Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Podcast Interview about Grassfed Meat
Low-carb expert and advocate, Jimmy Moore, interviews me on the Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show. We talk about all things grassfed—cooking, health, and nutrition. I really enjoyed the interview and think you will too. Here’s a link to the podcast:
Stanley Fishman Cooks Grassfed Meats the RIGHT Way!
The Cooking Advantages of Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Grassfed meat has many cooking advantages over other meat. Grassfed meat is tender and tastes much better than other meat. Grassfed meat is often easier to cook that other meat. Surprised? All of these statements are absolutely true, if you know how to cook grassfed meat.
Grassfed Meat Is Different
Grassfed meat, coming from animals that have been fed the diet they were designed to eat, is quite different from other meat. It is denser, with considerably less water in it, and leaner. It has much more flavor, right in the meat. These differences mean that grassfed meat can be cooked at lower temperatures, shrinks much less in cooking, does not release water into the pan, cooks much faster, needs little or no seasoning, and is much more satisfying, so you are satisfied with a smaller amount.
No More Smoke in the Kitchen
Conventional steaks are almost always cooked over very high heat, creating much smoke in the process. The high heat is necessary to deal with the large amount of water in the meat. Grassfed meat browns beautifully over medium heat, whether on the grill or in the pan or under the broiler.
No More Water in the Pan
Conventional meat will often release a fair amount of water into the pan when it is heated. This water can really interfere with the cooking process, and can ruin the taste and texture of the meat, while diluting the flavor of any sauce or gravy. The only way to prevent this is to use really high heat. Grassfed meat does not have this excess water, and will almost never have this problem.
Shrinks Much Less in Cooking
Grassfed meat retains most of its volume when properly cooked with a dry heat method. A conventional roast will shrink in size dramatically when roasted. Grassfed meat will shrink much less, because it is denser, with much less water.
Grassfed Meat Cooks Much Faster
Grassfed meat cooks much faster than conventional meat. You can cook a delicious roast with a roasting time of 30 minutes. Steaks, stews, and pot roasts also cook much faster. This gives you considerable saving, in time and energy costs, and is much more convenient.
Grassfed Meat Needs Less Seasoning
Grassfed meat, properly cooked, has great natural flavor right in the meat and fat. This flavor is so good that it does not need much in the way of seasoning to be outstanding. The recipes in Tender Grassfed Meat are designed to bring out the great natural flavor of the meat by using just a few traditional ingredients and flavor combinations. This tastes so good that I am getting very hungry as I type this, and I just had a big breakfast! Conventional meat has a bland, uniform taste that needs all kinds of seasoning and sauce to provide flavor.
Grassfed Meat Is Much More Satisfying
Grassfed meat and fat are full of nutrients, and have much less water in the meat. This makes grassfed meat very satisfying. When your body gets the nutrients it needs, hunger stops and you lose the desire to keep eating. Now that I eat grassfed meat, I eat half the amount of meat I used to. I did not make a decision to eat less meat, it just happened because grassfed meat is so satisfying. When I am satisfied, my desire to eat ends, and I stop eating.
Grassfed Meat Is Tender and Easy to Cook
I ruined the first grassfed meat I cooked, because I tried to cook it like conventional meat. After much research, I learned how to adapt the knowledge of our ancestors and developed several methods of making grassfed meat tender and delicious. I have found that cooking grassfed meat with these methods is easy. These methods are described in Tender Grassfed Meat, and they have worked for many people who knew nothing about cooking grassfed meat.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, March 19th at Food Renegade.
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a Holiday Feast!
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Fresh green parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
People in the United States think of corned beef and cabbage as being the traditional fare for St. Patrick’s Day. In Ireland itself, however, people are far more likely to eat the best grassfed beef they can get, green cabbage, and the well beloved potatoes. The recipes in the following link were developed as a Christmas menu, but are just as appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day. They include fine grassfed beef in the form of a magnificent prime rib roast, crispy roast potatoes, and a particularly fine cabbage dish. There is much green in this menu from the fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—to the cabbage. Enjoy this wonderful meal, and here’s the link to the recipes, at Kimberly Hartke’s fine blog:
Cooking for the Holidays with Stanley Fishman
A Sample of Tender Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Herb Crusted Strip Loin Roast
Tender Grassfed Meat is a different kind of cookbook. I designed the book to provide a lot of information about grassfed meat, why it is healthier, why it is best when cooked differently, and how to cook it. I also filled the book with delicious recipes. The following blog post is a sample of the book, containing information about grassfed meat, why it should be cooked differently, and a delicious recipe that demonstrates how to cook it.
