Archive for the ‘Beef’ Category

Pork workshop [Ep 50] went so well that there wasn’t much question about whether there would be more. This time around: beef. The kill was an old cow whose new destiny laid in Jeff Senger’s family’s freezer, while the cow we cut was a beauty of an organic cow from a local farmer. So the day: kill, skin & gut, break down into primals, cut into retail cuts, afternoon of charcuterie, followed by dinner and wine. Epic days, they are. And yes, we ate thinly sliced raw heart sandwiches for lunch.

Had lots of positive feedback about the pork butchery music track by the AwesomeHots, so this one features a shiny new track of theirs: Wayfaring Stranger. I love the vibe – really well tracked piece – and it gives this edit a somber side that made some of the gorier footage work in editing. If it’s too gory for you, blame Daniel Klein over at the Perennial Plate – he advised I go for it. Yeah, that’s a massive passing of the buck. Fact is, this is still tame relative to what goes down behind the scenes of a fast-food hamburger, say. Daniel’s work is extremely cool, btw, if you haven’t checked out his work, do. Here.

Just fyi, the trial of workshops this season was more successful than anticipated, but since my time doesn’t allow me to pursue it alone, I’ve teamed up with a bunch of rad people to start a company called Shovel and Fork. We’re essentially trying to do some good by offering folks a chance to engage with food in ways they wouldn’t normally get a crack at. These workshops will be a part of that. Should be a fun gig.

A couple decades ago, some forward thinking individual(s) decided to put on a holistic management course within the agriculture community, and whoever you are/were, I thank you. The output of that re-think of industrialized ag can be seen in the successes and influence of Ron Hamilton (Ep. 4), Peter Lundgard (Ep. 47), and featured in this one [and long overdue at that], Don Ruzicka of Sunrise Farm.

I find myself lacking the adequate supply of positive adjectives to adequately describe Don and his approach to sharing his experience in the world of food production – but I’ll try a few: he’s passionate, gentle, kind, generous, and vastly underrated in terms of his profile in the broader food community. The foods folks like this produce should be the brands that matter in the food industry – in this case not just because of animal handling practices, but because of philosophy and approach to land stewardship in general. We’re partly on the way down that road of producer becoming rock star in Alberta, but I think there’s some consumer flushing out to do of what’s good marketing, and where best practices are being reinvented – a motivator for me personally to keep visiting farms and asking questions with a camera rolling. Don’s the real deal.

After a successful first go at ‘Pork Butchery Workshop‘, and due to loads of demand, we’re now taking a crack at an inaugural ‘Beef Butchery Workshop‘. In case you’re wondering, I deleted the workshop page from my site because my inbox was getting inundated with inquiries. Still figuring out what to do about that exactly. In the meantime I’m posting details of coming workshops here.

Date: October 20th

Location: Sangudo Custom Meat Packers

THE GAME PLAN

8am. Kill a cow. Then, gut and skin cow, taking the necessary time to harvest and chat beef offal. Speed tour of the layout of the meat shop. We’ll then break down a side of certified organic beef and talk through your cut options with each primal. Eat some beef lunch. Spend the afternoon doing some beef charcuterie preparations, this time courtesy of chef Chad Moss. Then, we shall dine on beef and red wine. The end.

Everybody will go home with a minimum 5lb box of beef goodies – bones for stock, some fun off cuts and offal, etc.

Buy-in for this one’s higher because a head of certified organic beef costs the same as about 10 pigs in this case. That, and quite frankly the food and booze at pig day was largely donated, and we are trying to price this to be a financially sustainable endeavour. To keep costs manageable, we’re doing a price point of $250 for the whole day, meals and booze included, and you go home with the 5 lb box referred to above as a party favour. If you want in on the meat we’re cutting that day, which certainly would be a wise move, we’re going to be dividing a side into 10 equal boxes and you can take home one of those boxes [1/10 of a side of beef] for an additional $100, which is essentially at cost. So $350 w/ a meat share, $250 w/out. Up to you.

This one is a long way to selling out after a couple tweets that it’s going down, so if you want in, you’d better act quick. I’m taking registrations via email: kevinatkevinkossowan.com.

Deal will be the same as before: cash day-of. We’ll hold you to your word on you being there if you’re going to have us reserve a spot for you.

ps. a game butchery workshop is in the works too. november. elk.

Last year’s Rge Rd 135 farm-to-table epic at Nature’s Green Acres [Episode 19] is still engraved into the minds of everyone that had the pleasure of being involved, making me more than slightly trepdatious at the prospect of trying to duplicate, nevermind top that farm-to-table extravaganza. But as far as I see it, they pulled it off.

