The stuff arrived yesterday before noon, while I was on campus. Lauren signed for it, put the bulk of it (two London broils, three packages of lamb chops, and two filets mignon) in the freezer, and left out two filets.
I decided to keep it simple. I baked potatoes. I cooked broccoli. I sautéed sliced mushrooms in butter. I seared the steaks in a sauté pan, then poured red wine over them and deglazed the pan, tossed in two ice cubes of demi-glace, and covered the pan. I turned the steaks a couple times, tossed in the mushrooms, heated them, then added a little butter - simple pan sauce, nothing fancy at all.
Unlike industrial beef, which when treated this way can be cut with a spoon, the grassfed beef maintained muscle fibers even after cooking. It's denser, more muscular, and consequently doesn't melt apart. But it was still incredibly tender.
The package, and the web site, and the shipping notice, all informed us that grass fed beef takes less time and less heat to cook. This seemed true enough, although the thickness (about 1.5") of the steaks left them pretty much uncooked on the inside, the way we like them. (That's another difference, maybe due more to aging than feed: these things are purple before cooking, and the interior remained deep red.) There's frequently something a little metallic tasting to not-actually-cooked industrial beef, but despite having a similar raw taste, these didn't have that metallic aspect.
I was awestruck at one point during dinner. Lauren wasn't sure what my face meant when I just sat there, looking stupid. It was this: the beef tasted more animal than I was expecting, or used to. Even though this is prepackaged, even though it had been deep-frozen prior to shipping, something about it was fleshier than other meat. I can't quite put it in words. I suppose we'll just have to eat more of it.
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