Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
The Butchers Tale, or Is Real Food Worth It?
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Cuts of grass fed meat.
I ran into one of my favorite butchers yesterday. He was trained the old way, when butchering was an art. He knows a lot about all kinds of meat. He can cut steaks and roasts that are so beautiful that they are like a fine painting.
He had just finished reading Tender Grassfed Barbecue. He said that he agreed with everything I wrote about nutrition. He could see it in the meat, over the many years he was a butcher. He had wondered for a long time why grain-finished meat looked so different, and was so full of blocky streaks of fat, rather than the fine marbling he looked for in a superior piece of meat. He said that he believed that most conventional foods were not that nutritious. And then he let out a shocker.
“I am still going to eat the conventional food. I know the grassfed meat and real food is much better for me, but it is too much trouble to change. It would just be too much work. And the better food is too expensive.”
I have heard words like these from so many people. It is too hard, too much trouble, and too expensive, to make the switch to real food.
Having reached the point where we eat nothing but real food and grassfed meat, I can tell you this:
- It is very hard to make the switch.
- It is a lot of trouble.
- It is more expensive.
And, many people will think you are nuts.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely. The blessings of good health and mental clarity that I have received from changing my diet are worth all the trouble, expense, and even being made fun of or being thought of as a nut. It has been like being reborn.
Health Is Much Better than Convenience
Many years ago, when I was twenty, my Dad asked me if I ever felt good when I woke up in the morning, full of energy, eager for the challenges and pleasures of the day. I honestly told him that I never did. I did not even know what he was talking about. When I woke up, I was discouraged, annoyed, short of breath, and in pain.
I thought I was eating a good diet, because the FDA inspected all food, and would not allow any food that was not good to be sold. I ate only conventional foods sold by big supermarkets, because they were cheaper, and “just as good.”
I thought I was well nourished, because I was big and looked powerful. And because I followed my doctor’s advice on what to eat.
I thought I was getting the best medical care in the world.
So why was I so sick, exhausted, and miserable?
I am convinced I was suffering from severe malnutrition, like most Americans. And I did not even know it.
Because it is easy to find, buy, and use conventional food, I had convenience. But I did not have health.
Making the Change
Eventually, things deteriorated to the point where the medical profession had no help to give me, and told me so. Rather than give up and die as predicted, I got furious. I got determined. I used my skills as a research attorney to find another way.
What I found was the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and the priceless information on their website enabled me not only to save my life, but become healthy for the very first time as an adult.
I knew I had to switch to real food. It was difficult. I had to drop most of the food items I used to buy. I thought I loved many of them, though in reality, I was addicted. I had to learn a whole new way of cooking. And we spent much more money on food than we were used to. And I had to deal with the fact that some of the foods I needed could not be bought, only made. Making homemade broth, especially skimming it, and straining it, seemed so hard. Learning how to cook grassfed meat was hard, especially when I kept ruining it and there was nothing I could find that taught me how to cook it. I wrote Tender Grassfed Meat to make it easier for others to learn how to cook this wonderful meat. Making my own fermented foods was hard, at first. And I really missed the factory foods I was addicted to.
But once I learned how to make broth, cook grassfed meat, and make fermented foods, it became familiar and easy. Still time consuming, but easy.
I learned how to find and buy real food, which became fun. And the extra expense became easier to accept, as we adjusted our spending priorities, realizing that nothing we can buy is as important as the good food that keeps us healthy. We also learned how to find sales and bargains, which really helped.
The addiction to the factory foods began to fade, as we ate much better real food alternatives.
Many of our family members, friends, and acquaintances thought we were too picky. Some got offended when I would not eat the conventional food they liked.
The convincing argument, the one that convinced me that real food was worth all the time, expense, and trouble, is this—I became much healthier. When properly nourished, the natural functions of my body kept me healthy, without any drugs. My mind became much sharper, and the occasional short term memory problems disappeared. The quality of my life became so much better, in every way.
Now I wake up each morning eager for the challenges and pleasures of the day, full of energy, and so happy to be here. I finally understand what my Dad was talking about, so many years ago.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
Food Freedom Requires Good Labeling
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
photo credit: Danny Nicholson  We have a right to know what is in all food.