Maybe I’m biased. It was a menu heavy on grass fed free-range meats, fresh garden veg and a splash of wild foods, all cooked on fire. I’m into that kind of thing. It also was the true maiden voyage of the 2nd cob oven build of the year, the first being mine. Add a lucky card-draw on the weather [again], a crew that busted their butts to make it happen, a few bottles of wine, a farm tour, and a few beautiful dishes for a large crew of happy guests – what’s not to like? The cob oven performed fabulously, I’ll add. It was a joy to watch it shed the last of its moisture from the build, get insanely hot, and cook some beautiful food. I wish I’d shot a video about the build, but was soaked to squishy-socks-in-my-shoes-stage and muddy as all heck.

This event is a labour of love, and for that I adore it.

I’ve seen rotational grazing of sheep [Tangle Ridge Ranch, Ep 15], and heard and read lots about the philosophy and science behind rotational grazing of beef, but I hadn’t seen it in practice until visiting Nature’s Way Farm. I was there to shoot a video about Lisa’s veg CSA [Ep 46], but when our day included moving their cows, I couldn’t help but get Peter to speak about it in front of a lens.

I adore when farmers are obsessed with their soil. Peter is certainly one of them. It’s inspiring to clearly see the health in the soil and perennial forage post having had livestock moved through it, rather than the inverse, and it’s beautifully simple that it only takes a single electrified wire and a whole lot of care and attention to be able to restore health and fertility to land with a herd of livestock. Peter clearly brings a serious pile of knowledge and experience to the equation too.

Interestingly, they are the primary supplier of beef to the Sunworks Farm brand [Ep 4]. They also sell halves/whole direct.

This is a follow up to Episode 27, the reaction to which I must pause to thank you all for. I was more than slightly apprehensive in the days just prior to shooting it, fearful that if it didn’t go well, it could reflect badly on the subjects of the story. Turns out the result has been an outpouring of praise, appreciation, and value for the transparency, respect, and approach. I’m very grateful for you all and for having a brilliant individual to interview.

This is far…lighter, although still a serious topic near and dear to me: food waste. I left that day with 60-70 lbs of off-cuts from only 1 of the 5 cows killed, and it wasn’t even all the off-cuts. 100 lbs of edible ‘waste’ from one cow might be a good rough estimate. I’ll repeat myself to death that it’s the consumer demand that drives this waste. I’ll lump myself in there. I didn’t grow up eating heart, tripe, kidneys, caul fat, oxtail, etc – so I’m still learning about all this stuff too. But I now render all my lard from our annual pig, and easily use it all up. And I thoroughly enjoy roasted pig head which I would never have considered a few years ago. Pig skin crackling makes a regular appearance in my kitchen. There’s still a lot of an animal that I could learn to use better. So in this one, you get to see me make a dish with a bin cut that quite frankly should not be.

How did it taste? The flavour was intense and outstanding, and the mouthfeel unparalleled. For stews, I’m not sure there’s a better cut of beef. If the local restaurants don’t scoop this reject cut, I might, it’s that good. And for those that ‘don’t have the time’, please note how long it took to prepare.

When I buy sides of pork and beef from local farmers, it is quite plainly illegal for them to be killed in an un-inspected environment. Consequently, farmers bring their meat animals to one of the local meat processors/abattoirs and for a very reasonable fee, the processor does what’s called a ‘kill & chill’. Under supervision of a provincial meat inspector, they do the kill, gutting, skinning [or scraping for pigs], and chilling of the carcass. It’s important work, and I’m guessing it’s work that most retail customers are oblivious to, for a variety of reasons. You don’t want to know. Industry doesn’t want you do know. I think we should know.

In the poultry industry, kill plants have been shut down by increasing regulation over the years such that producers must now drive their poultry to the plant in St. Paul to have their birds processed – even if it takes hours and hours to drive there. The result is highly-stressed birds and significant loss of life in transit. Ask your local poultry producer about it. For whatever reason our local red meat processors have [thankfully] not met that same fate. We need to keep it that way. We need to better understand their role in our local food supply chain. We need to support these people that do our dirty work for us – and make no mistake, it’s the consumer that demands the dirty work be done.

Another theme I wanted to address is the amount of food that goes in the bin at the processor – by request of the consumer. Stock bones, oxtail, heart, liver, tongue, kidney, caul fat, tripe, pig heads, and loads more go in the bin because we don’t want it. It’s wasteful, disrespectful, and I think we’re due for a culture change in this regard.

This episode is graphic and not for everyone, so don’t watch it unless you want to see how a cow gets killed and processed. It’s a far too uncommon look at a critical part of the process of delivering meat to the table. I will be moderating the comments liberally.

My highlight reel of ‘From Local Farms‘ videos was just chosen by Daniel and Mirra of The Perennial Plate as a top-four contender in their recent video competition. I’m honored to be on the list, to say the least. The very reason I started a video series at all was directly because of Daniel and Mirra’s earliest episodes – inspiring me to pick up a cheap Flip camera, introduce myself to some farmers, and press some record button. My life, quite literally, has not been the same since.

