The two most important things in good beef are Taste and Tenderness
Age and diet are widely reckoned to be the most significant determining factors on beef flavour and carcase handling and treatment the most significant in tenderness .The general approach nowadays is to get beef cattle as big as possible as early as possible, which makes economic sense for most of the food chain but (in our view at least) falls short on optimum flavour and quality.
The majority of beef in the UK today comes from cross-bred cattle which are sired by Limousin, Charolais or Belgian Blue bulls. The resulting animals are killed at between 14 and 24 months old and, as you may expect, produce beef which is generally lean in nature. They are normally fed a diet high in concentrates so that t they grow quickly and put on a layer of fat which you will often see on the outside of a steak or roast.
In days gone by beef in the UK was produced from traditional and often local breeds such as Aberdeen Angus, Hereford or Galloway. Today you will often see these breeds featured in farm shops and also in supermarket premium ranges.
Native animals reared on grass take a little bit longer to grow however they typically lay down fat within as well as outside their muscles, this is a natural process which probably evolved to allow them to withstand the pleasures of the UK winter outside. The result is known as marbling and it helps greatly to produce succulent, tender meat with a lot of flavour which cooks easily.
Native cattle generally, and Dexter’s in particular, are smaller than their continental cousins, a big Dexter will produce a 200Kg carcase (Chunk up above is the biggest Dexter we have had, or heard of), a big Charolais will be well over 400Kg, both however will have the same number of muscle fibres, resulting in any given cut of Dexter beef being finer in texture.
Our Dexter’s excel in taste because they are grown slowly and allowed time to develop fully, we typically take them to just under 30 months old and sometimes older although this does add to processing costs.
Our cattle graze outside all summer ( and sometimes all year around) although we do put most of them in a shed in the winter it is more to keep their feet off the ground than to protect them from the weather. They do get some concentrates to ensure that they have all the vitamins they need but we keep supplemental feeding to the minimum possible and their diet is almost all preserved grass in the form of hay or silage as well as grazing rape and stubble turnips outside.
Once killed they are hung for 3 weeks to tenderise the meat before being cut by a local butcher who has been in the trade all his life.
Try it – it could be the best beef you ever taste
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