Here is a link to the post, at Hartke is Online, one of my favorite blogs:
At Last, The Secret to Tender Grassfed Meat, Revealed!
Why I Eat Organic or the Equivalent
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
I strongly recommend the use of organic ingredients in Tender Grassfed Meat. The reason is simple. I want to eat the most nutritious food I can, and the tastiest food I can. Dr. Weston A. Price discovered that people eating the traditional diet of their ancestors were healthy. All of the food contained in these traditional diets was organic or the equivalent. My health was restored by trying to copy the diets described by Dr. Price. After I restricted my diet to organic or the equivalent, I learned something. The food tasted better — much better.
The human body is made to process natural, unaltered food.
The methods that the human body uses to sustain, nourish and rebuild itself are many, and very complex. Nutrients are not processed in isolation, but together. For example, it is now known that an oversupply of one B vitamin can actually cause a deficiency in other B vitamins, because the body is set up to process these nutrients together, the way they are present in food. When you get your nutrients from unaltered food, everything is present that is needed to fully assimilate the nutrients. Our ancestors learned which foods were good to eat, and all of the nutrients and cofactors in those foods are necessary to properly assimilate the nutrients. Our ancestors also learned to combine foods to ensure proper nutrition. While they could not identify specific vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, they knew what to eat. This knowledge was passed from generation to generation, over thousands of years.
Non-organic foods are altered and different from traditional foods.
Modern food raising practices have altered the very chemistry of food. For example, feeding grain and other non-grass substances to cattle change the balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids dramatically, from one to one to twenty to one. When you eat meat from an animal made to eat grass, your body expects the food to have the proper ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. When the meat does not have the proper ratio, your body is not getting what it is ready to process. We do know that an excess of omega-6 fatty acids can cause inflammation and a host of illnesses.
Vegetables that are sprayed regularly with pesticides, which they absorb, are different from the vegetables humankind has eaten for most of history. Artificially fertilized soil lacks many of the nutrients and minerals present in naturally rich soil, and food grown with artificial fertilizers is different from food grown in naturally rich soil. This forces your body to process substances that either have never existed before (artificial chemicals and pesticides), and/or lack the substances the body expects to find in the food, which may be necessary to properly process and assimilate the nutrients.
GMOs did not exist in nature, and were not eaten by our ancestors.
None of the healthy peoples studied by Dr. Price ever ate GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), because GMOs did not exist at the time. GMOs are plants that are changed in a laboratory, sometimes having insect genes and other foreign components added to them. This once again presents your body with substances that it does not expect. Most GMO crops are designed with an internal pesticide, or designed to absorb and tolerate huge amounts of pesticides, amounts that might kill a normal plant. The presence of these pesticides in the crops once again forces your body to deal with a substance it does not expect, or know what to do with.
Modern science has identified only some of the nutrients and cofactors needed by our bodies.
Scientists keep discovering new nutrients as time goes on, from vitamin K2 (which used to be unknown), omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, which were also unknown decades ago, and a number of other substances. Vitamin K2, omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids all are very important nutrients. The point is that there are dozens, maybe hundreds of nutrients and substances necessary to process nutrients that are currently unknown. Since conventional agricultural practices change the very chemistry of food, it is impossible to know what nutrients are altered or missing, since so many nutrients have not even been discovered.
How to get all the nutrients and cofactors.
How can we get all of the nutrients and cofactors we need, if science has not identified all of them? The answer is very simple and I know it works because I have done it. Eating the nutrient-dense food enjoyed by our ancestors will give us all the nutrients and cofactors we need. Foods that are organic or the equivalent are the closest we can get to the food that was actually eaten by our ancestors.
What is the equivalent of organic?
The phrase “organic or the equivalent†is often used. “Equivalent†means food that has been raised according to organic food practices, but has not been certified organic by an authorized agency. The food is the same, it just doesn’t have the stamp of approval, which can be quite expensive and time-consuming to obtain. Food meets my definition of “organic or the equivalent†if it is raised without the use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, chemicals, or ionizing radiation. It cannot be GMO. Animals must be raised without the use of growth hormones or antibiotics. I add another requirement to the meat that I eat. The food that is fed to the animals must be species appropriate, meaning that it is very similar to the natural diet of the animal. For ruminant animals, such as cattle, bison, and lamb, this means 100 percent grassfed.