I consider the freedom to choose what we eat to be one of the most crucial human rights. Nothing affects us more than what we eat. If people do not eat what they need, and enough of it, they sicken and die.
The converse is also true—if we eat what we need, and enough of it, we are usually healthy. And there is nothing more important to a person than their actual health. Every person is different, and their needs change from day to day. We must be able to choose what we put into our bodies. But we cannot really choose what to eat, and what to avoid, if we do not know what is in the food, and how it was raised.
Since modern food contains many hidden ingredients and processes, the only way we can make an informed choice is if we know what is in the food, and how it was raised.
We need full and complete labeling.
The Modern Problem of Hidden Ingredients
The need to make a wise choice about what to eat is crucial, perhaps the most important decision, and one most of us make every single day. What we eat, and what we do not eat, has a huge impact on our health, mental attitude, energy, ability to do things, and our very survival.
In the past, the choice was not hard. There was a great deal of traditional knowledge about what foods were needed, and how a particular food could help a particular problem. Foods were unmodified and pure, for the most part.
That is not the case today. Most food is processed, raised in ways that violate the very laws of nature. Most food has many chemical additives. Even raw foods like meat and vegetables are often tainted with chemicals such as pesticides, growth hormones, and chemical cleansers such as bleach. Many animals are fed feed that was never part of their natural diet. Many plants are grown on depleted soil with the use of chemical fertilizers, and lack needed nutrients.
Without labeling, or actually knowing the details of what is in the food and how it has been raised, it is impossible to know what you are actually putting into your body.
The Labeling We Need
We do have some labeling and disclosure, but it is far from perfect. Many additives are not labeled, and the pesticides and chemicals used to grow and process the food usually never are on the label.
We need to have full disclosure of everything that is added to every food. We need to have full disclosure of how the food was raised. If we eat meat, we need to know what the animal was fed, where it was raised, and what has been added to the meat. If we eat vegetables, we need to know where they were grown, and what chemicals were used in the process. If we eat anything, we need to know how it has been processed. If something is genetically modified, we need to know it. Only then will we actually know what we are eating.
The food industry would greatly object to this kind of labeling, claiming it is too burdensome and expensive. I have heard one scientist say so many substances are used that there would not be enough room to put them on any label.
I do not believe the claim that full labeling and disclosure is too burdensome and expensive. Many other nations have much more extensive labeling requirements than the U.S.
As for the claim that there is no room on the label, my solution is to use less chemicals. Most of these unlabeled substances are chemical additives, which are there only to increase the profitability of the product. I submit that the freedom to know what we are eating is much more important than the profits of a greedy corporation that feels a need to hide what it adds to the food. We need good, real food, not chemical additives.
Given the current degree of control the biotech and food industries have over government in the U.S., such labeling is not likely at this time. But that does not mean we do not need it.
In the meantime, I learn all I can about what I eat, and refuse to eat those things that do not meet my standards of being naturally raised, and low in toxins.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Best Real Food Is at Home, Not in a Restaurant
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
photo credit: JustDerek The best food comes from a home kitchen.
When I read older cookbooks about various cuisines, the author will say that the way to eat the best food is in someone’s home, where the really good food is cooked, not a restaurant. Now, restaurants are celebrated in many cookbooks.
If I never ate in a restaurant again, that would be fine with me. I get much healthier food at home, and it tastes much better.
This is a somewhat shocking statement in a nation where most adults do not know how to cook, and where more people are eating out than ever before. A nation where cookery is treated as a mystery understood only by celebrity chefs, and where the convenience of eating out and buying heat and serve meals has become a way of life.
It was not always that way.
It used to be that most families had at least one good cook, sometimes several, and people preferred to eat the good real food they had at home. Restaurants were for special occasions, and their food had to be really good or no one would go there. Unfortunately, that is no longer true.
The best real food is cooked at home.
The Trouble with Restaurants
I have a number of problems with most of today’s restaurants.
