Do You Prefer Grass Feed Beef or Grain Feed Beef?

Ladeback69 · October 2014

I ask this because to me grass feed beef taste like grass or salad. I grow up on 4H beef as a kid and prefer the cow to be finished on grain and corn for that sweet taste I like. It also helps get some of that marbling we want in a rib eye steak. Just curious. Around here most of our beefavorite is grain feed and to get grass feed you buy the more expensive organic beef.

NPHuskerFL · October 2014

I've had both grass Fed and grain fed growing up in NE. Preference is grain fed for me. But, it is difficult to find grain fed here in FL. The grass fed I've had doesn't have the flavor you're referring to though (most of the beef I buy comes from NE or CO & is grass fed, free range, with no added antibiotics etc).

Ladeback69 · October 2014

Maybe the good Midwest grass is better tasting then down south or out west.

Carolina Q · October 2014

I have no idea. I just buy "beef" at the grocery store. No idea what I'm getting. I will say that I stopped wasting money on steaks though. Haven't has a good one in years.

On the other hand, doc says I can't eat much beef or pork these days anyway.

Scottborasjr · October 2014

I've tried grass Fed and definitely don't prefer it. Give me those nasty grain fed animals. They taste good. It's kind of like choosing caffeine or alcohol free beverages. They are alright but nothing compared to the good stuff.

bettysnephew · October 2014

I like the combination. Most beef here is pastured for the summer and then grain fed for the finish. seems to be the best of both worlds. Good musculature from moving around and nice marbling from the grain finish.

Boileregger · October 2014

I love grass fed...I avoid the grain fed if at all possible. Cooking steaks you have to cook at a little bit lower and slower but worth it IMO. You can't get good grass fed briskets otherwise I'd go 100% grass fed!

Aviator · October 2014

Several times I have thrown money, lots of money away on grass fed.

They are just horrible, in my opinion. YMMV.

Give me a well fed corn fed steak and I will show you the way to heaven.

cazzy · October 2014

I prefer well marbled beef! :-\"

PNWFoodie · October 2014

All beef is "grass fed". What you are really asking, I think, is if one prefers "grass finished"....those last few months before slaughter when the point is to get the bovine up to whatever it is you are desiring at the slaughter point. (Not trying to be ugly, just trying to use the the right words.) For me, I prefer organic, grass finished. I will admit it has more of a "gamier" taste, if you will, but I choose it for a few reasons. One, I don't want the GMOs that come with regular corn fed beef. Just my personal opinion. Two, I like to know where my meat comes from...and I can visit the farm where I get it. Three, I've actually come to really like the flavor level that grass finished delivers (I will not lie, this was an acquired taste) and Four...most importantly...for medical reasons, involving my stomach...most typical "ground beef" is just hard on my tummy....no idea why...but grass-finished is not. My favorite "treat" used to be a Micky D's cheeseburger (trust me,, I remember that taste with love)...but now I just cant handle it.

Ladeback69 · October 2014

PNWFoodie said:
All beef is "grass fed". What you are really asking, I think, is if one prefers "grass finished"....those last few months before slaughter when the point is to get the bovine up to whatever it is you are desiring at the slaughter point. (Not trying to be ugly, just trying to use the the right words.) For me, I prefer organic, grass finished. I will admit it has more of a "gamier" taste, if you will, but I choose it for a few reasons. One, I don't want the GMOs that come with regular corn fed beef. Just my personal opinion. Two, I like to know where my meat comes from...and I can visit the farm where I get it. Three, I've actually come to really like the flavor level that grass finished delivers (I will not lie, this was an acquired taste) and Four...most importantly...for medical reasons, involving my stomach...most typical "ground beef" is just hard on my tummy....no idea why...but grass-finished is not. My favorite "treat" used to be a Micky D's cheeseburger (trust me,, I remember that taste with love)...but now I just cant handle it.

I guessI awesomed everyone knew what I was talking about and did mention growing up on 4H beef finished with grain and corn, but that's ok. I understand health conditions it was more of a choice question as to which you prefer and I take it you have become used to it. It was brought up in my rib class yesterday when we were talking about cut of meat and other things. I prefer grain and corn finished. I grew up helping friends with cattle and I know they all eat grass. No the thing with grass is the beef can taste different from what ever type of grass the animal is eating. If it's alfalfa would be a little better, but ranchers can't afford to do that for the whole life of the animal. Also I was wanting to see how many people new there was a difference. The beef I grow up on and almost like older veal or pets in a way and have great marbling.

stlcharcoal · October 2014

Grain fed for me.......grass fed tastes like grass to me.

