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From pasture to plate, making sense of Alberta beef is a tasty, but tricky endeavour

Story and Photos By Cinda Chavich

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Anyone cruising the back roads of southern Alberta can see that this is true cattle country — rolling foothills and green pastures dotted with happy herds of steak on the hoof.

But getting the best of Alberta beef on the plate can be a tricky proposition because of the wide array of beef that’s labelled “Alberta.” Included under this heading are the offerings at the local supermarket meat counter, as well as designer-branded beef, AAA, organic and grass-fed beef available from better butchers or directly from your local rancher. Thus, it can be hard to pick a steak without a program. Here, then, is a primer on Alberta beef and where to buy it.

THE FOOD

Cattle outnumber people in Alberta almost two to one, but not all beef labelled “Alberta beef” was actually born and raised here.

The only way to ensure you’re buying truly local beef is to buy it directly from a rancher or a butcher who can guarantee its origin. Luckily, that’s getting easier all the time.

In the realm of regular Alberta beef — that is, the vast majority of beef cattle raised using low levels of growth hormones, antibiotics and a variety of feed sources to fatten them quickly in feedlots — there are various grades based on the degree of fat marbled through the meat. Supermarket beef usually grades to A or AA, while AAA goes to butchers and restaurant chefs.

Branded beef like “Sterling Silver,” “Excel” or “Certified Angus” beef are premium food service brands licensed to multinational companies like Cargill and Tyson — two of the country’s largest slaughterhouses and both based in Alberta.

Kobe Classic is another premium brand that identifies a very highly marbled meat from Wagyu and Angus cross cattle. Wagyu is the Japanese breed used for their famed Kobe beef, and while the Canadian version isn’t massaged or fed beer, it does command top prices, and has intramuscular fat content that puts it far beyond AAA beef thanks to long, slow feeding, not hormones.

Next on the list is “natural” beef — raised without antibiotics or growth hormones by a number of local ranch families and companies. Local examples include the beef from Driview Farms near Fort Macleod (driviewfarms.ca), and the beef from Doug and Elna Edgar, sold from their farm store and through Innisfail Growers at the Calgary Farmers Market (edgarfarms.com).

The Galloway beef from the Canadian Celtic Cattle Co. is particularly unique — high in omega-3 fatty acids from its high-forage diet, finished on minimal grain rations and dry-aged to maximize tenderness and flavour.

Organic beef producers must follow strict protocols for third-party organic certification. The seven southern Alberta ranch families that produce Diamond Willow organic beef are all certified organic, grazing their animals on organic pastures, feeding them certified organic feed and restricting the use of antibiotics and hormones (diamondwillow.ca).

Hoven Farms organic beef is similarly certified (hovenfarms.com), with no antibiotics or growth hormones, herbicides or pesticides.

The Biggs family on their TK Ranch takes the organic equation one step further, raising their animals on organic pasture and never feeding them grain. Grass feeding is most natural for ruminants like cattle. While they put on weight (and fat) faster when fed grain, this common “finishing” process is hard on the animals’ digestive systems and the Biggs, who are also experts in low-stress handling techniques, say grass feeding is the most humane way to raise beef cattle. Lean, nutrient-dense and naturally high in Omega-3s, with a true beefy flavour, TK Ranch grass-fed beef is also dry-aged for 21 days (natural-beef.net).

THE FIND

You’ll have to go beyond the big supermarkets to find much in the way of designer beef. Most offer A or AA grade beef, but for higher grades and organic or grass-fed beef you’ll need to go to smaller sources. Many of the small ranchers, like Hoven Farms and TK Ranch, sell directly from the farm, too.

The other great thing about shopping in butcher shops is the service. You can talk to the butcher, ask for your steaks to be cut as thick as you like and even get instructions for cooking your roast beef.

Longtime local butcher shops like MacEwan’s Meats and Bon Ton — where the meat is dry-aged right on site and a team of bow-tied butchers happily cut meat behind the counter — sell conventional AAA beef.

The Better Butcher sells Galloway beef and natural beef direct from local ranchers, and Second to None Meats sells only Galloway beef from the Canadian Celtic Cattle Company.

You can buy frozen TK Ranch natural beef at supermarkets like Calgary Co-op (calgarycoop.com) and Planet Organic Marcet (planetorganic.ca), and fresh, packaged Diamond Willow Organic beef at Community Natural Foods (communitynaturalfoods.com).

Kobe Classic beef is available for home delivery directly from kobeclassic.com.

A side-by-side taste test of regular supermarket, grass-fed and natural beef rib-eye steaks (the choice of most butchers surveyed) found every product to be delicious, but the rich, AAA Galloway beef from Second to None Meats was the winner for both flavour and juicy texture.

But none of this premium beef comes cheap. Expect to pay up to double the price and more. At press time, Hoven Farms organic or TK Ranch grass-fed rib-eye steak were selling for nearly $20 per pound and Kobe Classic beef strip loin sells for more than $45 per pound.

Much of the extra cost comes in the care the cattle receive. Without growth hormones, antibiotics and with special forage- or grass-feeding, it takes much longer for a steer to reach market weight, up to 36 months compared with the usual 16 to 18 months.

THE FIX

For summer barbecues, most butchers recommend a rib-eye steak or a strip loin cut to one-inch thickness.

That’s another thing about buying your steaks from a butcher. You can get thick steaks and special cuts, like a whole hip (a.k.a. Baron of Beef) to feed you and 50 of your friends for a Stampede barbeque. Or you can buy exceptional beef burgers. Second to None Meats makes 100-per cent Galloway beef burgers in six- or eight-ounce patties, or you can buy their ground chuck or sirloin. At press time, Kobe Classic was selling eight-ounce, 100-per cent beef King Kobe Burgers for $4.50 per patty.

Always cook ground meat to well done, but grill steak on a hot fire to medium rare, about five minutes per side.

Use the “touch test” to determine when your steak is cooked to perfection: relax your hand and touch the fleshy pad at the base of your thumb. It feels soft, like a rare piece of steak.

Touch your thumb and index finger together and press the base of your thumb again. It’s a little firmer, like a steak that’s medium rare.

No need to go on (steak house chefs say beef should never be cooked beyond medium rare), but if you must, touch your middle finger to your thumb — it feels like a steak cooked to medium.

Any more than that and there’s little point treating yourself to prime Alberta beef

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