First: Food quality, or rather the lack of it. Most restaurants use cheap, factory ingredients. Many chain restaurants and fast food places do no cooking other than heating prepackaged food in a microwave. The food is prepared in a central kitchen, frozen, and then shipped to the various locations where it is actually served. When cooking actually occurs in a restaurant, the worst factory oils such as soy and canola are commonly used. GMOs, CAFO meat, and factory produce are the standard, because they are much cheaper than real food. In the rare place where quality ingredients are actually used, the prices are extremely high, and the actual quality is often not as good as advertised.
Second: Many people get sick after eating at restaurants, ranging from feeling stuffed and bloated to something serious. While poor quality food is a factor, often a lack of basic sanitation is the real culprit. If you want to see how bad it can get, just watch a couple of episodes of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.
Third: Many restaurants, especially those who claim to have higher quality food, serve tiny portions of the choice ingredients, combined with larger portions of something cheap. The current practice of “plating,” where food is arranged to be “artistic,” is usually just an ingenious way to serve less food to the customers, saving costs. Quite frankly, I see nothing attractive about spots and swirls of sauce, and vast expanses of emptiness on a plate.
Fourth: In most cases, wherever you go, the food is just not that tasty. Usually it is mediocre at best.
The emphasis on profit and speed is not consistent with good meals. And most restaurants just cost too much, always more than you would think, once you add in the tax, tips, and drinks.
Now, there are exceptions, restaurants that serve clean quality food, skillfully prepared, with decent portions. Most of these exceptions are extremely expensive, but there are a few that are reasonable.
Good luck in finding them.
Home Cooked Meals Are Best
When you learn to cook, you set yourself free. You are no longer dependent on restaurants or packaged meals, but can select grassfed meat and real food, and be certain that you and your family are eating high quality food, which our bodies so desperately need.
You can keep a clean kitchen, and know that no one who eats your food will feel stuffed or sick from your cooking.
You will also find that it is much less expensive to do your own cooking, especially if you shop wisely for quality ingredients.
And here is another secret—most cooking is easy, once you have a little experience. In fact, quality ingredients such as grassfed meat and organic produce do not require much seasoning or skill to be absolutely delicious. My cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, teach how to cook absolutely delicious grassfed meat—the easy way.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
The Goodness of Grassfed Meat and Real Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
The deep orange color of the yolks shows that these are pastured eggs, rich with nutrients.
Grassfed meat and real food are more expensive, and much harder to get than factory food. Why should we pay the higher cost? Why go to the considerable trouble of finding real food and quality grassfed meat?
The answer is simple, yet profound.
- Because it makes me feel so much better.
- Because it enables the natural functions of my body to function better, keeping me healthy, with every part working well, from mind to toes.
- Because it tastes so good, and makes me feel so satisfied.
- Because eating properly prepared grassfed meat and real food makes me happy and content.
In a world that sells convenience above all else, it is important to remember that easy is not always best. Quality really matters, especially when it comes to food.
Good Health
Our bodies were not designed or evolved to live on pills and supplements, or on food raised with chemicals that did not even exist until they were invented in a lab. Humanity has eaten grassfed meat and real food for most of our history, and our bodies have adapted to use this wonderful fuel.
It is not just the individual nutrient that matters, it is the combination of nutrients, many of which have yet to be discovered. When we eat a balanced traditional diet of real food and grassfed meat, we need not worry about whether we are getting good nutrition that our bodies can easily absorb and use—because we are.
Factory foods raised with chemicals, GMOs, foods that have been irradiated, foods with chemical additives, are all new to humanity, and are different from the foods that have nourished us since the beginning.
How do we know if we are well nourished? We feel good, clear, with lots of energy. We experience a great deal of satisfaction and contentment. There is a wonderful feeling of satisfaction that comes after eating a good meal of real food, that can never come from eating factory food.
The chemicals they add to factory food can make it taste good, and can make us crave it, but it does not satisfy. In fact, one of the telltale signs of factory food is that you can eat a great deal of it and never be satisfied, always craving more. That is why people will eat whole quarts of factory ice cream, drink a gallon or more of factory soft drinks in a day, eat huge quantities of candy, and still be hungry.
With real food and grassfed meat, you eat, and your body knows when you have had enough. Then the desire to eat ends, and you enjoy the wonderful satisfaction that only real food can bring.
