Beef, Quarter cut
Back to Online Market
Beef, Quarter cut
This is the best way to purchase meat if you have the freezer space. You will get all the cuts from a quarter of a cow from ground beef to T- bone and porterhouse steaks. The price is $3.25 per lb hanging weight. You will pay $100 deposit and the meat will be ordered. You will recieve a call or email notifying you as to when you can pick up the meat. There is approximately 200 lbs. of meat(hangin weight) in a quarter cut side of beef.
You do have to be a farm cooperative member to purchase this meat.
Here some great facts that will keep you up to date on how our meat differs from what you get at the typical grocery store...
Beta-carotene is converted to vitamin A in the body. While excessive amounts of vitamin A in supplement form can be toxic, the body will only convert as much vitamin A as it needs from beta-carotene. Vitamin A is a critical fat-soluble vitamin that is important for normal vision, bone growth, reproduction, cell division and cell differentiation. A three-ounce serving of grass-fed beef supplies 10 percent of the recommended dietary allowance of beta-carotene for women, compared to 5 percent from conventional beef.
The amount of natural vitamin E found in beef raised on a conventional diet is 3.7 micrograms per gram of meat. The amount of vitamin E per gram in beef raised on the grass-based diet is 9.3 micrograms, a nearly threefold improvement. A 3.5-ounce serving of grass-fed beef would yield 930 micrograms of vitamin E, about 7 percent of the daily dietary requirement.
Vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin with powerful antioxidant activity. Antioxidants protect cells against the effects of free radicals, which are potentially damaging byproducts of the body's metabolism that may contribute to chronic health problems such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Cattle's diet significantly alters the fatty acid composition of their meat. Cattle fed primarily grass have 60 percent more omega-3 fatty acids and a more favorable omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation and help prevent heart disease and arthritis. Omega-6 promotes inflammation, blood clotting and tumor growth. Because the two substances work together to promote good health, it is important to maintain a proper balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. The essential fatty acids are also highly concentrated in the brain and appear to be particularly important for cognitive and behavioral function.
Aging the Beef
There are many reasons that butchers don't typically age meat these days:
- First of all the cost of aged beef can be very high. Because of the weight loss of aged beef, the price per pound can be pretty outrageous.
- If you add in the time, storage space, refrigeration, and labor, that price just keeps moving up.
- For aging to properly improve the quality of a cut of meat, it should contain substantial marbling. This means that there is fat evenly distributed throughout the meat. Only the highest grades have this kind of marbling (Choice and Prime).
This is just one of the benefits you get from having Simple Times and their Meat Packing company process your beef. We will take the extra time and costs to hang your beef so you get the best flavor and most tender meat.
The aging of beef is normally thought of as the time, in days, from slaughter until the carcass is broken down into retail cuts. The average industry time for aging beef before cutting the carcass into retail cuts is about seven days. At Simple Times' packing company we typically hang most beef for 10 to 14 days.
Cooked, un-aged beef has been described as "metallic" and lacking in typical beef flavor. True beef flavor is fully developed after about 11 days of aging. The aged beef flavor increases with increasing aging time.
Aging also increases tenderness. It has been shown that during the aging process certain changes take place in portions of the structure of collagen and muscle fibers. Currently, it is thought that enzymatic-caused changes in the structure of muscle fibers are largely responsible for the increase in tenderness. It is known that tenderness decreases immediately after slaughter while rigor mortis takes place (taking 6 to 12 hours to complete); then tenderness
increases gradually. Tenderness continues to increase up to 11 days, after which there is no increase in tenderness.
