Flannery Beef

Yes, I know it's in San Francisco. However, the beef looks good and my wife and I will buy some to try out and post in a follow up dinner pick. Additionally, for those in the Dallas area, the Whole Foods seems to be the best local bet for thick steaks and Wagyu beef around and well worth it. Now, I need to get a 2 inch thick bone in ribeye and put it on the smoker at 225 for a few hours. That's all. Thank you for your attention to this very important food issue.

Writer

Bet you can't wait to get some San Francisco meat in your mouth.

You live in Texas from what it looks like....  Have you thought about contacting some of the local ranches?

Already have. Usually we can get good stuff, but sometimes a shipment from elsewhere is not a bad thing.

There's all kinds of farmer's markets in cities of almost any size here. l aways see, grass fed, no hormone free ranging beef, chicken and lamb at those things.
Price is usually less than local stores and the meat is far superior. You can also go to area butchers and pick up stuff that is fresh and never frozen.

If you can't find good meat in Texas you just aren't trying.  Finding odd things like different types of sausages or a particular breed of chicken can be rough but finding good beef,lamb and pig simply takes a little bit of looking around.

The stuff you have shipped will be frozen. If your down with that Omaha Steaks isn't bad. I personally hit up farmers markets on the weekend or a butcher if I want a particular cut. Omaha Steaks I order from just to keep the freezer stocked. Their ribs are pretty good.

Not Beef but

Gunpowder Bison & Trading Company

My father was a rancher in Texas.  Most ranchers here sell their calves at auction when they are 450-750 lbs, strait off the cows teat.  Depending on when and where (in Texas), most of the cows live on grass during the spring, summer, and fall, and hay during the winter.  Grain based feeds are more expensive, and generally used very sparingly if at all.  Mineral supplements are pretty common (aka salt licks), abet most these days are not like the salt licks of old.  Anyway, I grew up eating "grass fed" calves.  I will agree that they taste better than most supermarket beef.  That said, my freezer is currently stocked with Buttercup - a calf that was grain fed for almost a year after weening.  Buttercup is either primer or darn near it - and her flavor blows grass fed away.
If you buy direct from a rancher, you can probably get some good, healthy meat.  That said, if you want near perfect marbling, and the taste and texture of prime - just be prepared to pay.  Buttercup was hormone free, lived as happy of life as any Japanese cow - and ate about $1k in feed as we finished her out.  Starting with a steer and using hormones gets more efficient weight gain, which in turns allows a commercial feed lot to make a profit and stay in business.





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fwiw, I used to be a food-hippy in Austin (you know, grain feed, organic, raw milk etc...).  Technically I still am, just not in Austin anymore (seems food-hippies and traditionalists are pretty much identical).  Anyway, there are a lot of like minded people in Austin, and group buy's were fairly common and often (there were a number of different groups, but they tend to work together.  Amish, Mormans, food-hippies, traditionalists...)  I saw the price they were paying for their "organic" beef, and noticed there was not really a damn thing special about it that was different than common practices of 95% of the ranchers I knew (ok, other than marketing - that was the 1 thing special).  I outlined to their forum exactly how the costs works, and how I could get them their beef for less than 1/2 what they were paying - and crickets chirped.  Without the marketing, they were not interested AT ALL.  No problems for me, I could still keep my freezer full of grass fed beef).






 

Now this is just damn cool! Thank you!!

This is what I'd really like to do but don't want to just walk up a rancher's driveway and say, "Oh by the way.." However, maybe that's how its done. Nonetheless, I did find two online, Augustus Ranch and Fredericksburg. I'll keep on looking and also contact them.

try going to your local feed store/tractor supply and if there aren't any ads on a corkboard, i'm sure someone there will be able to steer(no pun intended) you in the right direction

My local butcher used to sell half and whole calves (in theory might still), and would also process out your calf.  Once upon a time I knew the rancher he got the calves from.  Then I could have probably picked the calf - now, some foreigners purchased the shop, and all the meat is sourced from IBC.





Butchers generally do not have slaughter licenses.  The only real issue is getting your calf from the rancher to the slaughter house - real butchers will hand it back to you in paper or vacuumed.  2 calves ago I had the slaughter house process my calf (and it was good and inexpensive).  This time I had a LOT more invested in the calf, so went with the slaughter/butcher route.





Sad thing is butchers are disappearing.  Growing up my town had 4 butcher shops.  We are down to one meat market, and it is in the process getting rid of the butchers (they have 3 people manning the meat market, I think they want to cut it to one butcher and only sell out of the reach in).

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Another term to look into is locker plants.  

Some beef food knowledge, courtesy of me.

Cow, calf operations. This is your typical ranching operation. Calfs are sold as early as weaned 450 lbs or grass fed up to 800 lbs. Calf's will go on to backgrounding operations or high end beef, 450 pounders go direct to feed yards. Old cows or cull cows are sold at auction and shipped to slaughter. A few will ship to feed lots to fatten but most to slaughter. We call these, "kill cows." Most as mentioned are coming straight off grass and wind up in your grocers meat case and priced cheap if made into cuts. This is what hamburger is made from. Dark hamburger fresh from grinder is usually bull meat, light pink hamburger tends to be ground dairy beef, think Holstein.

Backgrounding operations, are a mix of grass and feed. Typically farming operations, farmer grinds his own hay and grain, grown in his operation or bought from another operation or elevator. Beef is typically backgrounded to weights between 900 to 1000 pounds before shipped to feed lot.

Growth Hormones, if used, that I'm aware of are injected long before beef hits commercial feed yard. Antibiotics are up to date prior to commercial feeding that I'm aware of. I've been a part of the business of transporting cattle for 5+ years so there are practices that vary I'm not around to see but I grew up raising beef and showed beef on 4-H level so I've fed a few from wean weight to slaughter weight. That said, operations vary.

Commercial feed yards. This is where marbeling and flavor come from. Feed yards are also the places food nazis have demonized, claiming grass is better tasting and healthier. Healthier depends on the farming or backgrounding operations more than feed yard. Beef is fed up to 1,450 lbs before slaughter. Feed yard beef is expensive beef, some you buy in your grocers meat case and pay premium price, the rest is sold to high end food service and ordered by us off restaurant menu.

I know what I'm eating for beef  by price. Our local steak house is known for ok tasting, cheap steak. He's feeding "kill cows" and pretty good at tendorizing and seasoning but it's kill cow. Dress it, flavor it anyway you like, meat will never be feed yard grade because the marbeling and flavoring of select feeding just isn't there.

Kobe beef, most expensive beef in the world. Real Kobe beef comes from Japan. This beef is beer fed and hand massaged in oil for almost it's entire time on the hoof. Labor intensive, this beef can't be fed out on a feed lot. The breeds have been imported from Japan into operations in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I'm told the closest to true Kobe comes from an operation in Arkansas but I don't know. Never been around a Kobe operation, I just know most the beef advertised to be Kobe isn't the real deal because the real deal has been hand massaged every day.

This isn't everything there is to know about beef, not even close to everything I know about beef but a better understanding than the food nazis have grasp of. Grass fed doesn't have potential in taste anywhere near grain fed, that's the illusion I'm dispelling with this post. Grass fed healthier ? That's in reality of the way beef is raised a discussion of eating young beef vs old beef.

Buffalo, got some insight to share. Fed on the same feed yards, just different pins. Whoops.. Not grass fed as many want you to believe.

dc.

Is BisonWorld (member here) selling his bison online yet?

State by state: Eat Wild

So is my brother. What could I get for him?

depends on the pedigree