Better Taste
Real food and grassfed meat, properly cooked with traditional ingredients and methods, tastes so good it is hard to describe. The smell and taste of a grassfed beef roast cooked over smoldering charcoal is good beyond belief, as are countless other traditional dishes.
And it is not hard to cook this kind of food to the point where it is wonderful. It is not complicated. If you have great ingredients, you can enjoy wonderful, tender grassfed meat, and utterly delicious real food, with just a few ingredients and simple cooking methods.
Two days ago, we had a grassfed beef roast cooked in front of a hardwood charcoal fire, seasoned with no more than three ingredients. Cooking it was simplicity itself, being just a matter of a very simple marinade, timing, and adjusting the temperature of the fire by adjusting the vents once. Yet this beef was so good, so delicious, absolutely mouth-watering as it came off the grill with that heavenly aroma that only barbecued meat can have.
Yesterday, we had a pastured pork roast, marinated with a traditional combination of four ingredients, then roasted in the oven with one change of temperature. We sliced it thin, and enjoyed the incredible flavor and tenderness of the meat, enhanced by the traditional spicing. This meat was so good it was hard to imagine anything better, and most of the dinner conversation involved praising the goodness of the pork.
Yet, when we had enough, in both of those meals, the desire to eat ended, and we experienced the wonderful sensation of satisfaction.
My cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, contain detailed instructions on how to cook wonderful grassfed meat—the easy way.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
To Use Your Food Senses, Eat Real Food Only
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
photo credit: JohnnyRokkit
Have you ever wondered why the sight, smell, texture, and taste of food is so important to us?
The answer is simple. Our bodies use these senses to decide what food should be eaten, what food should be avoided, to prepare the digestive system, and to tell us how much of a particular food to eat.
That is right, how much to eat. Our bodies do not follow calorie counting charts, but use sensory input to decide what to eat and how much. Every person is different, and our dietary needs vary from day to day. Our bodies have a magnificent system already in place to guide us with certainty as to what and how much we need to eat. Most of our ancestors trusted and used this system, and obesity was very rare.
But there is a problem in modern food that cripples our sensory food input—chemical flavor enhancers that are literally designed to fool and trick our senses, so our bodies think they are eating something they are not.
These chemicals create the equivalent of hallucinations for our taste buds, and appetite regulation system. They are completely legal, and fool the natural system we have for regulating our appetite and desiring food.
The only way to avoid them is to eat real food only, and avoid all factory foods.
Factory Foods Are Designed to Fool Our Senses
The food industry depends on foods raised as cheaply as possible, and demands that these foods have a long shelf life. The problem for the food industry is that the natural taste, sight, and smell of such foods is not very good, and people’s senses would reject them. The first factory foods that were introduced were almost completely rejected by the public, because their senses rejected them.
The food industry turned to science, and science came up with chemical flavor enhancers, and chemicals that change the very appearance, taste, and smell of the food. These enhancers are designed to trick the senses into thinking that a food is much more desirable than it is, and some of them actually make people want to eat more of that food.
Tricking the Eyes
These techniques fool the eyes by using chemicals to change the natural appearance of the food. One example is the use of carbon monoxide gas to make factory meat appear red, rather than brown or gray.
This fools the eyes, which do not find brownish or grayish raw meat appealing.
Other such techniques include putting chemical waxes on fruits, using gas to give a ripe appearance to fruits and vegetables, using chemical dyes in food, and others.
Tricking the Nose
The natural smell of factory food is often very bad. The food industry uses many different chemicals and processing techniques to remove the bad smells, and other chemicals to give a bland or enticing smell. This totally deceives our sense of smell.
Tricking the Taste
The natural taste of many factory foods is vile, and people will not eat food that tastes so bad. But chemicals are used in many products to hide the natural bad taste and add a good taste.
Factory foods are often bleached and deodorized with chemicals, to kill the horrible smell and taste of items like unfermented soy.
Chemical flavor enhancers are added to all kinds of foods. Scientists are able to use chemicals to add almost any desired taste to a particular food, and are constantly developing new artificial tastes. These chemicals not only make the food taste much better than it would naturally, but can fool our bodies into thinking they are eating something they are not. This confuses the digestive system and the appetite.
