[Seaver]

I'm thinking about buying a whole grass fed cow, already butchered, and storing it in my freezer.

Has anyone done this and have any tips, pros/cons, recipes/ideas for using all the parts, etc.

[Vroom]

Well I'm married. Does that count?

[Beyond Borders]

^haha Was going to say that I expected this to be a thread about marriage...

[tarquin]

I split half a cow with the farmer once. It's good stuff. I suggest using a dedicated chest freezer so you don't find meat five years from now at the bottom of the pile. I'd have him grind some of the cuts worth less into hamburger meat and throw a BBQ later on in the year. You could just eat it all yourself, but chances are you'll get some freezer burn on things if you don't eat it soon enough. You can also use the ground meat for sausages.

If freezer burn is a concern, I suggest a vacuum sealer. Actually, I suggest that anyway. Don't get the "food saver" sealer because they force you to use special bags. Get the "snorkel vac" which will allow you to use any bag. You can get it here, though I guess it is no longer named snorkel vac.

The same website sells mylar bags and plastic freezer bags for around 1/5th the cost of the food saver bags. You are locked into special bags with the food saver, so get this one instead and not pay higher costs over time.

Another benefit of a vacuum sealer is that you can marinate cuts in less time than traditional marination. Think an hour as opposed to half a day.

[Veloce]

(02-28-2014 07:06 PM)Seaver Wrote:  

I'm thinking about buying a whole grass fed cow, already butchered, and storing it in my freezer.

Has anyone done this and have any tips, pros/cons, recipes/ideas for using all the parts, etc.

I'd suggest starting with a quarter cow and going from there. Steer weight at slaughter can vary from 800 to 1400 lbs depending on the animal. A quarter steer will get you 200 lbs but that's with bones (which you should boil and make a few gallons of beef broth)

My personal preference would be a forequarter, not hind, but that's because I like fat. If you want more lean meat, go for the hindquarter.

[Menace]

Thought this was gonna be like that zebra thread.

[hoops330]

Why buy the whole cow when you're getting the milk for free?

[komatiite]

Make sure you have a solid plan on how you will eat all that beef, and consider paying more for better cut distribution if possible! I have done this before with beef and after you eat all the good ribeyes, sirloins, filets and roasts at the start you will find yourself with a mountain of ground beef and stew cubes which is a bit of a letdown after all the steak! I personally do not have the creativity and discipline in the kitchen to order mass amounts of meat, I ended up having to trash a lot of it after not being able to eat it after about a year due to freezer burn.

On a somewhat related note, this has had an indirect effect on my fishing practices too, I used to go out salmon fishing in BC or lake fishing on the Canadian Shield and come home with like a hundred pounds of fillets and cans, but it was too hard to eat that much fish so I have become more of a catch-and-release guy... haha.

[The Beast1]

My family has done this. We split it up with grandma so we don't have a metric shitton of meat. Best dinners ever. I really enjoyed the pig we got too. Man it's making me hungry thinking about it.

Do you get to meat (hehehe) the animal before butchering?

[Seaver]

(02-28-2014 09:06 PM)tarquin Wrote:  

I split half a cow with the farmer once. It's good stuff. I suggest using a dedicated chest freezer so you don't find meat five years from now at the bottom of the pile. I'd have him grind some of the cuts worth less into hamburger meat and throw a BBQ later on in the year. You could just eat it all yourself, but chances are you'll get some freezer burn on things if you don't eat it soon enough. You can also use the ground meat for sausages.

If freezer burn is a concern, I suggest a vacuum sealer. Actually, I suggest that anyway. Don't get the "food saver" sealer because they force you to use special bags. Get the "snorkel vac" which will allow you to use any bag. You can get it here, though I guess it is no longer named snorkel vac.

The same website sells mylar bags and plastic freezer bags for around 1/5th the cost of the food saver bags. You are locked into special bags with the food saver, so get this one instead and not pay higher costs over time.

Another benefit of a vacuum sealer is that you can marinate cuts in less time than traditional marination. Think an hour as opposed to half a day.

Splitting it with someone else was the plan, and good call on the vacuum sealer, I forgot about that. Not only can you marinate in the vacuum bags, but you can also just boil the whole bag to cook it.

[roberto]

A buddy of mine has some sheep and cows. We kill & butcher a sheep every now (legal in the UK if it's for your personal consumption) and then split it between us, but never done a cow. There's a slaughterhouse fairly locally but they charge a helluva whack. I remember a few years back we sent a pig off thinking we were gonna get rich. You know, do it by the book so we can sell the meat. After processing, the sausages in particular cost as much as they would from the supermarket. Doh.

Make sure your power supply is A1- a freezer of meat is a lot of $ / £ to waste. We have a couple of big chest freezers, and a genny for backup power.

But yeah, it's the best was for sure to save money and make sure you're eating top notch meat.

[General Mayhem]

I have an uncle who has been farming for years. 3 or 4 of us in the family usually just conspire when we need meat and he will send a cow to the butcher. It's great because we can choose what cuts and how much we want, and the quality is better than anything you are going to get from the store. We all have huge chest freezers that we store it in.

I would suggest staring with a quarter by the way.

[BCien]

I've done it, I come from a family of butchers and lemme tell you it is better.

[kerouac]

Out of curiosity, what is the difference between a store-bought prime/choice Ribeye steak and one you would get if you got it from a whole cow? Is there a different process that goes into the store-bought stuff?

[roberto]

There's a huge amount of variation. Quality meat will have two main differences- firstly, the meat will usually be much better quality due to the following factors:

a) the rate of growth (slower is better)
b) and food it eats (grass fed better than grain)
c)the breed of animal makes a big difference- generally the 'rare' or traditional breeds rather the commercial, grow-fast-on-grain breeds produce a better carcass with much more marbling. Marbling is where there are veins of vat throughout the meat, producing a much more succulent cut with subtle variations in flavour, much like a good whiskey.

Secondly, beef should be hung for a good period (up to a month) after slaughter to bring out flavour. Mass produced stuff is obviously not, it's cow in and then out in Tesco vac-packs as quick as they can.