Health Benefits of Grass Fed Meat

Interested in the health benefits of grass-fed beef and meat?  Meat, eggs, and dairy products from pastured animals are ideal for your health. Compared with commercial products, they offer you more "good" fats, and fewer "bad" fats. They are richer in antioxidants; including vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C.  They are higher in Omega 3's and do not contain traces of added growth hormones, or antibiotics.  Read more on grass fed beef at the Eat Wild Website:    http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm 

What type of Salt do you eat??

5 Reasons To Eat Salt......

If this title interests you, check out this blog explaining not all salt is the same and only a few are healthy.

http://wellnessmama.com/13164/5-reasons-eat-salt/

Is Soup Really the World's Healthiest Food?

A new post from The Cookhouse!

http://bigmamoucookhouse.com/2014/01/24/is-soup-really-the-worlds-healthiest-food/

Ideas for Stocks & Broths

The Cookhouse

Ideas for Stocks & Broths

- Greetings from the Cookhouse on Big Mamou Farms. Today I present a few ideas that you can use to put Cookhouse stocks & broths to work in your kitchen.

First, I will assume that you read my previous post on Beef Bone Broth for background on how we make stocks and broths. If you believe in the health and beauty benefits of stocks as I do, you may be looking for ideas to incorporate stocks and broths into your daily routine. And if you truly want to make great tasting foods, there may be no more important skill in your repertoire than your skill with stocks, broths and sauces. With three stocks or broths in your refrigerator, the possibilities are endless. Perhaps more important, you can make healthy, great tasting meals in just minutes.

The purpose of this post is to suggest that you can work wonders in the kitchen without a recipe and without watching the clock as long as you have a nice stock or broth on hand. That said, there is a time and place for fancy recipes and we will certainly suggest a few here in the Cookhouse blog with the idea that some of the world’s best tasting dishes start with stock and the healthiest dishes are oftentimes soups. I’m pretty sure our grandmother or at least our great grandmother’s knew this and it served them well. The central theme of my message is that so many cooking methods today leave the most nutritious and flavorful elements out of the picture.  I want to change that.

But first, my last post neglected to address a question that comes up often. That is; what is the difference between a stock and a broth? Many conflicting opinions regarding the specific definition exist out there including those that state that there is no difference. Just Google it and you will see what I mean.  I admit too that I have used the two interchangeably on occasion. That said, I choose to side with a simple and logical definition. A stock is a one-dimension foundation liquid pure and simple. In my case stocks do not contain spices or salt and are usually made with bones and limited vegetables only. In the case of vegetable stock, it is just that, the juice that results from slowly simmered vegetables and nothing more. It is only when I add to the stock that it becomes a broth. Beef stock simmered and infused with meat now becomes a broth. Or, once spices, protein, salt or anything else is added for additional flavor to the stock it becomes a broth. If I reduce the stock, it becomes a sauce. If I clarify the stock or the broth it becomes a consommé. These definitions can certainly be challenged but this is how that I use them.

Here’s a basic strategy (it might be your grandmother’s too) to make an infinite number of dishes. It may sound simple but believe me if you get this right your kids might even offer to do dishes.

-       No recipes; just a little creativity and a passion for eating healthy!

-       You will keep a couple of basic items on hand in the fridge or your freezer at all times.

          1) Never run out of stocks or broths (Ideally Beef, Chicken & Fish)

2) Rice, grains or other starch cooked ahead. Pasta of any shape or size is          great.

3) Vegetables

4) Any protein

With spices found in your kitchen, you probably have everything that you need to make hundreds of different healthy, low-fat, great tasting dishes in just a few minutes. You can buy the stocks or broths frozen and store enough for a week in your refrigerator freezer. Just take one out to thaw before leaving for work. Once a week or so, make a large batch of rice, grains, pasta or all three so that they are ready to go whenever you are. All that will be missing to prepare a great meal is the protein. Chicken breast, lean beef, tofu or fish all make great choices.

One Process, Thousands of Variations

The following step by step process a simple guide only. I want to stress that you can substitute anything that you desire as long as you stay in the same family of taste profiles. For example, it’s normally best to match your stock with your protein. The starches can be used interchangeably. It goes without saying that fish stock is best with fish, beef stock with beef and chicken is best used with chicken. One exception is tofu; it can be paired with just about anything.

The basic process is listed below but remember; the beauty is the ability to substitute and mix & match just about anything.

