In defining what is the quintessential American meal, it depends who you ask. But the fact is, few meals can rival the undeniable bliss felt when consuming a gorgeous, perfectly cut piece of beef. There’s only one problem: finding quality meat is becoming an increasingly difficult task. Local butchers have been replaced by mass grocery stores and super centers, and meat as a whole has seen a steady decline in quality and taste. If you’re lucky, you can still find quality beef locally, but for many – local isn’t an option. Your next best bet: have it shipped. Thanks to the magic of UPS and FedEx, ordering meat and having it shipped straight to your door is a piece of cake.
When shopping for steak (or beef) online, here’s a simple recommendation: skip the mass beef retailers that inundate the Google sponsored results. Just as mass grocery stores stock inferior meats, so too do the majority of major mail order beef suppliers. Instead, seek out a smaller source for your meats that specializes in quality over volume, and you’ll be signficantly happier with the results, I guarantee you. Want an example? Check out the Texas Heritage Beef Company. They’re a family owned business with over 100 years in the farming and ranching business, and more importantly, they sell some damn fine beef.
It was Texas Heritage Beef that christened my new Lynx grill on its maiden journey, and as I said in my review then, the results rivaled those produced by any steakhouse in the country. The cuts were gorgeous – perfectly marbled – and the end result was an incredible steak with just the right amount of tenderness and flavor. In terms of what makes Texas Heritage Beef so great, it’s really a combination of factors. For starters, there’s the cattle themselves. Texas Heritage beef is an heirloom breed of cattle that’s thrived in its natural habitat for over 500 years. The Texas Heritage Beef Company simply continues this process of allowing their cattle to exist in their preferred habitat, thus eliminating the need for all the things that have become commonplace in typcial beef. There are no hormones, no steroids, no antibiotics, and no pesticide in the pastures – in other words, there’s nothing in it you don’t want you or your family to eat. If that’s not enough incentive, factor in the health benefits. Texas Heritage Beef is lower in saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories than traditional beef, and is even healthier than a variety of other meats (here’s a chart for the specific figures). And then there’s the dry aging. Almost all store bought beef is wet aged, which does nothing to enhance the beef’s flavor. Texas Heritage Beef is instead dry aged, which plays a significant role in increasing both tenderness and flavor, and that’s exactly the reason that most established steakhouse serve dry aged beef.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is this: beef, and more specifically, steaks, have become a lost art. Quality that existed in the past has been replaced by convenience and mass production, which really is a shame. But the fact is, there are still great companies out there that master the art of beef, and the Texas Heritage Beef Company is one of them. If you’re looking to make a fantastic steak (or any other form of beef) in the comfort of your own home, I can’t recommend them enough. Once you’ve tried them, you’ll never look at your local grocer or super center’s steaks again – it really is that good.
To see Texas Heritage Beef in action, here are some photos from a recent dinner. The four dark cuts of beef you see are the Texas Heritage Beef; the other lighter steak that looks more like a piece of pork is a mail order steak from another major retailer costing roughly four times as much. If that’s not a testament to the difference in quality, I don’t know what is. For more info regarding the Texas Heritage Beef Company or to place an order online, you can do both at the Texas Heritage Beef Company website.