Eggcelsior · October 2014

Grass finished is best. Grain finished has zero flavor for me unless it's prime or dry aged. I typically season the hell out of grain finished to get flavor.

Austin Egghead · October 2014

Grain finished or only grass fed....i think the taste of the meat depends on the breed. We just finished "brisket" an all grass fed longhorn/Angus cross..that was some great tasting cow. Very little marbling but the meat was angus tender.
We are researching the Beltie breed right now. Their characteristics are very good marbling, great taste and range well in grass. Might buy a hefer calf and do some crossing. Right now nephew is crossing his angus hefers with a brahma.
Just brought home 50 pounds of "spot" another heritage pig nephew grass raised. We had the butcher brine, smoke and slice the jowls. we cooked them on the mini last night and topped our hamburger with some pieces..really good eats.

gdenby · October 2014

Depends on the grass. A fellow named Mark Schatzker had a book out a few years ago about his search for the best steak. The first grass finished he had, he thought it was the best. Then he had some other from another part of the country. Thought it was awful. Eventually, he found that it was the feed. In the end, he preferrred grass finished from very specific places.

If I'm recalling correctly, the same guy wrote that he learned all meats are somewhat flavored by the food the animal eats. Its not necessarily the inter-muscle fat, but the inter-cellular. So even tho' a chicken breast may have no noticable marbling, the flavor may be slightly different from one to another depending on the feed.

I sometimes buy organic from a nearby farm. They let the cattle eat whatever they please from the grasses and grains they grow. The flavor of the beef is unlike anything I've ever had, almost not like beef. I spoke w. the farmer, and he said the herd tended to like millet. Maybe that is the reason for the extraordinary flavor.

There is also 1 Amish vendor whose grass-fed beef taste very nice and sweet. There's another, not so much.

FATC1TY · December 2014

Grass fed, here.. Different taste, just seems more flavorful.. and if anything better luck with it being more flavorful and tender. Grass fed and finished on grain is fine by me too, and I can tell by the marbling in some beef. I eat what I can afford at the time without over doing myself, but generally, grass fed free range is what I like to get most of the time.

NDG · December 2014

Grass fed for me.

hapster · December 2014

Who knows... I'm with @cazzy‌
As long as it's well marbled I'm good...

cookingdude555 · December 2014

I like it from Costco

stemc33 · December 2014

Don't know how I missed this thread back in OCT, I'm in the grass-finished category. I wanted to try it and a coworker told me it will take a while to get use to it. Tried it for the first time this past summer. I was hooked from the first bite. I went to the Farmers Market every week to get it. I was like a druggie on crack.

From the post by @gdenby‌ above, maybe I just found the good stuff. The local rancher is not certified organic, but the cows are free range cattle. They told me they're not certified organic because sometimes they have to supplement hay from other local farms depending on the winter. If they were certified organic they would not be able to support local farms because they could only get hay from a certified farm.

Another factor that could effect the taste is how the cattle is processed. The ranchers I buy from dry-age for 14 days. Freezer costs money so some farmers skip or wet-age the meat. I don't really know how cattle is supposed to be processed or how it effects taste, but they seem honest and the meat tastes good.

DieselkW · December 2014

I'm on the Costco supply chain, grain finished - but that is NOT my preference, just my convenience and inherent scrooge-ness.
I'm self employed, so my "wealth" runs in cycles of enduring poverty to occasional riches.

When I have a few extra thousand in the bank and feeling secure in our future, I buy grass fed, grass finished, never frozen local beef and bison.

If you've spent any time in cattle country (I pass through) bovines of all variety are ABSOLUTELY NOT grazing in the corn fields. Given a choice between grass and corn, they choose grass. A cow will not eat corn by choice. Sure, mix it with molasses and oats and whatever other cheap government subsidized "stuff" they can throw on the ground they will eat and gain crucial and valuable weight in the weeks before sale to the slaughter house... yeah it marbles that muscle with fat... but you're paying meat prices by the pound for extra fat.

That's like spraying vegetables with water, then charging by the pound for wet broccoli.

Bovines eating too much grain will get sick and (even more) gassy. Of course I eat grain finished beef, but I prefer the natural kind.

It's not like I'm going to switch to tofu if I can't afford it.

twlangan · December 2014

DieselkW said:
I'm on the Costco supply chain, grain finished - but that is NOT my preference, just my convenience and inherent scrooge-ness.
I'm self employed, so my "wealth" runs in cycles of enduring poverty to occasional riches.

When I have a few extra thousand in the bank and feeling secure in our future, I buy grass fed, grass finished, never frozen local beef and bison.