Organic food tastes much better.
There is another benefit to using ingredients that are organic or the equivalent. They will make your food taste much better. Vegetables grown in good soil, without the use of pesticides or artificial fertilizer, have much more flavor. You can really taste this when you use a recipe that has only a few ingredients. Organic spices grown in good soil that contains the full range of minerals and nutrients have a depth of flavor that is far superior to the conventional varieties. The meat of grassfed animals who have eaten lush, green grass, grown in good soil has a deep, wonderful flavor that no feedlot meat can equal.
I eat organic or the equivalent because it is healthier and tastes better.
This post is part of the blog carnival: Fight Back Friday. Click here to read more great posts at FoodRenegade.com
Bringing Back the Fat Cap – Restoring the Fat of the Land
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Grassfed strip loin roast from U.S. Wellness Meats, cut from strip loin primal
Do you know what a fat cap is? Most people today do not. A fat cap was once considered absolutely necessary for roasting meat. Fat caps will greatly improve the nutritional qualities and taste of any grassfed meat.
Here is a link to my guest blog about fat caps on Kim Hartke’s great site, Hartke Is Online:
Fat on Grassfed Meat is Healthy, Claims Cookbook Author
Cooking Real Food — The Most Important Task
photo credit: stuartpilbrow
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
What if a drug was invented that would reduce the risk of cancer to almost nothing? What if the same drug was just as effective against heart disease? What if this drug also greatly reduced the risk of diabetes, asthma, birth defects, Alzheimer’s, depression, mental illness, ADD, arthritis, obesity, indigestion and every other chronic disease that plagues humankind? What if this very same drug strengthened your immune system to the point that the flu, colds, and infections became a thing of the past? What if the side effects of this drug were limited to a feeling of well-being, boundless energy, peaceful sleep, enhanced mental and physical ability? Wouldn’t you take this drug?
There is no such drug. But you can learn to do something that can provide all of the benefits I have described. You can learn to cook.
The human body is far more complex and intricate than anything invented by human science. There is much about the workings of the human body that is still a mystery. But we do know that the human body has an amazing capacity to protect itself, heal, regenerate, and rebuild. We also know that the body can fail, become very ill, and die.
What is the difference between a healthy body and a sick one?
Dr. Weston A Price, a dentist, noticed that each generation of his patients was less healthy than their parents. He decided to study the effect of diet on humanity, travelling to many countries to learn what healthy people ate. Dr. Price found that people eating the diet of their ancestors were healthy, with none of the chronic diseases that are so common today. These people did not have heart disease. They did not have cancer. They did not have mental illness. They did not have crime. They had no tooth decay, although they had no dentists. When the same people ate modern foods, their teeth decayed, and they suffered from all the chronic illnesses that afflict us today.
When the human body gets all the nutrients it needs, it is healthy. When the body does not get those nutrients, it is sick. Modern foods do not provide all the nutrients needed for good health. Supplements are not the answer, because the body takes its nutrients from foods, including a number of substances in the whole food called cofactors, which are often unknown, and are needed by the body to assimilate nutrients. Supplements do not have all the cofactors. The only way to get all needed nutrients is to eat real, unaltered food, prepared by somebody who knows how to cook it.
The most important task any of us can learn is to cook real food, as this is the only way we can provide the nutrients necessary for health.
Learning what to eat and how to cook takes time and work, but the rewards are worth it. To me, cooking has become more art than work. I truly enjoy it. When I cook, I am always aware that the food I am cooking will become part of me and the people I care about. I cultivate a happy, loving contentment when I cook — knowing that what I am doing will make me and my family healthier, while giving us the pleasure of a delicious meal. I cannot describe how good it feels to become healthier, and to see your family become healthier, and to know it is because of the good food you prepare.
Real cooking may seem difficult at first, but it gets easier and faster over time. If you cook enough, it will become as easy and instinctive as riding a bicycle, or driving a car.
I believe that food must taste good to be truly nutritious. The good taste and smell of real food, properly prepared, gives much pleasure while stimulating the salivary glands. The salivary glands produce substances that aid greatly in the digestion and absorption of food. Good taste helps good nutrition.
