I have been a big fan of Crowd Cow ever since I got my first order from them. If you aren’t familiar with Crowd Cow they are a site that allows consumers to order beef (and now chicken, pork, and later this month salmon) from small farms and ranches around the country. Most of their beef is grass fed, grass finished beef but it is all from small, family run ranches and farms.
A few months back I heard that they were writing a book and that got me very excited. I was interested to hear their story so and they sent me a copy of Craft Beef: A Revolution of Small Farms and Big Flavors to read.
Disclosure: This post is monetized with affiliate links. If you buy something through them I earn a commission which helps support this site and lets me buy more meat so I can write about it.
The three authors of the book are the masterminds behind Crowd Cow and this book gives some great background information on why they started Crowd Cow. But it is more than just a big commercial for their site.
Craft Beef digs deep into how disconnected most consumers are from the meat they are eating. The vast majority of meat eaten in this country comes from big factory farms with huge feedlots and thousand of head of cattle. I am not of the mindset that these operations are necessarily bad and I am not someone who will beat you over the head telling you to only eat grass fed beef. But I do think there is some tremendous value in having small, family farms that produce “Craft Beef” in the mix.
Think about coffee for a bit… Go to a grocery store and what do you see in the coffee aisle? Folgers, Maxwell House, and other big brands like that are definitely there but there are also other big brands like Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Dunkin, etc. Those coffees all have their place in the market but if you are a coffee connoisseur you know that to get a really unique cup of coffee you need to seek out smaller roasters who see coffee as a life passion and not just a money making machine.
For many years Budweiser, Miller, and Coors dominated the beer market in the US and that was fine but in the 90s smaller “micro breweries” started producing what is widely considered to be a better product. Sure, if you are having a 4th of July party and you see some Bud Light in the cooler you aren’t running away screaming but if you want to explore all that beer can be you need to dig into the micro brews.
Personally I hate coffee and beer so let’s talk about something I enjoy: STEAK! Most of the steaks you will see in the grocery store or warehouse club probably come from one of the 4 big meat producers: Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef Packing. These 4 companies produce about 80% of the beef on the market and slaughter around 100,000 head of cattle per day. Most of you have eaten steaks from these companies and have probably really enjoyed them. But what if I told you there was more to steak than what you can get from these guys?
That is where “Craft Beef” comes in. The authors define Craft Beef as “Beef produced by small-scale, independent farms with an emphasis on unique flavors and high ethical standards”. The book opens with one of the authors, Caroline, visiting Sweet Grass Farm on Lopez Island in Puget Sound about 100 miles north of Seattle. As she was eating a steak she could hear the cattle in the fields just outside the house. One of the first things she saw was how the ranch was set up to keep the cows happy all the way through the slaughter process which in turn produces a better final product. These cattle graze on wild grasses their whole life and roam the pastures. Any vision you have of a big mid-western feed lot with thousands of cattle eating from a trough should be the furthest thing from your mind as you imagine this ranch.
Also while at the ranch they got a call that a cow was calving. So Caroline, a vegetarian for over a decade, picked up her steak and walked out to see a cow giving birth. Most of us would probably feel a bit guilty eating a steak while a calf was born but as Caroline describes the scene and how well the cattle is cared for she took a bite of the steak and realized these animals are more well cared for than most other animals on the planet.
There are more stories like that in the book but there is more to it than that. The book talks about some of the lesser known cuts of beef beyond ribeye, filet mignon, NY strip, and other well known steaks. There is a lot of the cow that most people never get to try and when handled and cooked correctly it can all be delicious.
Craft Beef also talks about the positive environmental impacts that these small, family farms can have. In many cases these ranchers have taken land that is not good for anything else. Cattle grazing and fertilizing it can turn this land in to a productive asset and help turn worthless soil into rich, fertile soil.
For the most part the beef produced by these small farms has a much more unique taste and texture than the commodity beef we normally eat. Since these small farms are scattered all across the country eating different vegetation there will be a wide variety of flavors. A wine lover can taste the difference between a Washington wine and an California wine. In the same way once you train your taste buds you will be able to taste the nuances in beef from different small ranches.
Overall I really enjoyed the book. The stories from the ranches were probably my favorite part but there is a ton of great, interesting information in the book. You will learn about Japanese Wagyu beef, why there is more to a steak than marbling, how the flavor of a steak is impacted by what the cow eats, and how to pick out those flavors when you taste.
Craft Beef is a revolution that isn’t going away any time soon. Companies like Crowd Cow that are bringing this Craft Beef to the masses are opening the eyes of meat lovers (and even non-meat lovers) everywhere. If you are at all interested in learning more about the Craft Beef movement and how much more to meat there is than your grocery store butcher case order yourself a copy of this book. It will be released on June 2nd but you can pre-order it on Amazon.
Give this book a read and then go order some delicious craft beef from Crowd Cow. You won’t be disappointed.