-    -   In a stainless pan heat up stock ( a pint or quart will do nicely)

-    -   When the stock is hot, add starch, rice, pasta or grain

-    -   As it returns to temperature add the protein; chicken, fish, beef or tofu

-    -   Finally, add vegetables (whatever you have)

-    -   Salt & Pepper to taste

Note: In this case, I add ginger, a pinch of red pepper-flakes and substituted pecans for the protein just to emphasize that there are no limitations to what you can do. If the ingredients are fresh, farm-raised or organic and the stock is of excellent quality, this dish will be fantastic every time with no recipe required.

Or with a few basic vegetables on hand, you can make a beautiful and super-healthy soup. The specific amount of each vegetable is not that critical. I normally use about a one-to one ratio of diced potatoes, carrots, onions, corn and kale and then about half that amount of celery and half that amount again of mushrooms and garlic, salt and pepper to taste. If you happen to have a little left-over chicken breast you can throw that in too.

Another great use for broth whether chicken or beef is a simple onion and dried mushroom soup. This may be one of the healthiest foods that you can possibly put in your body for beautiful skin and hair. The mega-dose of natural minerals, collagen and gelatin supplied by the bone broth along with one of nature’s best sources of biotin, quercetin and polyphenols make this soup as healthy as it is great tasting. For additional taste, include fresh or dried ginger, white pepper or a pinch of red pepper-flakes. You might also choose to add mushrooms and toasted sesame seeds.

How about beans, lentils and corn using  a little chicken broth to pull it all together? A pinch of turmeric and curry powder give this soup’s flavor a nice twist with a glorious yellow color.

For a healthy dose of antioxidants, blanch freshly sliced cabbage in with your choice of chicken or beef broth. Feel free to add thinly sliced mushrooms, caraway seeds, ginger powder or a splash of tamari. Cabbage is often referred to as a super-food with health benefits too numerous to mention here. Blanching in the broth prevents important nutrients from going down the drain and instead puts them in your body.

Healthy! Many leading nutrition professionals believe that bone broth may be nature’s most perfect source of calcium, magnesium, selenium and a vast array of trace minerals required by our bodies for optimal health. Our Cook House bone broth and stock in particular will contain more than 60 trace minerals in addition to the macro nutrients. In a recent article about the health benefits of bone-broth Dr. David Jonkers of Exodus Health Center states, “Other valuable nutrients include collagen, gelatin, hyaluronic acid, chondroitin sulfate, glycosamino glycans, proline, glycine, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and potassium. These all help with the development of healthy joints, bones, ligaments and tendons as well as hair and skin. These nutrients are considered beauty foods because they help the body with proper structural alignment and beautiful skin and hair”. These are but a few of the many health reasons to make bone broth and stock part of your daily diet.

Thanks for your interest. I believe that stocks and broths represent the essence of Nature. A great stock should look, taste, smell and feel glorious to the touch. Done right, stocks and broths should be wonderfully delicious and nearly irresistible and all for good reason. Perhaps no other food in the universe contains so many nutrients designed specifically to light up each of your senses. There is a reason for this-

Next, I will expand on a recipe or two designed to inspire you to make stocks, broths and their derivative sauces part of your family’s daily meal. If you want to look and feel great, I’m convinced that it may be one of the most important things we can do.

Once again, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed hearing from the Cook House on the Big Mamou. - JG

Beef Bone Broth

The Cook House

BONE BROTH

- Greetings from the Cook House on Big Mamou Farms. Today we walk through the preparation of one of nature’s healthiest foods. BONE BROTH or ‘stock’ is a wonderful foundation for literally thousands of different dishes and a veritable culinary weapon in the hands of those in the know.

First, we start with 100% GRASS-FED bones from cows that roam freely on certified ORGANIC land. In our case, cattle graze atop one of the highest points in the county, ensuring they are never exposed to run-off that might include pesticides, herbicides or toxic heavy-metals. Why? Because the animal’s life-long exposure to everything good or bad is concentrated in their bones and tissue. Think about that next time you reach for that can of soup from the store. You can do better.

We use a variety of different bones depending upon whether we are making a simple broth, a complex stock or a sensual demi-glace that will ruin your appetite for lesser sauces forever more. The bone pictured to the right would have made a wonderful braised cross-cut shank on its own but it will also make a rich and beautiful stock. I insist on marrow bones when making my stocks and broths. Mother-nature blessed marrow bones with scores of nutrients and a taste that can only be described as the very essence of life. Along with the marrow bones I always include a knuckle or joint with as much connective tissue as possible. The connective tissue creates a gelatinous stock that will impart a desirable mouth-feel to your soup or consommé while providing a super-sized shot of nutrients for beautiful hair, skin and teeth. Incidentally, some anthropologists attribute the development of our unusually large brains to our ancestor’s skill in finding and consuming bone marrow. No matter how beautiful, we can all use bigger brains.

