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Cooking with Grass-Fed Meat and Fowl

If you are new to grass-fed products and feel unsure about how to cook meat or fowl please read Achieving Culinary Success With Grass-Fed Beef. This is a long essay but it explains the differences between conventional and pastured animals. The essay discusses the interesting topic of artisan butchery and how this specialty is being regulated out of existence.

One tool that is very useful in cooking pastured meat and fowl is to “put away your timer and get a good meat thermometer”. I started doing this after reading The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook by Shannon Hayes. I found it took all the mystery out of cooking a turkey or a very large roast. The fowl or meat would always turn out wonderful. The temperatures below are from her cookbook and I have found the temperatures to always produce a succulent meal. She recommends allowing the meat to sit on the counter and rest after cooking. It is interesting to watch the temperature continue to increase after the meat is out of the oven. The temperatures are for grass-fed meats and the standard recommended temperatures are in parentheses. I like my meat rare inside, so I normally use the lower suggested temperatures.

Beef: 120-165F (140-170F)
Bison: 120-165F (140-170F)
Chicken (unstuffed): 120-165F (140-170F)
Duck: 160-170F (180F)
Goat: 120-145F (140-170F)
Goose: 170F (180F)
Lamb: 120-145F (140-170F)
Rabbit: 160F (160F)
Pork: 145-165F (170F)
Turkey (unstuffed): 160-165F (180F)
Veal: 120-165F (140-170F)
Venison: 120-165F (140-170F)

One of the joys of buying whole animals, is having a choice of cuts that you have never tried before. If you do not know your cuts of meats, you can learn about cuts from books such as the Joy of Cooking. I have found butchers very helpful with learning about cuts of meat and offal. Get every part of the animal you can, even if you don’t know what to do with it. It’s fun to learn how to cook strange parts of the animal! Another great source is Offal Good.

Dry heat is better for some cuts of meat and moist heat is a must for others. The use of rubs and pastes tenderize meats and add exotic flavors. Or you can tenderize with devices like Jaccard Meat Tenderizer. Super slow cooking can soften the toughest meats by cooking at the lowest temperature your oven will go. Most modern ovens will not go below 150-170F.

Remember to save the juice, bones and fat drippings from fowl and meat. The juice is a wonderful base for soups and stews. The bones can be saved in the freezer for bone broth. The fat drippings are good for frying or oven roasting just about anything. I always try to have a grease bucket in the fridge or by my stove for quick use. Fats from animals can take high heat frying much better than even butter which can burn. Read The Grease Bucket and Beautiful Bone Broth for more information. Coconut oil is safe for cooking but save your extra virgin olive oil for pouring over salads or other unheated foods. I do not recommend using industrial oils of any kind. Actually, I think industrial oils and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are the two worst modern food additives. Unfortunately, they are in most processed foods.

Full-flavored meat comes from animals that have led a full life… Life intensifies flavor, and modern meat animals are living less and less.
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee

Birdsong Farm: Cow-Share Program

About a year ago Naomi Fournier leased some land from her family and started a Cow-Share Program in Enderby, BC. A cow-share or herd-share program gives a person part ownership of a cow or herd, so the person is able to enjoy the products of the cow or herd. Cow-share programs are fairly new to British Columbia. There are five that I know of:
1. Home on the Range, Chilliwack, BC
2. Wild Thing Organics, Christina Lake, BC
3. Birdsong Farm, Enderby, BC
4. Hunny-Do Ranch, Prince George, BC
5. Graham-Knight Farm, Haida Gwaii, BC
6. EcoReality Co-operative, Salt Spring Island, BC

Naomi started a year ago with one Jersey cow and now has three cows. The cows are on pasture during the summer and hay in the winter. She has staggered the pregnancies of her cows so she can have fresh raw milk all year round. Naomi is considering starting shares in goats and sheep. She is the Enderby Chapter Leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation. If you are interested in owning shares in a herd please contact Naomi for more information and share prices:
Birdsong Farm
Naomi Fournier
3607 Trinity Valley Road, Enderby, BC, V0E 1V5
T/F: 250-838-0235
E: naomisbirdsongfarm(a)hotmail.com

If you are wondering what’s so great about pastured raw milk please read Milk: It Does a Body Good?

Winter Storage Part II

Our household has three types of winter storage. We use a root cellar, dry storage and freezers. The root cellar is humid and cool, which is good for storing: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, cabbages, onions, garlic, shallots, green tomatoes, raw cheese and crocks of fermented vegetables. The dry storage is dry and cool, which is good for storing: dried fruits, ground coconut, grains, beans, legumes, assorted herbs and raw honey. We have over 70 cubic feet of freezer space in which we store: beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, organ meats, bones, raw milk, raw butter, butter, nuts, seeds, berries, tomatoes and assorted vegetables.

