image from sifu renka
Last week's Inexpensive Beer Week was successful in attracting people on finding out a good inexpensive beer to drink. It was fun to do and quite informative. I only wish I could try more and have a more extensive review with more samples! Perhaps round 2 is in the works?
This week we are going to cover the different types of meat you can find in some stores. The meats are not necessarily super exotic that only Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods will find and eat. Although he does seem to have an affinity for testicles and penises he enjoys eating from the various animals he comes across. Anyone can walk into any grocery store and easily find beef, chicken, fish and pork. I want to cover the next step up in meats that you can find in specialty grocery stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.
Today, we have buffalo steaks. Hold on, but isn't that bison steaks? If you didn't know, buffalo and bison is the same animal. It's like calling a bull and a cow two different animals, when in fact they are the same, although reserved for their different sex. Bison tends to have a more sexy marketing name to it, instead of buffalo. When people hear buffalo, they think of a stinky hairy animal that use to roam wildly in the early days. Or the hairy beast on the buffalo nickel. Not very appealing.
Is it okay to eat bison? I thought they were going extinct?
Nope! The bison meat you can find in stores isn't endangered and have been taken off the endangered list some time ago. The bison we are talking about is the American bison. Thanks to domesticated raised bison, bison meat is growing in popularity and farms increasing to provide this meat to consumers. So eat up and enjoy it without guilt.
Why would I want to eat bison over regular beef? The meat costs more.
The bison is generally free roaming and isn't herded in pens like regular beef cows are. When you see labels with grass fed bison, it's almost always grass fed, as they aren't subject to the same conditions as cows. The bison farms on average is still a novelty, so they haven't pumped the poor animals with antibiotics or growth hormones like they do with the regular cows. They are already hardy animals that can survive fine without the need for that.
One of the main points of bison meat is how healthy of a red meat it is. The meat is leaner, denser, lower in calories, lower in fat and naturally flavorful so you'll put less sauce to make it taste good. Rather than explain, take a look below at the nutrition comparison chart from bisoncentral.com. That's some pretty impressive stats!
I grabbed some bison steaks at Whole Foods market. I guess not all locations have them, as I've seen ground bison meat readily available, but not the steaks themselves. These steaks were pricey, at least much more than I would normally pay for top cut beef steaks. The price is about 2-3 times more, but you'll feel good knowing that your arteries and cholesterol levels aren't going to take a big hit.
There isn't any special handling you would take with these steaks or special prepping needed. Just cook them like any beef steak. However, due to the how lean the meat is, you'll want to pay attention to the bison being cooked as you don't want to overcook them. Nothing is worse than eating a very well done steak when you like medium rare!
I didn't do anything special when I cooked the bison steaks. I just heated up my outside grill till it was flaming hot, threw the steaks on there and seared the meat. Took it off the grill and pinched some salt on it, and that was it. Nothing else. Since I like my meat at medium rare to just about medium when eating good steaks, the steak I had, looked almost like the picture at the very top.
It was so good. Perhaps it was better than it really was as I was trying to taste the flavors as oppose to just getting carnivorous and wolfing down the steaks.
I'm beginning to see lots of flash frozen bison meat at upper end grocery stores, and if you are simply buying it for health reasons, then it's not so bad. If you are buying the frozen bison meat for taste, then I highly suggest you skip it, and the money you would spend on that frozen bison meat, you might as well get a top cut beef steak to enjoy.
Bison is a good way to try different meats without stepping off the normal beaten path if you are not the adventurous type. Give it a try.
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