Dry Aged (24 days) Post

I meant to post this at the first of the month. Now, I'm compounding the error by posting it 24 days late. Even worse, I'm now posting it the Saturday after Thanksgiving Day...when NOBODY wants to hear about food!

Oh, well. Here it goes anyway...maybe your stomachs have been sufficiently stretched by Thursday's gorge and you're strangely hungry again or...you've been in Argentina long enough that the holiday slipped your mind altogether ("Sorry, Mom! Really, I just forgot all about it!")

In case you missed it, slate.com did a tremendous piece entitled "Raising the Steaks" If you are thrilled by the taste of Argentine Beef...apparently, it's not your imagination.

The article concentrates on the question of whether or not grass-fed beef tastes better. However, it strays into the subject of the USDA grading system (Prime, Choice, etc.) and a little bit into whether or not meat from "Angus" cattle actually has superior flavor and tenderness.

Of the five top-notch steaks sampled from different methods of rearing and aging, I chuckled out loud when I came to the one US steak most like a cut of Argentine Beef, "Tasting notes: Never have I witnessed a piece of meat so move grown men (and women)."

That fifth steak was, of course, declared the winner:

"The Verdict:
Marbling, schmarbling. The steak with the least intramuscular fat tasted the best—and was also the cheapest. That said, the steak with the most marbling came in a not–too-distant second. Do the two share anything in common? Interestingly, neither was finished on straight corn or treated with hormones. Both steaks also hail from ranches that pride themselves on their humane treatment of bovines. That made for an unexpected warm and fuzzy feeling as we loosened our belts, sat back, and embarked on several hours of wine-aided digestion."

(We can only hope the fine judges were sipping a malbec.)

That result should lay to rest any doubts among us long-timers as to whether or not the beef here is truly more tasty...or we just can't remember what a US steak tastes like.

Furthermore, it says something very good for grass-fed ranchers in the US. The grass-fed and/or organic beef movement allá is still quite new. The article makes a brief mention as to the resistance of restauranteurs to grass-fed beef for reasons of inconsistency, appearance, and quality. There is no doubt in my mind that this reluctance is due to the early results from those ranchers.

Early adopters there of the "no-feedlot" had lots of problems; it had been decades and decades since the US national herd had been selected for success on grass. There simply didn't remain any way of determining (or even guessing) in advance which cows would mature well by grazing alone. Argentine ranchers don't even notice that they eliminate individual cattle that don't do well on grass, it's simply something that they've never stopped doing.