Can 100% Grass-Fed Beef Actually Be Well Marbled? (Why Our Fat Tastes Different)

Can 100% grass-fed beef actually be well marbled? Almost every new customer is surprised by the answer. Here's what grass-fed beef marbling really looks like, and why the fat behaves so differently.

Customer of the Week is a very serious process around here.

There's a nomination committee (Nicole forwards me amazing customer feedback). A review committee (me). A rigorous vetting process (I read the email twice to select for maximum hyperbole).

It's pretty a tight ship.

But last week a customer found a previously unexploited loophole....

He nominated himself.

He opened his email to Nicole by announcing he was writing "to join the legions of other customers" and volunteered as tribute to let me use his quote in a newsletter.

I'm writing to join the legions of other customers to say that we are absolutely blown away by the flavor and quality of the beef!! The color and marbling of all the cuts is unreal, and that's because it IS real! They say fat is flavor, but this fat actually has flavor!

Like so many others, you've made converts and loyal customers out of us. Life is hectic but when I can I will join in on the thousands of other Google reviews.

Well Joe, consider yourself QUOTED.

Obviously there's a lot to unpack here.

But naturally I wanna focus on what he said about the color, marbling and flavor of our beef.

Because this is the most common reaction we get from new customers.

Shock that 100% grassfed beef could be so well marbled. Surprise at the COLOR of the meat. And total elation over the flavor.

Why grass-fed beef fat is different from feedlot fat

It turns out that Real Beef is not supposed to look or taste like.... whatever that stuff you buy at the grocery store is.

For a lot of reasons....

First of all, feedlot beef fat tends to have a "heavier" almost waxy texture that coats your mouth. Our grassfed fat is lighter, melts in your mouth, and more palatable when you get a big piece. My daughter, Juniper, will chow down hunks of the stuff if I trim it off a ribeye.

Oh and that fat actually tastes like something.

How you get grass-fed beef marbling without corn

Getting cattle to lay on real fat on 100% grass isn't an exercise in "how many calories of corn does it take to ship this steer to the slaughterhouse at 14 months old?" It's a multi-year process that requires skill, patience, a wide variety of forages, and hundreds of daily moves onto fresh grass.

All of that creates real, nuanced flavor. Wine folks would call it terroir, but I have a folksy down-to-earth farmer reputation to uphold so I would never say something like that....

(That variety is doing a lot of the work here. Here's the 40+ plants our cows eat across the grazing season, and here's why finishing on grass takes 24 to 30 months instead of 14.)

The last step: dry-aging

And then there's the way it cooks up. Because we actually dry age our meat, the flavor concentrates. About 5% of the weight evaporates off before it gets packaged up and you wind up with beef that sears flawlessly and enhances that flavor. Instead of the self steaming feature that the Big 4 Meatpackers include in every single package of beef by 'wet-aging' it in it's own juices.

(That water is a whole story of its own. Here's why grocery store beef is watery and who's profiting from it.)

Add it all up

Add it all up and the experience can be a little mindblowing. You'll never forget your first time 🤠

(For the broader version of that first-bite reaction, here's does grass-fed beef taste different from grocery store beef.)

So if you'd like to experience Real Beef that will recalibrate your eyeballs and tastebuds, you can reserve a Beef Share with a free chest freezer here.

Your Farmer,

Josh

P.S. When Nicole thanked him, he wrote back and explained himself: "People only ever speak up these days when something is wrong so I make a point of saying something when things are great. Trust me, it really throws people off in restaurants or hotels." He's right. I suffer from the same affliction. After a decade running a small business, you would have to do something egregious to earn a 1-Star Review from me. When I get to the point of writing a bad review, it's not even worth it because the person is already in Federal Custody. Anyway. We're very grateful that our amazing customers keep us well stocked with amazing reviews, so it doesn't confuse us. But I promise you it never, ever gets old.