Dr. Price discovered what to eat, and what to avoid. I follow the Weston A. Price Foundation’s Dietary Guidelines. I have switched entirely to grassfed and grass finished meat, with wonderful results.
If you have decided to learn to cook real food — the most important task — I recommend the book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD. This magnificent book covers just about every aspect of cooking real food, while providing a huge amount of information on what to eat and why. While the scope of the book may seem overwhelming, you don’t have to read the whole thing at once. I recommend using the book as a cooking encyclopedia, and looking up the specific issue or recipe you want to learn about.
For a detailed and user-friendly cookbook on grassfed meat, designed for people who have never cooked grassfed meat, I recommend Tender Grassfed Meat. That is why I wrote it.
This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival, hosted this week by Cheeseslave blog. Go see other homages to real foods, good fats on Cheeseslave.com!
Health Benefits of Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
English Style Prime Rib, page 86, Tender Grassfed Meat.
Why did I spend three years writing a book on cooking grassfed meat? Why did I read over 300 cookbooks and novels? The answer is very simple. I wanted to improve my health by enjoying the immense health benefits of grassfed meat. Grassfed meat and fat are so nutritious that they can literally rebuild your body. They certainly rebuilt mine.
Grassfed meat is a completely different product from conventional meat. The natural food of cattle, bison, and lamb is grass and meadow plants. That is all they should be eating. When the animals are raised on grass, their meat is packed full of nutrients in the perfect proportion for good health, in a form that can be easily assimilated by the human body.
Meat that is not 100 percent grassfed and grass finished is fed a mixture of grain, soy, and many other things that were never a part of the natural diet of these animals. The “other things†can include rendered restaurant waste, various animal parts, cement dust, plastic balls, chicken manure, and many other unsavory ingredients. Some producers only feed a 100 percent vegetarian diet to their animals. However, even these diets usually consist of a large amount of grain and soy, which are not part of the natural diet of grass eating animals.
Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids
The meat of grain finished animals is very different in composition than the meat of grassfed animals, and lacks many of the wonderful nutrients that are present in grassfed meat. For example, the natural balance of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids should be no more than four to one. In grassfed meat, the ratio is usually one to one. In meat that is not exclusively grassfed, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is often twenty-to-one. The omega-6 excess in the American diet has been associated with a greatly increased risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity, rapid aging, and many other health problems. Many doctors advise their patients to take fish oil capsules to try to help with the imbalance. Grassfed meat has the same ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 as wild fish.
The Benefits of CLA
In addition to having the proper ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, grassfed meat contains a large amount of CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid). The amount of CLA goes down when the animal is fed grain. The more grain fed to the animal, the less CLA. Various studies have shown that CLA:
- Increases the metabolic rate
- Increases muscle mass while reducing fat
- Decreases abdominal fat
- Strengthens the immune system
- Reduces the risk of cancer
- Reduces the risk of heart disease
- Reduces the risk of diabetes
- Reduces the risk of hyperthyroidism
- Normalizes thyroid function
More Nutrients in Grassfed Meat
But that is not all. Your body does not use nutrients in isolation, but is accustomed to receiving them together with other substances that are present in the food and necessary for your body to assimilate and use the nutrients. These substances are known as cofactors. When the cofactors are missing or altered, the ability of your body to use the nutrients is greatly reduced. This is why vitamin supplements are often ineffective, because your body needs the cofactors present in real food to properly assimilate nutrients. When you eat 100 percent grassfed and grass finished meat, you know you are getting all the cofactors, in their proper form.
Grassfed meat also provides a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. All of these nutrients are present in proper proportion to each other, along with the cofactors needed for your body to properly assimilate them.
My health has improved enormously since I made the switch to eating only 100 percent grassfed and grass finished meat. Learning how to cook grassfed meat was worth all the time, trouble, and expense. Good health is worth it!
Disclaimer:
I am not a doctor, and the above is not intended to be medical advice. Grassfed meat is a food, not a medicine. By all means, see a doctor if you want medical advice. The above is just a description of my understanding of the nutritional benefits of grassfed meat.
This post is part of GAPS Friendly Friday blog carnival. Read more great Real Food Wednesday blogs at Kelly the Kitchen Cop.
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