Hard Use & my Lessons for the day

festerfromnzed said:
HaaaaHaaaaaa!! point taken sir!!....i was merely commenting on handle shape is all.....sorry for getting off topic.......................FES
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It really does go to the point of the thread I think, comfort and made for real use. :)
 
Ankerson....would you know what the steel and RC is on these Russell knives ??...It is one of my favourites without a doubt..............FES
 
Big Mike,
Well played & My appologies for miss reading the intent of your post. The best part of the internet also lends to the worst... wish we could get the voice inflection to understand the intent of the message.

Unfortunately I never know when the "gift cows" are coming. Had 5 now in 4 years with 2 in the last 2 months. This was the first without help. To borrow a knife in expectation of an opportunity to use it may be an opportunity for Murphy

Funny thing... confession time I guess... I AM A WANNA BE knife guy... as I looked through my knives, I only have 3 hunting knives I have ever bought... the $10 bargan cave special, a buck 110 & a China buck. I have some knives from dad & gifted knives, but other than the 110, I HAVE NEVER Bought a quality hunting / working knife! Lots of pocket knives, but...

I know there are going to have to be repurcussions and pentence for this sin... ;)

God Bless,
 
Great post - especially for me; a suburbia based desk jockey, who has never had the opportunity to butcher/dress anything bigger than rabbits! I am interested in the quantity of meat you can get from a $50 cow. What sort of weight of meat do you think you managed to butcher? Rump steak in my local supermarket here, near London, England, retails for about $5 per pound.
 
The age of the cow, the breed of the cow and what it was fed determines the quality of the meat. "Feeder calves" are typically just fully weened and weigh around 600-700 pounds when they are sent to the feedlot. It takes about 15-18 months to feed them up to 1500 or more pounds IIRC, so typically they aren't much more than 2 years old at slaughter time. At that size, i would think that you would get at least 700 pounds of usable meat, if not more. I'm wondering why any younger cow would be sold for $50 when you could probably get a couple of hundred for it for pet food.
EastendOverspill said:
Great post - especially for me; a suburbia based desk jockey, who has never had the opportunity to butcher/dress anything bigger than rabbits! I am interested in the quantity of meat you can get from a $50 cow. What sort of weight of meat do you think you managed to butcher? Rump steak in my local supermarket here, near London, England, retails for about $5 per pound.
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EastendOverspill said:
Great post - especially for me; a suburbia based desk jockey, who has never had the opportunity to butcher/dress anything bigger than rabbits! I am interested in the quantity of meat you can get from a $50 cow. What sort of weight of meat do you think you managed to butcher? Rump steak in my local supermarket here, near London, England, retails for about $5 per pound.
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.....in my experience you end up with a third of what live weight is in useable meat........2/3 is bone,guts,hide,head etc......1/3 is meat.....ie a 900 pound animal will supply approx 300 pound of meat............FES
 
You might want to age the beef. I grew up on a ranch and we butchered a few head that had to be put down from a prolapse or other injury. The ones we didn't age were hardly edible. Beef needs to "hang" for a few weeks at just above freezing for the best taste and texture. That's one of the main differences between a steak from a fine restaurant and an all you can eat buffet. Lot's of info on line about how to do it if you interested.
 
JWRobinson said:
You might want to age the beef. I grew up on a ranch and we butchered a few head that had to be put down from a prolapse or other injury. The ones we didn't age were hardly edible. Beef needs to "hang" for a few weeks at just above freezing for the best taste and texture. That's one of the main differences between a steak from a fine restaurant and an all you can eat buffet. Lot's of info on line about how to do it if you interested.
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Very good advice my friend, all meat benefits from controlled aging,

...but it sounds like that was not an option here.



I always felt bad when hunting with family and friends in Texas,

...just too hot to properly age a deer like we do in New England.



Of course, these day's most harvested meat goes straight to a processor.


Back in the day I can remember my gramps moving some of the better cuts into the root cellar to get stinky.



He was the man; a butcher, a chef, and a lover of food.



Big Mike
 
Mike
The beef we didn't age was when we had to put an animal down in the summer. Way to hot to do the traditional was of hanging the carcase for two to three weeks in a shed or the garage. However, you can 'dry age" roasts etc by letting them sit in the back of the fridge for about a week wrapped in cheese cloth. Not as tender as the traditional way but way better than UN-aged meat. Most people don't know it (you obviously do) but the majority of the steaks and roasts you buy at the local market are aged at least a week before they are sold. MMM....I'm remembering the venison I would hang for three weeks out on the ranch. Could almost cut it with a fork and even my non-hunter friends loved it.
 
JWRobinson said:
Mike
The beef we didn't age was when we had to put an animal down in the summer. Way to hot to do the traditional was of hanging the carcase for two to three weeks in a shed or the garage. However, you can 'dry age" roasts etc by letting them sit in the back of the fridge for about a week wrapped in cheese cloth. Not as tender as the traditional way but way better than UN-aged meat. Most people don't know it (you obviously do) but the majority of the steaks and roasts you buy at the local market are aged at least a week before they are sold. MMM....I'm remembering the venison I would hang for three weeks out on the ranch. Could almost cut it with a fork and even my non-hunter friends loved it.
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Yeah brother , we speak the same language.


A grass fed steer, properly aged, and cooked up low and slow,

...the essence of the best food in the world, Texas BBQ.