Three years ago, we came to Kamloops and moved into an old mining pit. The soil is clay, rock and gravel. The first year we were busy building the warehouse and a home. The second season we started the garden. We had to bring in compost, peat, and manure from all over the city to grow anything. We planted fruit trees, currents, raspberries and other food producing plants. We use drip irrigation and a small number of spray emitters. The soil was so hard and rocky I was using a rock pick to dig shallow holes to plant my herb garden. Many plants died that first year.

The quickest way to build soil is animals. We have run chickens for two seasons now. Shaen is the gardener in the family and he has had some production this year. We have had good production from: raspberries, strawberries, some tree fruits, spaghetti squash, beets, zucchini, chard, tomatoes, green beans, herbs and dried beans. Everything else languished or died.

The last week, has been a race with the weather to remove the remainder of our crops from the garden. We managed to put away some spaghetti squash, pie pumpkins and green tomatoes in the root cellar. We froze some raspberries and green beans. We put away a very small amount of dried beans into our dry storage. It was chickens that really worked this year. We put away 120 chicken or about 600 pounds of meat in our freezers. We have eleven turkeys still growing in the back “pasture”. Our new laying hens are consistently producing over a dozen eggs a day.

Every urban homestead starts from humble intentions. The urban homesteader must be flexible. The land can only produce what the land can produce. The urban homesteader must be patient. With careful tending and a little effort, the land will produce more and more each year. If we are in a hurry, production can be increased, but a cost will be paid in labor or money. The urban homesteader needs to be grateful. Whatever comes is a bounty, a gift, from the land. In our modern world we have forgotten how precious food is. Growing your own food counteracts this delusion.

These are some of the local producers I have used for dry stores and for our freezers:
1. Westsyde Apiaries: 250.579.8518: raw honey, raw honey comb
2. Fieldstone Granary Ltd: 250.546.4558: organic spelt kernels, golden flax seed, oat groats, green lentils, and buckwheat groats, chicken scratch
3. Healthylife Nutrition: 250.828.6680: raw pecans, raw walnuts, shredded coconut, raisins, currents, dates (Once a year fall order from www.ranchovignola.com.)
4. Jocko Creek Ranch: 250.374.9495: grass fed beef, grass fed lamb
5. Lyne Farm: 250.578.8266: grass fed beef, grass fed veal
6. Beaver Valley Livestock Services: 250.243.2257: pastured pork
7. Big Bear Ranch: 250.620.3353: pastured organic pork
8. Golden Ears Farm: 250.679.8421: unsprayed strawberries
9. Highland Farm: 250.803.0048: organic cherries
10. Blueberry Hill Farm: 250.246.4099: unsprayed blueberries
11. Avalon Dairies: 604.456.0550: pasteurized organic butter (Good for cooking.)

Winter Storage Part I

This week my family have been working on a modified root cellar for winter storage. Traditionally, a root cellar would be built into the ground. This would give the vegetables a consistent temperature and humidity throughout the seasons. We will try to build a real root cellar next spring.

This winter we will have to be satisfied with a modified work shed. The work shed is a typical 8′x12′ wood-frame constructed building. The building will be too dry. We will have to put pails of water in the building to increase humidity. We will have to heat the structure during the coldest parts of the winter, something a true root cellar would not require.

We will be sourcing vegetables for storage over the next few weeks. We will be looking for potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, cabbage, assorted types of squash, garlic, hot peppers, parsnips, rutabaga, turnips and shallots. As I said before, I am not a local food zealot. But I like to buy as much as I can locally. My largest household expense is food. When I purchase my food locally, my money stays in our community. Also, the quality is better. It is great to be able to look at my plate and know where everything on it came from. It makes me feel somehow more connected.

I am madly making sour kraut and kim chi. I am always amazed at how many cabbages can go into a crock. These crocks will be stored in the root cellar for later consumption.

There are lots of great places to find local food for root cellar winter storage. These are some of the producers I have used this year:
1. Zaparango Organic Farm (certified organic)
Robert Vanderlip T: 250.318.0235
potatoes, carrots, onions, assorted squash, livestock feed corn
2. Lyne Farm (un-sprayed)
Liz Lyne T:250.578.8266
pickling cucumbers, beets, carrots
3. Farmhouse Herbs (certified organic)
Paula and Mendel Rubinsons T: 250.373.2312
pickling cabbage, onions, shallots, parsnips
4. Gort’s Gouda Cheese Farm (certified organic)
T: 250.832.4274
raw gouda, smoked raw gouda (Have Gort’s cut the large wheels into eight segments and vacuum pack. Each piece will naturally age and easily last through the winter months.)

