Blog - Clover Meadows Beef

08/07/2020 By Matt & Jessica @ Clover Meadows Beef

What is grain finished beef?

All cattle (and we really do mean all) spend the majority of their lives eating grass on pasture.

But beef can be “finished” in a variety of ways. This is why you see different labels on beef like “grass fed beef”, “grass finished beef”, “natural” and “grain finished beef.”

What is Grass Fed Beef?

There’s a lot of confusion about what grass fed beef actually is. Here are the facts so you can be more informed about what is grass fed beef.

Grass fed beef was once a novelty, but now it can be found in many places, from restaurant menus to grocery stores. However, there is a lot of confusion about what the term really means and what the benefits of grass fed beef are.

What is grass fed beef?

Surprisingly, the USDA (who monitors food labels) doesn’t have an official definition for grass fed beef.

In 2016, the Agricultural Marketing Service, a branch of the USDA, announced in a statement that it was dropping its official definition of “grass fed” because it doesn’t have the authority to define and determine whether grass fed claims are truthful and misleading.

All cows eat grass

Why Cattle Nutrition is Important to Everybody That Eats Beef

Today we’re going to skim the surface on an popular agriculture topic, cattle nutrition. We don’t usually go this deep into agriculture topics, but we decided to for a few reasons:

We sometimes get questions from customers who ask if our cattle only eat grass. The answer is no. All cattle (even grass finished cattle) sometimes need to eat something other than grass in order to be healthy, like mineral.
We try to be completely transparent about what we do on our farm, and one of the things we focus on daily is cattle nutrition.
If you’re thinking, “I’m a typical consumer that just wants good grass fed beef. Why should I care about cattle nutrition and mineral?” The answer is because without cattle nutrition and mineral, the quality and quantity of grass fed beef changes. In other words, without good cattle nutrition, your steaks won’t be as good.

8 Easy Steak Marinade Recipes

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Having a good, quick steak marinade recipe is essential during grilling season.

Although we think most cuts taste amazing with only a little salt and pepper, a good steak marinade recipe is great when you want to give the beef an added flavor.

Since we raise beef cattle, we eat a lot of steaks.

There are a few steak marinade recipes that we repeatedly use because they’re easy to make, they’re versatile for multiple recipes, they use common pantry ingredients, and they infuse flavor quickly.

For some of these steak marinades, the steak needs to marinade for as little as 15-minutes to get the flavor.

Best Hamburger Seasoning

It’s grilling season! And that means it’s time to talk burgers and hamburger seasoning.

Our favorite hamburger seasoning uses some very basic ingredients that you already have in your pantry: paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, brown sugar and cayenne pepper.

The Best DIY Hamburger Seasoning Recipe

Good hamburgers are an art. In our opinion, they need to be hot of the grill with a slight char-grilled outside and juicy inside. Plus, they must be easy to throw together.

Why easy? Because half the time that we grill hamburgers, we’re having a party with friends. When having a party, we’d much rather be talking to friends than slaving away making a burger. Easy is a must.

That brings us to the perfect hamburger seasoning. If you get the beef and the hamburger seasoning right, you end up with an amazing burger. Every. Time.

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What is Grain Finished Beef?

There’s a lot of confusion about what grain finished beef actually is. Even its name can be confusing since grain finished beef is also known as grain fed beef and conventional beef. Here are the facts so you can be informed about grain finished beef.