Chemicals are also added to many factory foods that make people want to eat more of the food, just because of the chemical. This causes many people to overeat, and is believed to be a huge cause of the rampant obesity that plagues the modern world.
When You Only Eat Real Food, It Is Natural to Eat Only what You Need
By avoiding foods with chemicals, we set our senses free to do their job of regulating our diet. It may take a while, but I have found that my senses tell me what I want to eat, and how much. When I have eaten enough of a certain food, I am no longer hungry for it. When I stop eating, I am happy, content, satisfied, and never stuffed or uncomfortable. I have no digestive problems when I eat real food. I can trust my senses to tell me what to eat, and how much, because they are not fooled with chemicals. And my health has improved so much.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Eating Real Food Is NOT Snobby, but Wise
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
photo credit: jessicareeder
As more and more people are giving up factory food for something real, the industry has come up with a sleazy, deceptive argument to get us back to buying their chemical-filled concoctions—guilt.
If you try to avoid toxins, GMOs, chemicals, and try to eat the pure foods of our ancestors, you are a snob, and a bad person.
This is absolute nonsense, and I have written a guest blog explaining why.
Real Food vs. Industrial Food
The real food movement has become a threat to industrial food producers. People are realizing that real food is much better. Industrial food manufacturers are trying to demonize real food and the people who eat it. They claim:
Click here to read the rest of the article at Hartke Is Online!
A Video Worth Seeing about Truth in Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Normally, I do not do blogs about YouTube videos. But this video is different.
It corrects some of the biggest false ideas most people have about eating. The message is clear, simple, and compelling. Modern eating makes us fat and sick. Traditional eating, eating the foods humanity ate before industrial food was invented, keeps us slim and healthy. Too much exercise wears us out, and does not make us lose weight.
Eating high quality food is the way to go. Counting calories is a waste of time. Most diets are worthless. The basic, unmodified foods of nature are best. Sugary, starchy foods are the worst. The more natural, the better. Eat grassfed meat. And many other good ideas, clearly presented.
This is all good advice, and totally contradicts the false precepts of the Standard American Diet (SAD), the diet that makes Americans the weakest, sickest, most crippled rich people in history.
I have corresponded with Jonathan Bailor, the maker of the video. His goal is to spread awareness of his message so it can actually reach the mainstream. This is a magnificent goal, as the mainstream believes in SAD, diets, high-carb eating, factory food , calorie restriction, and exercising until they are worn out as the way to be healthy and slim. That sounds ridiculous even as I write it—but most Americans believe this nonsense.
Many of you already know the truth about food, but we are a tiny minority. Ultimately, if we remain a tiny minority, the corporations and governments will make it impossible for anyone to get real food, including us. Knowing the truth about food will do us no good if we cannot get quality food. The best protection we can get is to have our knowledge go mainstream, and Jonathon has a plan to get there.
Jonathon’s immediate goal is to get one million views of this video, as he believes that will get attention and engage the interest of many people. I do not know if he is right, but I hope he is. So I support his goal of one million views.
Ultimately, it is vital that most people learn the truth about food, the sooner the better. If everyone knew the concepts on this video, and followed them, the health and understanding of most people would greatly improve. And that is a worthwhile goal, which is why I am asking you to consider viewing the video.
If you like the video, please consider spreading news of it to the people you know, and inviting them to view it.
The more people who understand the truth about food, the better our chances of being able to have real food in the future.
Here is a link to the video:
Slim Is Simple .org – The Non-Profit Nutrition Education Effort
Our Ancestors Thrived on High-Fat Diets
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grass-fed beef with its natural fat cap.
If you study the history of food, and read what contemporary people wrote and said about it, you will be struck by one inevitable fact—our ancestors considered fat a vital nutrient, and loved to eat it. The only bad thing about fat was the difficulty in obtaining it, as it was often expensive and hard to get.
This fact is shocking to modern people, who have been subject to a propaganda campaign that labeled most fat as bad, unhealthy, and the cause of most illness. This propaganda campaign began in the 1960s, and became accepted as absolute fact in the 1980s. Even though there never was any real evidence to support the all-animal-fat-is-bad theory, nearly everyone believed it. Even today, most people believe that fat, especially saturated animal fat, is bad for health and should be restricted.