Making Raw Sweet Butter or Raw Cultured Butter

The best time to make butter is during the spring and fall, while the grass is growing quickly. If you are wondering why spring and fall butter is so important please read Why Butter is Better and The X Factor. Another essay about nourishing traditional foods and what these foods mean for the health of our children is Ancient Wisdom for Tomorrow’s Children.

Making butter has become a lost tradition. Raw sweet butter is made from raw cream that has not been fermented. Making raw sweet butter is very easy:
1. Use a food processor with the standard blade attachment. Pour in the cold raw cream to within 1/2 inch of the top of the blade. Do not go any higher or the cream may flow out the center of the appliance. It will take about 12-15 minutes to make butter. The cream will go from whipping cream, to a sloppy mass, to butter clumps and buttermilk. You will hear a change in the motor sound and the buttermilk will start slopping around the container. When opened, there will be butter in small clumps and buttermilk.
2. Have a stainless steel bowl with a sieve set up to collect the buttermilk. Pour the buttermilk out of the food processor and the sieve will catch the small pieces of butter. Press out as much buttermilk as you can into the bowl. Carefully collect the butter in the sieve and add it to the butter patty. Save the buttermilk. Real raw buttermilk is sweet and delicious, nothing like the ersatz buttermilk available through the Industrial Food System.
3. Have two stainless steel bowls half filled with clean water and ice. The water should be cold. After you have gotten the buttermilk out of the butter, form the butter into a patty and put it into the icy water. Wait a few minutes for the butter to harden a bit and start working the buttermilk out of the butter by folding the patty over. Keep your hands as cold as possible. When the butter is clean, put it into the second bowl of icy water for another cleaning cycle.
4. Form the butter into patties and wrap in wax paper. Gather together and store in a plastic bag in the freezer. Label and date the plastic bag for later consumption.

It is easy to make raw cultured butter by leaving the raw cream out overnight. In the morning, refrigerate the cream until cold, and process as usual. The buttermilk from cultured milk will have a pleasant sour flavor. Traditionally, butter would have been made once a week. Cream from the daily milking would be added to the old cream. The cream would be fermented by the end of the week. This fermented cream would then be made into raw cultured butter.

With 1 gallon of raw cream from Patty, our Jersey cow, I made 2.4 pounds of raw butter and 2.5L of buttermilk. The raw butter has a deep yellow color. This rich yellow or orange color is a sign of a butter with high vitamin content.

Update October 16, 2009: I found this link for making butter using a KitchenAid Mixer at cookingforengineers.com. There are good pictures of the process on the website.

Whizbang Chicken Plucker

Last week Shaen finished the Whizbang Chicken Plucker. It took him about 8 hours to assemble the materials and build the plucker. Shaen outsourced some machining because he did not have the right tools for the job. It cost about $400 to build. Most of the materials are new but the motor is second hand.

In a previous blog called Slaughtering Chickens, it took four people 10 hours to process 50 chickens. This works out to 48 minutes per chicken. We were plucking chickens by hand. This does not include set-up or clean-up time.

Last Sunday we had three people working for 4 hours to process 70 chickens. With the Whizbang Chicken Plucker, it took 10.3 minutes per chicken. This does not include time for set-up or clean-up. It took 1/5 of the time to process the chickens with the Whizbang Chicken Plucker over hand plucking. If we had had an extra person on the gutting or wrapping table, the time would have been even faster.

If we had to do the 70 chickens by hand, it would have taken four people 14 hours. An interesting question would be how much did we save if we had to pay the workers $10 an hour? With hand plucking it would cost $8.00 per chicken in labor and with the mechanical plucker it would cost $1.72 per chicken in labor. With the cost of the plucker at $400, we would have to mechanically pluck 63.7 chickens to pay for the plucker. This of course is a mental exercise because we didn’t pay our workers. Our helpful volunteer Chris Harder, went home with some chickens and grass-fed veal steaks. Christine and Shaen work for free but will enjoy chicken all winter long. I got the day off and took the girls to the 4-H Fall Fair!

The First Weston A. Price Foundation Potluck

When: Sunday October 18, 2009 at 2:00pm-6:00pm
Where: 2853 Bowers Pl, Kamloops, BC
Contact: Caroline Cooper at 250.374.4646

We will be hosting the first Weston A. Price Foundation Potluck. We are hoping to have the potlucks the third Sunday of each month. Please bring one Nourishing Traditional dish to share with others. If you are unsure of what a Nourishing Traditional dish is please read Dietary Guidelines and Dietary Dangers. Please bring a list of ingredients for the dish or a copy of the recipe.

I received the first order of Green Pasture’s fermented cod liver oil, high vitamin butter oil, fermented skate oil and coconut oil. They will be available for sale at the potluck if desired.

We can discuss starting a herd share program or other issues of interest to the group. We also have material from Sally Fallon’s lectures. Children are always welcome.