Is Grass Fed Beef From Costco the Same as Whole Foods

I cooked this steak – with a simple cherry vino-dearest reduction and a creamy parmigiano-peppercorn salad – in honor of one of my peculiarly snarky fans, someone (you lot know who you are!) who objects strenuously every time I buy something from a supermarket for what I've billed as a "cooking locally" weblog: I'll stipulate the point, insofar every bit the letter of the law is concerned, simply to paraphrase Ralph Waldo, zealotry is the hobgoblin of small-minded cooks, and my coin says I'yard not the only parent in the County who'd similar to serve their kids a decent, healthy steak for a few less bucks. But is it a decent, healthy steak?

The meat in question is sold nether Costco's Organic Ranchers brand and costs $12.99/lb for USDA pick-grade rib eye; different cuts vary in toll. The ultimate supplier is Dakota Organic Beefiness, the largest certified-organic beef supplier in the country and a part of the Meyer Natural Foods Company. From the company website:

[We] never apply hormones, antibiotics or harmful chemicals. Our cattle are born and raised on certified organic pastures in the centre of cattle state… They are vegetarian fed and finished on a nutrition of certified organic grains. Nosotros provide the most natural environs for our cattle including unrestricted outdoor access, humane handling and opportunities to engage in natural behaviors. [Nosotros have] fabricated it our mission to maintain sustainable stewardship for the cattle and the environment to meet the needs of today and generations to come.

All of which are the right things to say, and I commend them for doing and then, although the die-hard locavore may object to the unsaid road trips: the cattle are raised in Oregon, fed grain grown from the Midwest, and then processed in North Dakota, all before ending upwardly back in Santa Rosa, where I bought my steak; the company too imports meat all the way from Commonwealth of australia for its footing beef. Personally, I tend to worry more about provenance than transportation, so I'd also like know whether the beasts finish out their lives on pasture, or bailiwick to the indignities of the feedlot, only I couldn't find the reply.

Dakota Beef depends on grain-finishing and, like many ranchers, brand the instance that feeding grain produces a more tender, marbled, and therefore superior product, but I have to disagree: the health benefits of 100% grass-fed beef are incontrovertible, and its flavors are cleaner, brighter, and more pronounced. In contrast, I notice the softer and more densely marbled flesh of corn-fed cattle to exist overly rich, flabby, and banal, and I suspect that the perception of the superiority of corn-fed beefiness has more to do with what we've been trained to await than with any inherent quality in the meat itself.

Flavor-wise, the Costco steak occupies a center ground on the grass-corn spectrum, with a considerably beefier flavor and less gratuitous fatty than a typical supermarket cut, but defective the clean, grassy flavors and house texture that I look for in the 100% pasture-based, locally farmed beef from folks similar the Owen Family unit Farm in Hopland (sad, no website), the Black Sheep Farm (707-874-2152), Marin Sun Farms (widely available), Wyeth Acres, or Mac Magruder (available at Willowside Meat & Sausage Mill in Santa Rosa).

To be fair, virtually of these local alternatives are neither certified organic nor graded past the USDA, and they cost considerably more than than the $12.99/lb I paid at Costco – ranging from a depression of $14.95 for the same cutting at Willowside, to more like $21 at near of the other farms – so nearly folks will want to take those factors into business relationship, too. Ultimately, and at the risk of filing yet another postal service under "two-handed economist", I yet strongly prefer the local guys on the ground of sustainability and especially quality, simply I have no objection to the Costco production, particularly at the toll, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again.

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Source: https://www.sonomamag.com/costco-report-organic-rib-eye-w-red-wine-honey-reduction/

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