This belief remains common even though it has never been proven and many studies and much research has totally discredited it.
Now, I am not a doctor, or a nutritionist, or a scientist. But I am an attorney, and I have been one for a very long time. Attorneys are experts in evaluating evidence. I have evaluated the available evidence on fat, and it is my opinion that animal fat from healthy animals eating their natural diet is one of the healthiest, most vital, and most needed foods we can eat.
The Case Against Traditional Animal Fat
The claim that fat is bad and causes illness began with the infamous “lipid hypothesis “developed after World War II. This unproven theory tried to connect cholesterol with heart disease, and eating fat with the creation of excess cholesterol.
This theory was of great benefit to the makers of factory vegetable fats and modified foods, who had to find a way to get Americans to drop the healthy traditional foods of their ancestors, so they would buy the new products. It also created a whole new set of illnesses and medical conditions, which increased revenue for the medical profession and the drug industry. These powerful forces supported the lipid hypothesis and the related belief that eating saturated animal fat caused too much cholesterol, and therefore, heart disease. Since eating factory foods makes people fat, a huge diet industry grew and added its money and power to the propaganda campaign. Eventually, these industries were able to persuade most people and institutions that eating traditional animal fats caused many other illnesses. Since these industries have a great deal of influence over government, they were able to get government agencies to support the fat and cholesterol myths.
A number of careful reviews of the studies supporting the lipid hypothesis have shown that there is no real evidence to support the theory. The same is true of the theory that eating animal fat is unhealthy. A number of these reviews are available at the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation. The lipid hypothesis is believed not because it is true, but because it has been marketed so effectively.
The Case for Traditional Animal Fat
Human history and even animal history establishes conclusively that traditional animal fat is a vital nutrient. The very first part of the animal eaten by predators is the fatty liver, followed by the other fatty organs. Caves which sheltered prehistoric peoples are full of bones that have been cracked open to get at the fatty marrow. Nearly every traditional people valued natural animal fat as one of their most important foods. Pemmican, the traditional survival food of the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains, was one-third bison fat. European poets wrote poems about their love and appreciation for fatty foods. There are countless other examples.
Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist and researcher, became aware that each generation of his patients had worse teeth than the preceding generation. He noticed how healthy some traditional peoples seemed to be. He decided to visit a number of them, all over the globe, and learn what made them healthy. Dr. Price was convinced that nutrition was the key, and expected to find that these people were vegetarians. He spent ten years travelling the world, visiting these healthy peoples in person and learning what they ate, and did not eat.
He learned that none of them were vegetarians, and all of them relied heavily on what he called sacred foods—which were always foods rich in animal fats, including butter, the back fat of moose, fish eggs, seal blubber, cod livers, milk that had six times the fat content of American milk, and other similar foods.
These people were healthy, having perfect teeth, no degenerative diseases, no mental illness, and no birth defects. When the very same people began to eat the processed foods of civilization, their health collapsed, they lost their teeth, and became the victim of many horrible illnesses, like tuberculosis.
Dr. Price had thousands of traditional foods studied in labs, and concluded that the most important nutrients were found in traditional foods rich in animal fat.
I find Dr. Price’s research convincing, and adopting a high animal fat diet based on his research brought me from being very ill to being free of all illness.
My cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, are true to the principles discovered by Dr. Price, and make full use of traditional animal fats in the recipes.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday , and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Grassfed Feasts for the Holidays—An Old Tradition
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
English Style Prime Rib, page 86, Tender Grassfed Meat.
A feast at the end of the year is a very old European tradition, going back to the days before Christmas was celebrated. This holiday was often known as Yule. It has generally been replaced with Christmas, which also traditionally includes a feast.
It was common to welcome the New Year with a feast as well.
These days, people are taught to fear their food. Fat from healthy animals, one of the most vital and nutrient-rich foods we can eat, has been demonized and blamed for heart disease, and almost every other chronic disease known to humanity. This is just not true. People ate foods rich in animal fat during eras where heart disease, cancer, and most other modern diseases were unknown.
Yet the propaganda has been so effective that many people do not even know which foods were the traditional centerpieces of the holiday feast, and have never tasted them.
