Recently, I finally found a local grass-fed farm and my husband announced that he thought everything from it tasted really gamey. I've been thinking about his comments and I've all but convinced myself that the taste is probably seasonal. We tried a pork loin and maybe pork would taste much better after the animal grazes all summer on insects and plants. The beef seems ok, again just not too flavorful.

Has anyone else experienced flavorless grass-fed meat?

Hi,
we eat grass-fed at my house and when we first tried it i was surprised how different it tasted. but, i did not think of it as "gamey", rather it tastes a little "sweet" and is a little chewier and not as "pasty" as corn-fed/regular.

you are what you eat, right? we know that for sure as LCers. so it makes sense that the flesh of a corn-fed animal would differ significantly from a grass-fed animal. there is a lower fat content and it does not take as long to cook. it took me a few times of eating grass-fed before i adjusted. maybe your husband just needs time and if you cook it at a lower temp, that might help. maybe make some burgers- with mustard, onions/whatever fixings, and he would not notice the difference as much.

Ok another question.

I have had alot of "natural" but not grass fed beef lately. Tastes very good and a bit more "buttery" than the regular corn cows at the grocery store.

Well my dad got a bunch of organic grass fed beef... and he grilled steaks... and I swear it tastes a bit like liver. My hubby thought so too. Everyone else thinks its just fine.... including all the kids.

Is that normal? Most of my experiance with grass fed beef was in the form of hamburgers or "covered" in something.



So would a slightly "liver" taste be normal?

What an animal has been eating does affect how its meat will taste. After years of eating corn-fed steers, grass fed cattle will taste different. It will also look slightly different in color, again depending upon what its food was.

Ashling,

I can't imagine why your steaks tasted like liver. Maybe the steaks were stored against some liver?

Does grass-fed beef have alot less fat than corn-fed? I would assume that it would be so, but maybe it's just less fat inside the muscle, and there is still alot to leave on the steaks and mix in with the ground meat. I don't care for lean meats much, but do like the idea of organic & grass-fed beef. Can you have your cake and eat it too?

From Eat Wild (http://www.eatwild.com/basics.html) I eat grassfed, organically raised beef (free of hormones, antibiotics, etc) and while I agree it tastes differently from corn-fed, I agree with lillylou, it tastes sweeter to me. (probably because I know I'm getting a healthier protein without all that nasty added stuff).

Hmm no it was not stored next to any liver or freezer burnt in any way. Liver was the closest thing I could come up with... it was not LIKE liver... just an odd taste similar to it.

The taste was closer to the "fat strip" on the side.

We have tasted "corn" beef like it before and would not finish it.



The weird thing was no one else but hubby and I "tasted" it. No one got sick so it was not bad.


I was just trying to figure out if it was supposed to taste that way and to just get over it... or if something might have been wrong with it.

I just had a steak that tasted a bit like liver, sort of. More like the texture of liver. It was just a regular grocery store steak but I suppose it was grass fed since all cows are out in the pastures eating their salad this time of the year. I remember when I was a young feller shooting partridge back in N.B. that they would taste different if they had been eating around spruce trees instead of maples or birch. Their meat was darker and a lot gamey-er. Maybe our taste buds are getting more sensitive on this natural diet.

Actually most of the grocery store cattle are in feed lots eating grain and never see a pasture or grass.


You will see alot of people arguing over the animal treatment... and is a main reason for many to go with grass fed and or natural beef and animal products.


Plus all those various animals in lots and warehouses need all the meds and hormones and crap because of how they are raised.


Sad for the animals and sad for consumers all around.



I personally would not go veggie for it... but I am trying to keep it "clean" for healths sake... and I like to know that my food lived its life closer to the way nature intended it too!

I talked with a farmer who pastures all of his animals after trying the cow prison concept. He said it was finacially draining and that is why he switched. He said during the seventies there was a really big push in agriculture to be bigger and better all the time. Thus he felt he had to keep up and this meant buying all of the equipment for the cow cells, hiring more people, and being wardens to the animals and having to watch them constantly for infection. But it was expensive to raise cows this way so he thought to go back to the 'old way' with cows fed on grass to be different than the rest of the farmers. It was after he switched that he realized all of the benefits to the animals and the consumer.

It does seem like pasturing an animal would be cheaper than the intense feed-lot style. Were I live, there are small "weekend" farms where a guy might have a dozen cows, and they just hang out in the fields and chew on those big round bales all day, and on the grass. I'm sure buying and/or growing corn and soybeans for feed would be expensive. Some of these farmers will supplement with some grain for a few months before slaughter, but the cows still have access to the grass, hay, and sunshine. These farmers might be borderline organic and don't even know it!

I believe most beef cattle spend most of their lives on pasture, with supplemental silage/roughage/grain in the winter (if necessary) and are only given high-grain content fattening feed in the last few weeks before slaughter. On the other hand, commercial dairy cows are bred for high milk output and will suffer from malnutrition if they are not given high protein (soy)feed.

Pasturing IS cheaper than grain and legume feed because pasture land is less valuable than the farmland used to grow grains and legumes. It is used for pasturage because it's good for nothing else.

Wyv

I read somewhere that pasturing is cheaper by the head, but not by the pound -- that they fatten beef up with grains because that gets them more pounds of marbled meat, which translates into profit for them despite the higher feed cost.

I don't know how close that matches reality, but surely there's SOME financial incentive for the big factory-grain-farms...

Grain is more effective for fattening, so it's used for fattening for market, or for building winter fat reserves if pasturage is poor, but not generally for growth.

Wyv

I've been getting organic grass-fed beef since March of this year, and it definitely isn't flavorless. It has much more flavor than any store-bought meat. We ran out of steak and I got some at the regular store and I wanted to barf...we threw it out, it truly had no flavor. The ground beef is very strong, but I agree with some other posters that it kind of has a sweet taste. My husband is good at flavoring it with lots of spices and Worcester sauce. The steak tastes great to me, I just pepper it, fry it in butter a few minutes on each side. Mmmmm, yum.