So a big thank you goes out today to Daniel, Mirra, all the passionate farmers, and especially to you for taking the time to watch what other folks have to say about our food world. You plugging into and supporting projects like The Perennial Plate matters – it creates cracks in a food culture needing to evolve.

Please click over here to like the video on facebook, and vote for it too while you’re at it. If the vid wins the day, it will replace the regular programming of The Perennial Plate next Monday, exposing it to a very large viewership of like minded folks across many borders. That would be very cool. Even if it doesn’t, big thanks to Daniel and Mirra for your support of what I’m up to and sharing your audience.

Beef butchering is over for another year. My cellar is empty of hanging quarters, once again, only having been empty a day between elk and beef. All that’s left as evidence of the beef is the reducing pot of stock on my stove and the high population of magpies in my back yard cleaning up the remaining bones. Two things are top of mind for me about this experience this year: quality, and economics.

Quality. This cow is this year’s calf, having fed on milk and grass only, so the meat nearly looks like pork when cooked it’s so light in colour. The copious fat has an exceptionally clean flavour. I harvest moose at this same age, and find similarities in that nearly every cut is tender and delicate in flavour. This stuff’s a joy to work with.

This is a drug-free cow. A cow that actually grazed on grass rather than having eaten trucked corn or some other feed it’s not built to eat. It wasn’t stressed by being trucked around to auctions and feedlots prior to slaughter. I’ve spent a good amount of time in the pasture where this cow lived, and know the farmers well. I’m not sure what else I could ask for when it comes to quality of product.

Economics. Here‘s my beef-onomics from last year. This year, same asking price from the farm per pound of hook weight: $3. Worked out to $2.40/lb for front quarter, $3.51 for hind quarter. 81 lbs front, 95lbs hind. A big difference this year is that they used a different processor and rather than $76.13 for kill/chill cost, it was $26.25/quarter. My all-in cost for the front quarter was $220.66 for 81 lbs, or $2.72/lb hook weight. Last year’s numbers were $263.63/75lbs = $3.51/lb. I had to look at that math a few times…23% lower cost. Most of that is simply lower processor fees, but part is due to an error in assuming 50% of the side was front quarter, when in fact this year it proved to be 46%.

Weight of wrapped/packed cuts: 64.4 lbs. $220.66/ 64.4lbs = $3.43/lb, not including bones. Including about 5 lbs of stock bones, the total’s about $3.18/lb. Substantially less than last year. Interesting. Yay for lower processing costs.

There’s a point here beyond simply understanding what my food costs are when butchering it myself. The point is this: local, antibiotic and hormone free, stress-minimized, milk and grass fed beef bought from a farmer that sells at a farmers’ market can COST LESS than conventional box-store meat. People often tell me: ‘yeah, but‘ and cite the high cost of local food as a barrier to eating local. I have a ‘Save-On Foods’ flyer in front of me, beef outside round oven roast is $3.49 a lb for meat that is from ‘Western Canada’, conventionally raised and fed, likely finished at a feed lot, and shipped here and there. For the cost-senstive would-be-ethical-eaters [this was me at one time], the big question is this: do you care enough about the meat you eat to buy raw ag product from a farmer and process it yourself? If yes, welcome to the world of high quality AND lower cost. If not, please don’t complain to me that local food is expensive – it certainly can be if you choose, but doesn’t need to be.

I met Britt a few months ago, when the proprietor of the restaurant she was then working at introduced us. I promised her some plants, she came to get them and came for dinner, and I still haven’t managed to get her those plants. I think she and I get along because we’re both pretty hardcore when it comes to our values around food, and neither of us care much for beating around the bush. We were able to get out mushroom foraging this summer, and it looks like she’ll be jumping in on helping Allan Suddaby and I butcher elk this weekend. So there you have it: disclosure of bias + an explanation of why I was at her event, all wrapped into one.

Anyway, long story short: she’s started up her own gig, was having an ‘after hours’ harvest dinner geared entirely around farmers’ market vendor ingredients [NOT a normal activity around here], and invited me to attend as her guest. If you want to read a lovely blog post, Liane happened to be there. Read hers. I lack her eloquence. What I can tell you is that those chefs leading the way in their industry towards a real local and seasonal approach to food have my support. I’m unusual, with all my DIY/grow-it-kill-it-make-it-yourself stuff – I get it. I also get that many folks that eat out have similar values around local, seasonal, ethical food, and if I can support the chefs blazing the way in industry that serves the masses, I will.

Because I, quite honestly, hate writing about events [or worse, organizing them, don't ask me to do that], do enjoy the video below. It delivers far more than I could via writing and a few pictures. Last thought: get down to the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market not just to shop, but to eat, as Britt now runs the concession. The menu blew me away, as it actually serves up food sold by the vendors under that very roof. Well done, whoever lined up this long-time-needed change [and I know who you are]. Well done.