When it comes to beef, we at ML Brand Beef have passion for creating the best! We do that by growing our own high quality feed, caring for the cattle from birth through finish and doing our overall best to ensure a tasty eating experience for you, our customer.

We call it Prime feed, Prime care, Prime beef.

We are so passionate about our beef, we created a whole beef education blog just to talk about it.

We know that there is a lot to learn when it comes to butchering, transporting and cooking beef and we also know that many of our customers know how to do these things already; but for those of you who don?t, we have you covered!

First, we want to tell you a bit about the quality of meat we produce. When you buy beef at a grocery store, you will see multiple ?cuts? for sale -- ribeye, New York, filet mignon, etc. A little-known secret is that all those different cuts of meat come from different beef cattle. One package of steaks may come from the same animal or several. This means that the quality and age of the beef can vary throughout any supermarket. The good news is that when you buy a beef animal from ML Brand, you can rest assured that all of the cuts of meat come from the same animal that has been raised and finished with the utmost care. Additionally, closeout reports from the packing plant shows beef from our cattle reaches Certified Angus Beef, USDA Choice and USDA Prime certifications 90% of time. When you pair our industry-leading average quality rating with the added assurance that your animal is handpicked for visual quality, you know you?re getting the best.

So, let?s dive into ML Brand Beef ?beefucation.? Let?s explore what it?s like to get your beef processed and packaged by a custom butcher rather than a commercial meat processor and why this method of buying beef is superior to store-bought beef.

Retail prices in grocery stores mean you?re paying for cuts that have been trimmed of all excess external fat and packaged for quick consumption. The Styrofoam tray, moisture absorber and thin plastic wrap mean the meat is packaged for the refrigerator. If stored in the freezer the meat is much more susceptible to freezer burn.

Custom butchers cut the meat to the customer's specifications but unless the request is made to trim the excess fat they will leave it on. They also wrap the meat using heavy duty food-grade plastic and butcher paper to guard against freezer burn. The two-layer approach protects the meat during transportation and from freezer burn after months in the freezer.

This leads us to our next point, fat! Fat is flavor, but not all fat is created equal. There are generally two types of fat in a piece of beef. The first, and most obvious being visceral or external fat. If you like to keep this fat on your meat, then it is a good rule of thumb to check for how soft, or hard the visceral fat is. It is important to note that soft visceral fat can render down during the cooking process and add more flavor to your beef. Hard visceral fat will not render down during cooking. You may just want to remove it by simply cutting it out carefully with a knife.

The second type of fat, and the best type in our opinion, is the intramuscular fat, or marbling. Marbling is the fat that you see in between the muscle fibers in your beef. This fat is easily rendered down in the cooking process, giving the beef flavor and juiciness. Better yet, some studies show this type of fat has positive health effects, as well. See? fat is not so bad after all.

Learn more here: (https://meat.tamu.edu/2015/03/26/marbling-research-shows-healthy-fat-in-beef-has-benefits-agrilife-today/)

We can go on and on about beef, seriously, there is no shortage of subjects on this matter. We highly encourage you to continue to educate yourself about how to prepare and cook your beef. Also, pay us a visit in the near future for more educational updates.

Additionally the following sites include great references for beef recipes and click on this graphic for a deeper understanding of cuts of beef and how to properly cook each one.

https://www.certifiedangusbeef.com/

https://www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com/

https://www.certifiedangusbeef.com/cuts/poster/Beef-Cuts-Print-Friendly.pdf