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“I cooked one of your ribeye steaks the other night and it was the toughest steak I have ever eaten in my life.” You are our partners, and we want to provide you and your family the tastiest, most tender, healthiest beef possible. We have many customers who absolutely love our beef and recommend it to all of their friends. We have heard from many of you who like our product but have had a problem with a part of your order. I am sure that there are many more of you who have simply been disappointed but have suffered in silence. Don’t! Tell us, let us know what you thought! Our steak will probably never be as tender as a chemically tenderized corn fed steak, but it should definitely not be “the toughest steak I’ve ever eaten in your life”. I am not putting this issue front and center to encourage an onslaught of complaints, but we are ready, so “bring it on”. When you purchase Lasater Grasslands Beef, your satisfaction is absolutely guaranteed. If you are not completely satisfied with your order, we want to hear about it! We can only improve our product and service with your feedback. For those of you who can remember back to the early days of the Natural Food store business when Whole Foods only had one store on South Lamar in Austin, you will remember that the tomatoes were not all picture perfect and you had to really pick your produce carefully. There was a long period of time when that Whole Foods store in Austin was really an alternative scene for those true die hard health food fanatics. Now anyone can walk into a Whole Foods store and search the produce aisles and not find one blemish on any of the fruits and vegetables. This has taken many years and millions of dollars in improvements in the supply chain for the healthfood industry. Due to the fact that our beef is grass finished there will be some variability in the product. There are many ways we can improve our product (such as dry aging) and we are constantly making efforts to improve our product. However, due to the fact that we don’t fatten our cattle using grain, there is less uniformity and there is always the possibility of a particularly tough steak or an off color piece of meat (perhaps from freezer burn) or various other consistency issues. So if you get a tough steak, or an off color piece of meat tell us about it and we will replace the product, refund your money, or do something to make you happy again! The American palate has become very accustomed to beef that you can cut with a fork and we understand that some people who try our beef will simply not be able to adjust to the difference. When you eat our beef, you might have to chew a little harder! That is good for your jaw muscles! But it definitely should not be in the tough range. To date, we have chosen not to mechanically tenderize or chemically tenderize our beef. We do dry age our beef for 21 days which helps a great deal with tenderness, and also provides great flavor. We may offer a choice of mechanically tenderized beef in the future, but we are still looking into the various issues. Would you like the choice of mechanically tenderized steaks? Once we have done everything on our end to provide you with a steak that has the greatest potential of being tender and delicious, there are certain things which you can do to increase the chances of total satisfaction. How can you ensure that your steak is as tender and juicy as it possible can be? Our beef is so lean, that the biggest problem is that it cooks much faster than grain fed beef. If you like your beef medium rare, you should only cook it until it is 70% to your desired doneness (is that how you say that?), and then remove it from the heat. The residual heat will keep cooking while you take it to the table and it should be just perfect. We highly recommend that you eat your steak medium rare, or at the most, pink. The more you cook, your steak, the less tender it will be. This is just how it is. Since barbecue weather is back for most of you, I highly recommend setting up the old barbecue grill and throwing those steaks on the grill. There is simply no better way to cook steaks than on an open fire. Not only will your steaks taste better, but you will feel more relaxed after you have spent an hour on the deck decompressing next to the barbecue. If you have kids, have them set up the barbecue, you’ll be even more relaxed. Whether you cook your steaks on a barbecue, or pan fry them, it is always a good idea to use very high heat and sear each side. Somewhere in our promotional literature, I have seen mention of the idea of cooking the steaks directly from a frozen steak. Bad idea! Don’t know how this idea snuck through the Q.C. committee, but bad idea. Thaw your steaks before you cook them ! Please! Thawing the beef. This brings up an ongoing issue we haven’t been able to solve. There could be some leakage when you thaw your steaks because the wrapping may crack during the freeze or defrost process. You can save yourself a lot of grief and anger by putting a plate under your beef when you put your beef on the counter top to thaw. We will get this resolved at some point, but for now, “please defrost on a plate”. We will continue to test various cooking methods and report back to you. I have seen a cooking implement which is used to pound veal before cooking. For our thinner leaner cuts of meat, giving your Lgbeef a good pounding before throwing it on the grill may be a very good idea. We will test this idea and let you know if it met our expectations. One of the main factors with tenderness is that if you
overcook the meat, it loses all the moisture and since it is so lean,
you are just left with very lean, dry meat. So, how about pulling out
that Julia Childs cookbook and making a red wine reduction sauce! Not
only will your steak be more moist and tender, but you’ll learn
some new cooking techniques also. Have you devised a unique method of cooking our steaks? Tell us! Your feedback is essential! Last but
not least. For those of you who are still reading, and for those of
you who love our steaks and want to help us promote our product. I have
an idea on how you can help us spread the word and perhaps have some
fun at the same time. Are you active in any community club or activity?
Rotary club? Book reading? Little league? Church? Other? Why not have
a Lgbeef barbecue for all of the people in your group! We’ll supply
the burgers and you supply the venue. Sound interesting? Send me an
email. Tom@lgbeef.com and lets talk
about it.
Lasater Grasslands Beef LLC Within Colorado 1-719-541-2855 Outside Colorado 1-866-4LG-BEEF © 2002 Lasater Ranch
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