The bones are roasted at 500 degrees for just a few minutes and then we turn the heat down to 350 for about an hour and a half with roughly-chopped organic carrots, organic onions and organic celery or kale stalks. Occasionally we insert a fresh garlic clove in the marrow to allow the pair to roast together. After the roasting process is complete, the onions and carrots should be caramelized and any meat in the roasting pan should be a beautiful burgundy or brown color. At this point we transfer everything to a large heavy-bottomed stock pot and then cover the bones with ice-cold water, skim the fat and proteins from the top and place it on the stove.

Meanwhile, we deglaze by placing the roasting pan on top of the stove with water. Some prefer to deglaze with red wine. The most important part of the deglazing process is to reheat the roasting pan with enough liquid to scrape the brown morsels from the bottom of the pan and return the entire contents to the stock.

Next, we bring the stock up to temperature. If making a broth for a base we bring the temperature to a slow boil. If for a clear soup or stock we will bring the temperature up just below a boil. When the stock is up to temperature we add, bay, thyme, rosemary and other spices such as black peppercorns and allspice depending upon the stock and its intended use.

This process will take approximately 2-3 days around-the-clock or 48-72 hours. Demi-glace will usually take an extra day. It’s critical to watch the stock closely as the temperature will change in step with the change in volume due to evaporation.

I do not salt or pepper at this point in the process because I want to encourage the stock to develop the true essence of beef stock beforehand. Later, when I do add salt, it will be unprocessed Real Salt, Himalayan or Sea Salt and the quantity will be scant. I’m after the essence of beef and bone and nothing more and nothing less. What you do with the stock when it’s done is your business.

Degreasing is the next step and is vitally important if we expect to produce a stock that tastes fantastic and has a velvety smooth but clean mouth feel. And by doing so, we are removing the vast majority of saturated fat while leaving behind essential life-giving minerals such as magnesium, calcium selenium and too many trace minerals to mention.

To degrease, we remove the bones from the broth and discard. Second, we will strain the entire contents through a fine sieve into a thin metal enamel coated holding pot to cool as quickly as possible. We immediately place the contents into a blast freezer for two hours and then transfer to a refrigerator for 8-10 hours. This process will force the fat to rise to the top and congeal into a solid mass leaving a clear and clean liquid beneath. To perform the final degrease, we remove the solidified fat from the top and strain the remaining contents a second time through a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth that has been folded to form a double-layer.

Finally we ladle our stock into one-quart containers, seal, label and immediately transfer the batch to the blast freezer. This particular batch happened to yield 16 quarts, roughly half the size of the stockpot used for the first two days of simmering.

Notice how the light hits the stock in both the one-quart containers and the large stainless bowl in the picture to the right? A poorly made, thin batch of stock that does not reflect light will impart a mouth feel reminiscent of chalk water; dead and un-lively, it will also be lacking in taste. This is just one yardstick that I use to measure myself for it speaks to how well that I attended to the process of making the stock. The viscosity and reflective quality of the stock will never lie to you.

Healthy! Many leading nutrition professionals believe that bone broth may be nature’s most perfect source of calcium, magnesium, selenium and a vast array of trace minerals required by our bodies for optimal health. Our Cook House bone broth and stock in particular will contain more than 60 trace minerals in addition to the macro nutrients. Athlete’s, particularly endurance athletes lose large amounts of minerals while training. Replacing minerals and trace minerals synthetically with pills and tablets while eating large amounts of empty calories devoid of mother-nature’s minerals can leave you in a depleted state with an immune system that is vulnerable to a wide array of diseases.

In a recent article about the health benefits of bone-broth Dr. David Jonkers of Exodus Health Center states, “Other valuable nutrients include collagen, gelatin, hyaluronic acid, chondroitin sulfate, glycosamino glycans, proline, glycine, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and potassium. These all help with the development of healthy joints, bones, ligaments and tendons as well as hair and skin. These nutrients are considered beauty foods because they help the body with proper structural alignment and beautiful skin and hair”. These are but a few of the many health reasons to make bone broth and stock part of your daily diet.

A rigorous search aimed at the benefits of bone broth will reveal a massive amount of information and testimonials. The recent groundswell of interest in bone marrow and popularity of bone broth including chicken broth is due in part to the recent interest in the Paleo-diet. As for me, thousands of Doctors, French Chefs, our Ancestors and Mom can’t be too far wrong.

Thanks for your interest and for reading about one of the methods that we follow to make bone-broth and stock. There are certainly hundreds of different ways to make stocks and perhaps no correct or ‘right-way’ since food tastes always come down to a matter of personal preference and personal choice. From my perspective however there is only one or perhaps two ‘right’ paths to follow on the journey to seek the ‘perfect stock’. Like most good things in life, there are simply no short-cuts.

