VICTORIAN FARMSTEAD

We love to go on Meat Adventures. Today our journey only went as far as the Santa Rosa farmers market.’ Victorian Farmstead’ located in Sebastopol California sells their ‘all natural and pastured’ meats at this Saturday market. Local beef, pork, chicken, and lamb are sustainable, kindly, stress free and humanely grown. The beef is raised on certified organic pasture and grass finished. The pork is a Berkshire/Duroc hybrid. This meat vender is pushing all the right buttons for today’s demanding consumer. Does it taste good?

Some of you may know that I am not a big fan of grass fed beef. The attributes of grass fed beef has been overly hyped to the politically correct food connoisseur. You need to use caution cooking grass fed beef because of its lack of fat. It also has a flavor that proclaims that it is the original beef flavor. Boulderdash! If you have to tell me that it tastes good something is not right. Give me a ‘Midwestern’ corn fed beef any day. That is what beef should taste like. With that said, we purchased a 18 ounce rib-eye steak. It set us back 22.80 cents.

This steak had nice fat marbling. This was one impressive looking rib-eye. This would be cooked over a very hot mesquite charcoal fire. Cooking grass fed beef can be a little challenging. It should be cooked rare or medium rare to guarantee tenderness. You really need to be careful with the carry-over cooking. A medium rare can turn tough in an instant. We cooked our steak to the rare stage and after a 10 minute rest it was a perfect medium rare. Now, for the taste verdict.

Sometimes one must admit that trying different styles of meat can be flavorful. This rib-eye was very tender. There was a rich beefy flavor. Victorian Farmstead must be doing something right because this was one great steak. I still am not a convert to grass fed but I will keep an open mind.