The secret to the best-tasting steaks from California chefs? old cows

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Woolley said, recalling the intense buttery flavor. “It was completely unlike any beef I’ve had in the US.”

Now, it’s a flavor Woolley and a handful of other Californians are trying to recreate, herding dairy cows and “retired” old women and selling steaks to high-end restaurants including Progress and Birdsong in San Francisco. Considering all the dairies in California, Woolley said, “I just thought, why can’t we have that here? Where does all that meat go?

Paul Chung, the culinary director of Saison Hospitality, which runs Saison and Angler restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles, has been serving pasture-raised retired dairy cow beef for five years. He believes that the quality of fat in an old cow is much higher than that of Wagyu or USDA Prime beef. “The first thing you notice is that the top of the (beef) fat is a darker yellow color from being grass fed its entire life,” he said. However, he acknowledges that the American beef industry, and thus American consumers, still value younger cows with excess mottled fat.

At Saison, they make the most of the retired dairy cow by making beef garum, a fermented sauce made from ground trimmings that acts as a finishing salt. “It’s much more complex and delicious than the garum we make from normal cows,” Chung said, “it has a unique quirk that it tastes a bit like aged tamari rather than just salty.”

In Europe, it is more common to find farmers raising mature cows and chefs serving the resulting meat. Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson was known to cook with him at his lauded restaurant Fäviken, which closed in 2019. In London, beef from old Basque cows began appearing in a handful of trendy restaurants in 2015, and as a result, a large number of British farmers started raising their own old cows.

Recently, access to this niche, albeit prized, beef has begun to take off in the United States. sustainable, regenerative ranches and sells beef from aged cows to Bay Area restaurants. Pollard first became involved in this quest in 2015 when he was at Mindful Meats, a pasture-raised organic beef company founded in 2011 that has since merged with Marin Sun Farms, where he developed his retired beefsteak program. milk cow. The initial cows came from the Straus Family Creamery in Petaluma. In 2016, Pollard left Mindful Meats to found Cream Co. Meats. Beef from old cows from specific dairies in the Central Valley was one of the first products he sold. He called it “old beef.”

“They were beautiful, healthy animals, certified organic, pasture-raised, very high quality,” Pollard recalled. However, these 5-year-old cows were being sold for the lowest possible price at auction, as Americans have not been conditioned to eat them. The older animals are leaner and tougher, but have a deeper flavor, Pollard said, with a “terroir of flavor” from a lifetime grazing California perennial grasses. (Aging beef to break down enzymes is an essential step in tenderizing meat from these older animals.)

Chris Kronner of Oakland’s now-closed KronnerBurger restaurant took an interest in Pollard’s old-fashioned meat early on for his burger joint. “In my experience, once people have eaten a piece of good dry-aged beef, it’s like no steak tastes the same,” Kronner said.

Then, there is the environmental imperative. “If you are going to eat beef, dairy cow is the most sustainable option,” Kronner said. Dairy cows produce milk, cream and butter until retirement. “There’s simply nothing else that comes close to being so responsibly sourced or tasting so delicious.”

Cream Co. has since replaced their old show with something similar, which they call “vaca vieja” (Spanish for “old cow”). The old cow comes from 8-10 year old retired breeding cows whose purpose is to give birth to beef cows, rather than retired dairy cows, and are raised by Stemple Creek Ranch in Tomales, a regenerative, 100% fed operation. with grass. . Ribs, loins, and fillets are sold to restaurants; other parts of these cows, such as flank steaks and flank steaks, have too much rubbery connective tissue, even after being matured, to eat as steaks, so they are ground into patties and turned into stew meat. Cream Co. also sells its old cow direct to consumers online, often selling out quickly.

Raising old cows that were not initially bred for food, whether they are retired dairy cows or breeding cows, is a delicate task. Commercial steers are raised to identical size, then slaughtered between 18 and 24 months of age so their meat is marbled and tender, two qualities Americans have been taught to prioritize. There are inconsistencies, however, among adult cows between 5 and 8 years old, whose life purpose has been to produce milk or raise animals.

“They can be too skinny, too tall, too short, or too long,” Kronner explained. This makes them a challenge to slaughter, as slaughterhouses do not have the proper equipment for their various sizes. Most retired cows end up in the national beef supply chain, with their prime cuts made into common steaks in grocery stores and the rest used to make fast-food burgers or deli meats, such as pastrami and roast beef. .

Loren Poncia, the fourth-generation head rancher at Stemple Creek, said the old cow program is a small part of his business, but it’s still a worthwhile investment. He kills 40 cows a week and only 60 to 100 old cows in a year. He could increase his production of old cows, but the market doesn’t demand more, at least not yet. “Not a lot of people want (the old cow), but people who love it and are willing to pay an economic premium for it, so it makes economic sense for the rancher.” (Temple Creek old cow prices depend on a cut, but are comparable to traditional beef prices.)

Back at Peads & Barnetts near Yosemite, Woolley remains determined to recreate more steaks like the one that wowed him in Cornwall. It took him a while to figure out the supply, but his first group of seven or eight cows arrived about a year ago. Woolley put them on his pasture to relax and eat native California grasses and silage for six to nine months. Then, last November, he harvested his first batch of beef, which he now sells to chefs and farmers markets in Los Angeles.

“One chef said it tasted like it was dipped in butter,” Woolley said, noting the appropriate flavor profile.

Emily Wilson is a freelance writer. Contact [email protected]