If you've spent any time in cattle country (I pass through) bovines of all variety are ABSOLUTELY NOT grazing in the corn fields. Given a choice between grass and corn, they choose grass. A cow will not eat corn by choice. Sure, mix it with molasses and oats and whatever other cheap government subsidized "stuff" they can throw on the ground they will eat and gain crucial and valuable weight in the weeks before sale to the slaughter house... yeah it marbles that muscle with fat... but you're paying meat prices by the pound for extra fat.

That's like spraying vegetables with water, then charging by the pound for wet broccoli.

Bovines eating too much grain will get sick and (even more) gassy. Of course I eat grain finished beef, but I prefer the natural kind.

It's not like I'm going to switch to tofu if I can't afford it.

One shouldn't make assumptions from observations while you "pass through" cattle country. Cattle will gleefully graze on corn if allowed to. However, they will tromp down a great deal of a very expensive crop to plant in the process. This is why we harvest the crop and feed it to them rather than let them do it themselves.

As a beef producer, I am interested in the so-called "cheap government subsidized stuff such as oats and molasses" that you mention. My fellow producers and I exchange information and ideas on a regular bases and I have never heard of such a thing. Did you see something about this on a billboard while passing through my neck of the woods?

We raise a lot of holstein steers, this being largely dairy country. We feed nearly 100% corn (only 1-2 lbs of hay per head per day) and very, very rarely have an animal get sick from it. And being ruminants, they will produce more "gas" on grass than they ever will on corn. I suspect you are buying into the greenhouse gas attributed to cattle that our current tree hugging administration is trying to fool the American public into believing. However, before the cattle industry came to be, bison by the millions were roaming our western countryside, consuming - you guessed it - grass - and were producing more "gas" than our national cattle herd is today.

bboulier · December 2014

All beef is good! Growing up in Nebraska in the 1950s, we ate beef six days a week. Usually had round steak for breakfast. Chicken was a Sunday or special meal, as it was more expensive than beef. Still remember the chicken running around the yard with its head cut off. My dad was a veterinarian, so we got all the unusual cuts during the appropriate season (e.g., rocky mountain oysters.). We also ate our share of cheap eats: kidneys, tripe, liver, etc. Most of these are now expensive. In the old days, they were dirt cheap. Having been raised on grass fed beef, I am still partial to its flavor, but any beef will do.

Zmokin · December 2014

I know I buy the cheap stuff, so i know it's grain fed in the end.
Don't know if I've ever been served grass finished at a restaurant or not.

I did have a burger once that claimed to be Kobe beef. Meh! It seemed like any other restaurant burger, big fat patty as opposed to fast food or pre-formed frozen patties. I do prefer the big fat fresh patty over the thin fast food burgers, but i didn't find anything special about the Kobe. Of course, I don't know how accurate their claim of Kobe really was.

stemc33 · December 2014

I have a few questions for @twlangan‌ or anyone else experienced with beef. The outside fat on the cuts of grass-finished beef I'm getting are harder than the stuff I buy in the store. Usually fat is kinda squishy and blobby and the outside fat on grass-finished is dense and hard. Also, the grass-finished beef is less marbled which makes sense, but it seems to have more flavor and is more tender. I thought the marbling of fat is what makes the flavor in beef? Are these things to be expected or am I overstating these things? I have changed my preference from medium well to a medium rare which I know will enhance flavors, but I really can tell the difference between grain finished and grass-finished. For me it's a big difference. Can you explain why there's a difference in the fat texture?

twlangan · December 2014

I'm just going to take a stab at this because I have rarely had grass fed beef. Steers out on pasture (grass fed) travel around a large distance in their grazing activities. They get more exercise. I'm thinking that is what is causing the hard fat layer.

Now here is something else to consider (not directed at you, stemc33)...

I believe the difference most of you guys are seeing between grass and grain fed beef is due to processing. Seeing as how so few are buying beef from local growers, small locker plants, etc - and most meat is being bought in supermarkets.

I have had to buy meat in the supermarket in a pinch. Sometimes we run out of burger while still having roasts/steaks left or vice versa. I can tell you - no matter which store I buy from, we can hardly gag the stuff down. I have tossed several pounds of burger meat out to the dog in the past because we could not stand it, even made into spicy chili. This is presumably grain fed beef.