Certainly, skinless, boneless chicken breast, or skinless, boneless turkey breast, from birds fed GMO soy and GMO corn, were never the center of the holiday feast. Neither were vegetarian concoctions such as soy substitutes for meat, laden with chemicals and flavor enhancers.
The traditional centerpiece of the European and American holiday feast was a big grassfed roast, or pastured roast, or pastured bird, roasted whole with its skin intact.
It is time to put the fear aside, and enjoy the rich, traditional bounty of the holiday. You do not have to restrict yourself to lean factory meats devoid of taste and nutrition. We can still enjoy the feasting traditions of our ancestors and the many health benefits of grassfed and pastured meats.
Traditional Foods for the Feast
Prime Rib Roast
This roast, grassfed until the mid-twentieth century, is a magnificent centerpiece for any holiday feast. Cut from the chine area of the steer, the most prized traditional cut, sometimes reserved for heroes, it is a magnificent sight. Resting on a natural rack of its own bones, covered by a thick mantle of its own healthy fat, it produces instant hunger when brought to the table.
Prime rib has a unique taste of its own, that no other beef or meat shares. It is a truly wonderful taste, enhanced by being roasted on the bone, enriched by the melting fat that bastes the meat as the roasting proceeds. The natural fat cap helps keep the meat moist and tender, while lending a magnificent flavor.
It is an old tradition to roast vegetables in the same pan as the prime rib. The vegetables caramelize in the flavorful fat that melts from the roast, developing a depth of flavor that must be tasted to be believed, turning crusty on the outside while remaining tender on the inside. Organic potatoes reach their height of perfection when roasted this way, which also adds scrumptious flavors to peeled and sliced carrots and onion wedges. A traditional grassfed prime rib roasted with vegetables in this manner is perhaps our favorite holiday meal, which we have at least once every holiday season. You can see a photo of one of our holiday prime ribs above.
Roast Tenderloin of Beef
A whole tenderloin of beef is another holiday choice for a special meal. Grassfed tenderloin, in particular, has a wonderful flavor. Tenderloin is naturally lean, and traditional preparations add fat to it in many different ways. It often had slivers of bacon inserted in the meat, a process called larding, that used a special needle. It was often wrapped in pork fat, or beef kidney fat. It was often marinated in oil with herbs. Many times, it was coated with large amounts of butter and basted as it roasted.
Beef Wellington, page 92, Tender Grassfed Meat.
Yet our favorite method of cooking this magnificent, luxury cut is to cook it in a rich pastry, made with huge amounts of butter, known as Beef Wellington. The meat is coated with a mixture of finely chopped mushrooms and onions, sautéed in butter until they have shrunk and caramelized, which greatly intensifies their flavor. The coated meat is than wrapped in butter-rich puff pastry, and roasted to tender, flavorful, perfection.
The smell of the roasting grassfed meat, butter, and mushrooms makes you so hungry, and the sight of the wonderfully browned pastry as it is carried to the table is something to behold. The combination of the tender grassfed meat, sautéed mushroom coating, and buttery pastry is wonderful beyond my ability to describe it.
Roast Rack of Lamb
Castillian Rack of Lamb with Chine, page 167, Tender Grassfed Meat.
The rack of lamb is cut from the chine portion of the lamb, traditionally the most valuable and cherished cut. This cut is also a great choice for a holiday feast. Many people, especially in the U.S., think they do not like lamb, but that is only because they have not had quality grassfed lamb, from a traditional meat breed, which has a mild yet wonderful taste, especially when served rare to medium rare.
A rack of lamb has been prized in Europe as a holiday feast for a very long time, and we have learned how to enjoy this tradition as well.
Racks of lamb are often “Frenched,†which usually means that all the fat is trimmed off. I do not recommend this, as the fat is crucial to a magnificent roast. Sometimes during the holidays you will come across a “crown rack of lamb,†which is cut in such a way that it is almost guaranteed to come out overcooked. I do not recommend this either. Most American butchers will cut a rack of lamb between each bone, to make it easy to carve into individual chops once roasted. I do not recommend this either, as it almost always results in an overcooked lamb that has lost far too much of its natural juices and flavor.
