Imagine sitting down for supper one evening, the table is set, the family is around and you’re about to enjoy your meal. Your kids have set the table and well, they forgot the knives. Before you get up from the table, you think, I’ll just try and cut this with my fork. To your surprise, your ribeye is so tender, you can cut it with your fork. Where does that tender meat come from?
A number of factors come into play when we talk about how our beef gets that wonderful buttery tenderness. The specific breed of cattle we use, years of superior genetics, and well-balanced diets are just a few of the reasons our beef tastes so great.
Why Angus Beef Cattle?
Black Angus beef is all about superior marbling. Marbling is the intramuscular fat content found in each cut of meat. When talking about Black Angus beef, more fat equals more flavor, creating the most tender, flavorful, and juiciest beef. Black Angus Beef is also considered to be graded in a class of its own, most easily compared to prime-grade beef on the USDA scale.
Angus beef cattle are specifically bred for an increase in muscle mass. You might be thinking, why on earth does that matter? Well the larger the cross-section of muscle mass means you get a higher content of intramuscular fat and a larger section of protein.
They are known to throw an easy calf with a lower birth rate than other cattle breeds, however, their intramuscular fat content is more evenly distributed. They produce a high-quality consistent calves, year after year.
How Does Genetics Factor In?
We all know USDA Prime beef is the best available grade for purchase. Years and years of selective breeding allow us to decide which animal will produce the highest and best yields. In recent years, our cattle line has been graded not just as Prime beef, but as Certifed Prime Angus Beef.
This ensures that every single steak, roast, or whatever your favorite cut is, packs in the most flavor available. We constantly strive to make sure we are producing the most flavorful, tender beef. We want our Angus Beef cattle to gain 3-4 pounds a day for 120 days to ensure the muscle mass and fat content are of the highest quality.
What Do We Feed Our Cattle?
A well-balanced diet is probably the most crucial element in creating the quality grade beef we love. Cattle are what is called a ruminant, meaning they take in plants to ferment in one of their stomachs to create a fatty acid. This process is commonly referred to as “cud” and the plants that cattle eat can likely not be used for any other purpose.
Cattle are pretty amazing if you think about it. They take the waste ground and turn it into a delicious protein option. Our ecosystem would quite literally fall apart if cattle could not roam and graze freely.
Besides grass, cattle enjoy a diet of hay, grain, and supplemental mineral throughout the year. We prefer our cattle are left to free range but Mother Nature doesn’t let us call the shots! When there is plenty of rain and sun, mixed grass pasture is our first choice. In the winter months, we make certain they are well-fed on hay.
When finishing out our beef for butchering, we fatten them up for 120 days. They are finished out on a grain mixture. That mix is made up of dry distillers grain, cracked, soy whole pellets, and alfalfa pellets. This high quality grain mixture is what gives meat that wonderful, tender flavor. No need to fear grain fed beef, they are always offered pasture along with their grain. Our cattle enjoy a diverse diet of both grass and grain to produce perfectly tender meat.
Know where your next meal comes from, it’s okay to have beef with us!