First, Select your farms and cut of choice. By keeping the cut consistent, you can see how other variables affect the overall taste and find the differences between farms. We recommend tasting about three to five farms to enjoy the variations without tiring out your tastebuds! Be sure to include some method of marking the different farms.

There's a marked difference between the industrial beef world and the sustainable world of craft beef from independent farms. The industrial beef world trades away health, animal welfare, and variety for low prices, faster turnaround, and heaps of labels that mean little in the long run. USDA Pirce cuts may come from low cost, industrial feedlots.

The USDA grading system rewards marbling above all else, so the eight "grades" that a cut could receive will prize a heavily marbled cut of meat, regardless of the history or flavor. This results in commercial feedlots forcefeeding grain pellets to fatten the cows faster while keeping them confined to small pens.

That leanness, especially, means you need to cook grass-fed, grass-finished steak differently. Grass-fed steak has less water and less fat content than the grain-finished steak you might be used to. Here are our best tips for cooking a grass-finished steak to perfect yumminess: Grass-fed beef takes 25-30% less time to cook.

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