Now, if I had spent my life consuming that kind of beef (not really knowing any better) and started to hear about all this wonderful grass fed beef and how much better it was - and finally decided to spring for some - I'm betting I would be sold for life on it too. Since grass fed is a niche market (so far), it is more than likely being processed in smaller plants which can take the time to properly age the beef. I can tell you, without exception, cattle running around out on a pasture WILL result in tougher meat than those on feedlots IF the meat is processed exactly the same. You can make that tough grass fed beef tender by aging it longer - and I'll guarantee that is what is going on. However, that meat hanging in a cooled building all that time is costing a lot of extra $$$ and it is being passed on to you as a consumer.

I do believe there would be a taste difference. It only makes sense. And that would all be a personal preference. But if you want really good beef at a more reasonable price, grain fed is and always will be your best choice.

If the grass fed trend continues and eventually becomes what the majority of consumers want, it will be processed in large plants, pushed through as quickly as possible, and you will end up with nasty tasting shoe leather in the beef cases at your supermarket. Right now, you only have nasty tasting beef since grain fed is naturally more tender.

Ladeback69 · December 2014

As I said when I started this thread I grew up on 4H beef for years which was basically a pet so they didn't move around a lot and got a lot of oats and corn to finish them out. I prefer this type of beef, because it is sweeter to me and that's why I like gain finished. It's interesting how this thread has progressed. My first live is beef, then pork, then chicken and lastly fish. I believe most the people on this site like most of these or they wouldn't be grilling. I believe the grass finished beef is more of a west coast thing too, but I could be wrong. I don't see it a lot in the Midwest.

H12mike · December 2014

I have purchaed the Nolan Ryan brand grass fed all natural beef but I and the family prefer the taste of the Angus beef. I talked with the butcher at Old Town MM and he says he will not to purchase or use the grass fed.

twlangan · December 2014

Ladeback69 said:

As I said when I started this thread I grew up on 4H beef for years which was basically a pet so they didn't move around a lot and got a lot of oats and corn to finish them out. I prefer this type of beef, because it is sweeter to me and that's why I like gain finished. It's interesting how this thread has progressed. My first live is beef, then pork, then chicken and lastly fish. I believe most the people on this site like most of these or they wouldn't be grilling. I believe the grass finished beef is more of a west coast thing too, but I could be wrong. I don't see it a lot in the Midwest.

I am seeing more and more of it around here (Wisconsin). I see ads quite often on Craigslist - beef growers pushing grass fed freezer beef for sale. It comes up in conversations with non-farm consumers too.

As a producer, I don't really care which way the trend goes. We are not producing on a large scale and have the flexibility to produce beef either way. I feel it is actually less expensive for me to produce grain fed beef though. Steers take much longer to finish out on forages so I cannot turn as many cattle as I can by pushing them to finish on corn. I'm sure this would be offset by higher prices though if we made the switch. If we were ever to do it, I would still grain feed a few for my own consumption since I know the REAL difference in the quality of it.

Ladeback69 · December 2014

twlangan said:

Ladeback69 said:

As I said when I started this thread I grew up on 4H beef for years which was basically a pet so they didn't move around a lot and got a lot of oats and corn to finish them out. I prefer this type of beef, because it is sweeter to me and that's why I like gain finished. It's interesting how this thread has progressed. My first live is beef, then pork, then chicken and lastly fish. I believe most the people on this site like most of these or they wouldn't be grilling. I believe the grass finished beef is more of a west coast thing too, but I could be wrong. I don't see it a lot in the Midwest.

I am seeing more and more of it around here (Wisconsin). I see ads quite often on Craigslist - beef growers pushing grass fed freezer beef for sale. It comes up in conversations with non-farm consumers too.

As a producer, I don't really care which way the trend goes. We are not producing on a large scale and have the flexibility to produce beef either way. I feel it is actually less expensive for me to produce grain fed beef though. Steers take much longer to finish out on forages so I cannot turn as many cattle as I can by pushing them to finish on corn. I'm sure this would be offset by higher prices though if we made the switch. If we were ever to do it, I would still grain feed a few for my own consumption since I know the REAL difference in the quality of it.

I think the type of grass to finish would give a diffenet taste too, say alfalfa or other quality grass. If I could afford it and had the room I would buy a 4H half side of beef.

NDG · December 2014

Ok soooo I understand that many people are not that into food (ex: my inlaws call it "fuel") so they buy a frozen tube of ground beef or the discounted brownish-grey ground beef that is leaking through the plastic wrap.

BUT I am shocked how many people on this forum say "I buy the cheap stuff" when it comes to Meat . . you bought a freakin $1,000+ grill . . and you decide to skimp on the MEAT? The actual thing you are grilling and digesting . . wtf!

Do You Prefer Grass Feed Beef or Grain Feed Beef?

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