Next, I will present a few ideas to incorporate bone broths into your daily routine to save time while creating great tasting and healthy dishes. Once again, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed learning how we make stock at the Cook House on the Big Mamou. - JG

First Newsletter!

BIG MAMOU FARMS 

Quarterly

December 2013 Edition
By John Grabski

Hello and welcome to the first edition of the BIG MAMOU FARMS news letter! The mission for our first news letter is simple. That is, we will seek to introduce our farm and our belief system and why it should matter. Our goal is to help our customers understand how we produce our beef, chicken and eggs in some detail. Our goal is simple; to earn your trust through absolute transparency in everything we do related to the food that you may choose to buy from us.

Each newsletter will offer highlights of the preceding month on the farm however will focus on one specific topic and how that same topic may apply to you and your family. For example, the next issue may focus on antibiotics, grass-fed versus grain fed, cattle-nutrition or our genetic-breeding program. In each edition, we will answer questions that we hear from customers on a regular basis. If it is important to you, it’s important to us and especially so if it involves your family’s good health.

Food Matters
Why are we doing this? Because like you, we believe that food really does matter. Where it comes from, how it was raised and under what conditions is critical in the grand scheme of things and is too often lost in today’s world. Profit motive, while important to us is lower on the priority scale because we feel that we’re doing something really important. Food matters. And, really good food matters even more.

Trust Matters
Trust matters too. And while large commercial producers are important, it is nearly impossible to know what’s in your food, how it got there or the conditions it may have endured on the way to your kitchen. Trust matters here in a really big way.
You can trust BIG MAMOU FARMS to communicate exactly what’s in your food and how it got there. In addition, you can count on us to uphold the highest standard of animal husbandry. If our animals aren’t comfortable we do not sleep.

Animals Matter
We’re omnivores that’s true, but that doesn’t mean we take the subject lightly. Our animal’s health, well-being and comfort is the highest priority on the farm.

Environment Matters
The land on which our cows and other animals graze is USDA Certified ORGANIC. We’ll spend a lot of time on this subject in months to come but suffice it to say that it is central to our belief system. For example, we elected not to use herbicides or pesticides on our fields over 20 years before becoming certified.

Family Matters
We recognize that you have hundreds if not thousands of choices when it comes to where you buy your beef, chicken and other proteins. Educating your children by helping them connect with the farm and their food source more intimately will help them make better and more informed decisions about their diet, the environment and the welfare of animals in the future.

Economy Matters
Buying local helps improve the area in which we live. Your hard earned dollar benefits you twice or more when you buy locally. You benefit first when you exchange it for something that you need or desire, and then indirectly again as that same dollar is invested in local businesses and taxes that improve our general area.

Highlights

We will expand on each topic in upcoming newsletters but for now you can use the following list as a rough guideline.
 -Our Farm is Certified Organic
 -USDA License 20C (Cook House)
 -Use only USDA Processors
 -No Antibiotics
 -No Adders, Fillers or Dyes
 -No Growth Hormones
 -Predominately Grass Fed
 -100% Angus and Hereford Beef
 -Heritage Breed Chicken

Comment on Growth Hormones. Certainly all mammals have naturally occurring growth hormones. We represent that we never feed, implant or administer growth hormones of any kind, ever.

Comment on the term ‘Predominately Grass Fed’. On occasion we train our cows to move from pasture to barn by treating them with a handful of buckwheat (a fruit) mixed with molasses, sea salt and kelp. We also treat the calves when weaned to reduce the stress of leaving Mom.

The Farm Store is open one day each week between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Our products include beef, chicken, duck, lamb, eggs, soups and stocks and so much more. We are also carrying a variety of local producer’s products for your convenience.
We hope that you stop by.
John & Stacey

Thank You!

Thank You to everyone who came to our Grand Opening last Saturday!

This week we will feature a new item, Beef stuffed Cabbage Rolls

located in the freezer section. 

 Take home and heat in the oven or stove top.

The Farm Store

at The Big Mamou Organic Farm

Saturdays  10:00 a.m.  - 4:00 p.m.

1985 Keech Rd. Branchport

Carrying our grass fed beef, lamb, organically raised chickens,

ducks and eggs, organic vegetables- carrots, cabbage, beets, onions,

and potatoes and handcrafted frozen soups.   Our apple pies 

are made from no spray wild pasture apples.  

We carry local no spray apple cider, soaps, chocolate,

maple syrup, honey, jams and jellies, coffee, tea, salt

and so much more!

Thank you to Mimi Eaves for sending us this beautiful photo

of the Osso Buco she made this week with Big Mamou

Grass Fed Beef!  Looks delicious :)