A wife and a mom of 3 elementary age kids. I have a husband who has eaten low carb for the last 5 years and has both lost and maintained well over 100# weight loss. My daughter is dairy free and has food allergies/intolerances. Therefore, mealtime is super fun at our house… kidding! We eat lots of meat and creative low carb/ dairy free sides over here.
We buy “clean” wine and organic fruit so why didn’t I buy meat from its source? My search for Beef that was “clean” and wasn’t sitting in the meat counter for days on end started for me! I wanted to not only find higher quality meat to feed my family but wanted to make sure that if something happened in the world, our freezer was stocked with food to feed my family! Oak Barn Beef was our perfect solution! Hannah not only cares about her product but also about her animals and their care long before the meat stocks my freezer. And let’s be honest, she’s delightful to talk to.
When our ½ cow arrived, it was exciting, and we had lots of new cuts to become familiar with. Denver steaks, fajita meat, hanging steaks, chuck eye steaks, minute steaks? What do I do with these? Roasts, hamburger, and ribeye’s I was confident in! The other cuts I was a bit shy about digging into. We paid good hard-earned money for this beef, so I certainly didn’t want to mess up. Then began my quest to master these mysterious beef cuts.
Cooking and Baking have always been a passion of mine. Which is why in college my degree was Dietetics (nutritional science). During covid I started a FB group to do live meal preparation and have others share what they are making for dinner each night. I was channeling my inner Pioneer Woman and Michael Simon on these posts… Food experiments are not a new concept for my family to sit down to at supper each night.
Denver Steaks were the first “mystery” I pulled out of the freezer. I lived in Colorado for 10 years so why not start there? The Denver steak had nice even marbling throughout, little fat, and was a thinner steak which reminded me of a flank steak or flat iron steak.
This method produced a nice juicy steak that was medium rare. With a thin steak like this, grilling to temp of medium to medium rare (130-145 degrees) is your best bet, anything over that tends to become chewy.
The 2nd hardest part is to remember to cut across the grain with this type of steak, again producing a more tender bite.
Let me tell you, the steak was juicy and TENDER! My Husband and kids are huge steak eaters and gobbled it up!
That first experience I only grilled 1 steak and from that day on, 2 were needed as mama needs to eat too!
This month's Friday On The Farm is all about managing heat stress during the hot summer months.
We all know that the late summer heat can start to take a toll on us, but it can also take a toll on the cattle. This means that, just like us, they have ways to keep themselves cool.