Big Mike
 
Europeans are not necessarily used to aged beef. Not sure about the Brits. That is why even a really good steak in France will taste a little different than what we are used to. Some people may think it is because of grass feeding, but the French grow more corn than any country in Europe. They just don't eat much of it. Almost all of it is grown for animal feed and exported all over Europe. Aging is as much about letting some the moisture leech out and intensifying the "beefy" flavor as it is about tenderizing.
 
The Brits traditionally age everything even far more than in North America. We don't typically age poultry for instance, but in the UK pheasants are hung from their tail feathers until the body pulls loose from it's own weight. I've never been willing to try that one myself as birds can carry a lot of nasty bacteria (ie salmonella) that is uncommon in our four legged food sources. I've heard it's quite good that way though.
 
Joe

Dude! :thumbup: I just looked at your web site. I think you do yourself a disservice with the title apprentice as those are some masterfully done pieces. I'll have to try to seem some in person when I get off Active Duty as I live in Pasco County.
 
Several questions raised... I'll try to fill in the gaps.

First off the cow was prolaps... uterous comes out during a difficult calving, in this case breed too small to a bull too big & the calf had its hoofs in the wrong place to come out right. Means the animal is not going to live without extensive surgery that most rancher are unwilling to mess with, because she is likely to do it again. Don't know what the process would be to sell it to a dog food place. People who have this herd... well they don't need the money, lets put it that way. So a gift cow to the preacher or a couple of $$ from the rendering truck, neither will effect their top or bottom line noticably. (& no they are not members of my church, just great people who approve of the work we are doing.)

After I was done I took the 4 quarters to the local High School which has a meat cooler (FFA makes a few bucks every fall come elk season). The FFA teacher is a friend of mine & so he hung the meat for me very close to a week. The $50 is a gift back to the FFA for hanging & then the boys cut it up for me. (actually $25 & a pizza, but who is counting?)

I got the meat back from them today. Our grinder is not here yet (finally got to order our own) so the meat was just frozen in ziplocks. Ended up with 152 lbs (+/-). 1/3 of live weight rings about true to me. Biggest whitetail I've shot gave me 83 lbs of meat and live weight was over 200 lbs for sure. The school will only bone out, no bone cutting, so no ribs, no fancy steaks, etc. What we need though are roasts and ground beef so this works great for us. I think if I was to do the boneing / ribs & stuff the actual useable would have been up just a tad, maybe 200 lbs = 600 lb live weight. Not sure how detailed the boys got I guess, but I'm not complaining either.

As to the quality... we had the first roast tonight. Having lived most of my life in good beef country South Dakota, I have tasted the whole range of good to bad beef. Honestly I was concerned what 2 days of prolaps would do to her. This roast was never frozen. Small roast, maybe 2-3 lbs. We put it in a marinade for 2 hours just to be sure & then slow cooked it at about 350. No worries, it was good. Not "cut it with a dull spoon & watch it fall off" good, but a crockpot would make it that way. It had a nice consistency, solild, but not chewy. Taste was fine. Certainly not the highest quality ever, but absolutely no complaints either! Next one will not get masked by marinade.

God Bless,
 
Dakota Dogman said:
a difficult calving, in this case breed too small to a bull too big

,
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That was the mistake we made. Tried Charleigh (sic) bulls and Black Angus Cows. Had to pull a lot of calves and prolapse problems plagued us for several years. You can get a vet to come out and repair the prolapse but that's expensive and fails at least half the time. The best option is usually just to put the animal down as it's in tremendous pain. Most ranchers, buy the way, don't bother to attempt to salvage the meat. They leave it for the coyotes if it's in the pasture or call the "dead truck" to haul it off if it's in a pen. That option doesn't cost anything as those animals go to the rendering plant to be made into various by-products. I'm glad you put in the work and the meat turned out well. And thanks for your support of the FFA, those young men and women are an important part of our future and I'm sure the experience and donation was a great help to the local chapter.
 
Gentlemen, this has become the singularly most interesting discussion I have read in a year on BF. Here in England meat is often hung to enhance its flavour and texture. I've been fortunate to try beef and venison hung for some time, rabbit and duck hung for less. I've not tried pheasant - but my butcher hangs them for up to 2 weeks.
 
Yeah, that does seem rather small for breeding. Do you know what breed it was? I thought that we might have learned the aging trick from the Brits, but was not sure. As for aging, some of the really high end beef can be ages fro at lead 28 days and sometimes longer. I was watching some Food Netwrok show and they showed a fancy steakhouse that dry aged their beef for like 6 weeks or me in an aging room that had walls made from salt blocks. Of course, they are buying prime beef which is very scarce even in the breeds where you see ti more often like Angus and the amount of weight loss and waste in the meat that you see at a high end chop house that ages that long is pretty scary. That is part of the reason for the scary high prices. We tend to eat whole the parts of Choice and regular beef that are pretty tender anyway and leave the tougher parts for processing, grinding or the occasional abuse by BBQ chefs in Texas.:D A big problem that many cattle breeders are having today is price for live animals. the cost of feed has gone way up because of the whole ethanol fuel thing, but the price for beef has not gone up the same amount, so the guys selling the feeder calfs have to take a haircut. Even if you are only feeding grass and hay, that still costs labor money.
 
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You stuck in Ft. Hood? :D Come on buy when you get paroled. LOL
JWRobinson said:
Joe

Dude! :thumbup: I just looked at your web site. I think you do yourself a disservice with the title apprentice as those are some masterfully done pieces. I'll have to try to seem some in person when I get off Active Duty as I live in Pasco County.
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