have um i think there are hickory left in there hickory pellets gonna super hit super smoke smoke for 35 to 45 minutes that's going to build some really nice smoky flavor and then by that point the internal temperature on the pecan we'll have reached about 110 and then we're going to set them aside and we're going to sear them another batch so the first ones going on are grain fed second ones will be the grass-fed we'll put them on two different sides of the grill so that we can keep track of them throughout that way we know what we're taste testing there's the last grain fed so you can pro tip here scott's hot tip like he like like he likes to say you can just dab it around your plate sort of like soaking up egg yolk with your toast get these grass-fed all seasoned up get them folded something to keep in mind if you do plan on having a party and you're going to use grass-fed beef just keep in mind that the portions are a lot smaller so you're going to need to compensate for that so with this with our black blend some people have commented and said that the seasoning itself isn't black which we understand you can see that it's starting to turn black a little bit already and it has instant coffee in it so that's why when it comes out of the shaker you may not see it black but as the moisture as the seasoning absorbs absorbs the moisture you're going to see a little bit of black coming out of it and then if you use it as a topical use if you're going to be smoking with it it does in fact turn that bark super super black so that'd be the reason why we named it black last skewer scott i have already put um my cast iron lodge cast iron reversible griddle on here because the reason being that this grille is going to be at 185 so my cast iron will already be at 185 so when i turn the grill up to 500 so i can get the sear with the cast iron on there it's already at 185 so it's going to go up to 500 even quicker so here we go i set the timer for 45 minutes we'll keep an eye on it over wi-fi come back when the internal temperature is about 110 sear them off and we're going to give them a try so i had every intentions of helping scott or not helping but just standing here being a part of it smelling the steaks cooking but somebody just walked in and they're acquiring about a treasure so scott it's all you i'm going to sell a grill i think we can handle it so we've uh we've got these nice stop talking about these would be getting some of that black color got these beautiful pecan steaks got a nice smoke get some good color going on them and at this point it's time to set them aside while we set up our grill for the searing part the smell alone is worth it all right so i just moved that down to the bottom there and you know what in fact i'm gonna do with traeger because i have the ability i'm just going to take this grate right here i'm going to drop it down with the iron wood and with the general lines we can put that grate down even closer and get a little bit better sear so i'm going to go ahead and do that i'm also going to get my shelf out of here that i had my nice little feature i can just hang this right here in the back now we're all wide open right here and you notice too i pull my probe out these things they don't like to sit in there by themselves and get up to 500 degrees so i'm gonna crank the grill up to 500 and uh we're just going to wait a couple minutes while that temp comes up these will rest and then we'll get our sear you know where scott went spencer i have no idea i sold a treasure so i need some help well i guess that's me then all right let's go directly at 500 on our traeger and we're at 110 on these stakes after they've rested so now we just get them on there and in fact i'm not going to probe them with the traeger the actual trigger probe because um it's a little bit of fiddling around with all the flipping and everything like that want to get my grill shut i'm just going to use the instant read thermometer and just basically go by time and feel until they get to about 1 25 130 and then we're going to pull them off let them rest again and then it's time to slice and eat did you get it sold is that the person that called this do you expect anything different if they called when i talked to them then does that mean that i get the sale 50 it's a team there's no i and team where are we at here um so i didn't even bother with a probe because i'm just gonna put them on there for oh about a minute and a half two minutes on the first side flip them about the same on the second side so in fact let's just take a look [Music] look at that getting a real nice crust one of the things that we love about these instant read thermometers is they literally are that i think we're there 127 to pull them boy they smell delicious so now the important thing is that you don't go gobbling into these things immediately you've got to get them a little time to rest yum we're going to put them off to the side give them a few minutes to rest slice tell you what we think all right time to pull the skewers out do a little slice in here looks amazing now one of the things with great grain fed beef versus grass fed is typically we're gonna see a difference with the fat flavor um i hate to use the word gamey but with grass-fed you can get especially in the fat you can get more of a a richer flavor a bigger beefier flavor some folks have said that has to do with the the mineral and specifically the iron content looks like it's tender to me feel tender setting up really nice all right so there's our grain fed i'm going to cut these down a little bit so we can have some nice portions definitely no lack of juiciness all right that's the only thing one left to do at this point seth let's try it need a toothpick yep i'm just gonna go for this big chunk right there oh yeah i love that black seasoning on red meat let me get juicy tender a little bit of fat excellent i have the grain fed yeah yeah i'm gonna try that same thing too a little fat little chunk of fat on there nice and mellow one of the things about dry aging the beef is you get that nice beef flavor we've heard people tell us that the meat that they buy in our store has a beef flavor they remember from 30 40 50 years ago and that's when beef was always dry aged now for the grass fed time for the grass fed nice okay right off the bat get a richer a richer or beefy beefy flavor like a deeper beef flavor um almost a little bit of a grassy taste yeah i use that analogy of the olive oil um very good analogy if you think of like the grain fed being more like the butter flavor the grass-fed being a little bit more of the olive oil flavor they're both equally as tender now i haven't tried any grass-fed fat yet grass-fed fat is usually where you get the even more intense beefiness going on you're gonna notice her on that i just ate a piece they had a big chunk of fat so yeah you definitely get like a like i said like not necessarily a gamey but almost like uh you might get with uh yeah it's interesting like you can almost taste the grass a little irony yeah with that so yeah both of these turned out phenomenally well we hope that this gave you a lot of insight when you're in the store and you're looking to purchase grass-fed grain fed the differences between the two with 100 grass fed anything that talks about 100 percent or or carries a certain claim or certification you should definitely find out as much as you can about it whether it's through the packaging or the people that are selling it as we mentioned with our 100 grass-fed beef it is third-party certified by the american grass-fed association um at the farm basically that just certifies that that beef eats exclusively grass its entire life like mentioned we're uh we basically what the customer wants is what we provide we have a customer that specifically wants the grass-fed beef mostly for the health benefits that they um that they they get from the grass-fed beef the leaner uh the leaner beef and um and then we have a customer that wants that that grain fed beef they like that nice mellow flavor they like those big cuts uh mostly you know the guys with the barbecues and things like that they want the grain fit so that's why we offer both um we think both are excellent choices and we hope that the insight that we provided here gives you some more insight into the differences between the two beef and mostly just boils down for us to the food source both beef are excellent don't forget go to our website www dot dot grab a shaker or maybe six we think you'll like it and um you can also snag a bucket while you're there but anyways until next time don't forget you know what the deal is please subscribe hit that bell for notifications we've got tons more to come and uh nice work until next time cheers [Music] you

Channel: The Bearded Butchers

Views: 2,181,485

Rating: 4.922946 out of 5

Keywords: bearded butchers, Grass Fed Beef, Grain Fed Beef

Id: yomerhQkpSc

Length: 44min 22sec (2662 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020