The rack of lamb in our holiday feast rests on a natural rack of its own bones, retains a thick crown of its own magnificent fat, and is uncut and whole—no cuts between each chop to let the flavor out. It roasts quickly at a high heat, with organic potatoes and other vegetables in the pan, caramelizing in the melting fat, and taking on a wonderful, crusty flavor and texture. The smell of this cut as it roasts is almost as good as the taste when it is finally served. It is important to serve lamb hot, and not let it get lukewarm or cold. But the flavor of a true grassfed lamb, from a traditional meat breed, is magnificent.
Roast Goose
No article about holiday feasts in winter can be complete without at least a mention of roast goose, which was one of the favorite Christmas meals in Europe for many centuries. In fact, having a roast goose for Christmas was so important that many employment contracts provided that the employer would give the employee a fat goose at Christmas time—it was that important.
Goose is not commonly made these days, and is a bit tricky to get right, but when you get it right, it is something very special. The plentiful, crisp skin is in a league of its own, being an incredibly satisfying mouthful, with a wonderful texture and flavor. The tender dark meat has a great depth of flavor which sets off the crisp skin perfectly. Any traditional holiday goose will include a delicious stuffing, often rich with apples, which go perfectly with the goose meat. And the traditional gravy, flavored by the rich, caramelized drippings, is something special, a symphony of flavors that enhance the stuffing, the skin, and the flavorful meat.
The goose gives off a lot of fat when roasting, so much fat that it must be carefully drained at various times during the roasting. Traditionally, this fat was saved, and used for cooking, and for healing. I have saved goose fat in this matter, and it is one of my favorite fats to cook with.
There are many other traditional centerpieces for the holiday meal, including hams (both cured and fresh), duck, capon, turkey, leg of lamb, rib roast of pork, roast pork loin, roasted beef strip loin, roast saddle of lamb, and others. All of them are roasted whole, with plenty of their own fat, and usually roasted on the bone. Our ancestors knew how to celebrate with food!
My first cookbook, Tender Grassfed Meat, contains many recipes for prime rib and rack of lamb, and the best grassfed Beef Wellington I have ever tasted.
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Freaky Friday blog carnivals.
Grassfed Cooking Tips
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grassfed steaks, properly cooked, are the best tasting.
Many people have heard of the health benefits of grassfed meat. Just as I once did, they will buy some grassfed meat, cook it the same way they cook other meat—and ruin it. Many of these people will never try grassfed meat again, convinced that it is tough and tastes bad. This can happen even to professional chefs. It certainly happened to me.
Yet I will tell you that grassfed meat is incredibly tender, with flavors that make conventional meat taste like cardboard. I now find the taste of grain-fed meat to be totally blah, and the texture of grain-fed meat to be repulsive.
The difference is all in how you cook it, though the meat itself is just as important. Knowing what meat to select, and how to cook it, has resulted in hundreds, perhaps thousands of wonderful grassfed meals for me and my family. And the meat is always tender.
When I became frustrated with my failures in cooking grassfed meat, I realized that our ancestors knew how to cook it. They had to. There was no other red meat. And I read many accounts of how humans have loved and cherished red meat for thousands of years, and used red meat to recover from wounds and illness.
I went to work, researching many older cookbooks, histories, and old novels. I came to understand that our ancestors cooked grassfed meat very differently than we cook factory meat, and decided to use the old ways, adjust them for modern kitchens, and see what I could do. After years of research, experimentation, and cooking hundreds of meals, I finally learned how to cook this wonderful meat.
And I discovered a secret—properly cooked grassfed meat is not only much healthier for us, with large amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, CLAs, and vital amino acids in a form that our bodies easily absorb—it tastes much better than conventional meat. And it is more tender, with wonderful mouth feel and texture.
The details of how to cook grassfed meat and to have it come out tender and delicious every time, using easy methods, are contained in my cookbooks: Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue.
Each book contains over a hundred detailed recipes.
In response to a request from my good friend Kimberly Hartke, I have decided to share some tips on cooking grassfed meat. These tips will be useful for most people who are learning to cook grassfed meat.
Here is the link, to my article on Kimberly’s great blog, Hartke is Online: