Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "Best" Beef Breed

The beef I had when I was a kid, sure tasted better. Herefords and Shorthorns my family raised.

While Angus was bagpiping his way to glory, I ran into this breed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_cattle

The Scots call them "Heeland Coo." I have heard they are the best tasting beef out of Europe, and the Queen keeps a herd at Balmoral to supply beef for the Royal Family.

The reason I took an interest in them was it seems they do a fairly good job browsing on red cedar, and will take a fairly large tree and knock it over. They sound like the perfect sort of animal for my steeper hillsides down at the farm where I can't get a bush hog.

Brangus Hereford cross. Black Baldies(Hereford Angus cross) are second.
There's lots of reasons to go with the Brangus/Herefords. Mainly is that they
put a lot of feed through there system. Brahmas don't lay down like European
breeds do. Not lazy at all.
Beefmaster is another good breed that I'd look at.
I've been in the cattle business for a lot of years and you
can take my advice for what you paid for it.

Back in the 90's, I bought some cows that were part Beefalo. They were very easy keepers, and always raised some good calves. When I bought the cows, I bought a Simmental bull, and thought I'd got been had. I would see cows in heat, and he would act as if he was not paying them any attention at all. My neighbor told he that he'd always heard that Simmentals bred at night, something I couldn't believe. Anyway, I got rid of him, and got a Brangus bull. Every one of those cows had a calf by the Simmental, so I guess there was something to that night breeding thing.

Many years ago at the local salebarn I bought a 6 weight, lop eared, red brangus heifer. She had many
good calves for me and we always kept those for our own freezer. They didn't finish quite as heavy but
it was good lean meat.

Lots of interesting thoughts. Couple points I want to share.

There are definite differences in breeds. But that means there is no guarantee a steak from breed Z will always be____. IOW, there is variability within the breed and there is a huge environmental influence on the eating quality of any meat from any carcass.

Different people referenced flavor they had from cattle run in the desert, or older cows or grassfed beef or roping steers etc. In my experience, that difference comes from advanced age of the animal at harvest giving the meat itself a stronger flavor. Slightly similar to the stronger flavor of game.

Fat flavor is also different in meat depending on management/feed. The fat composition will change dramatically as a result of type of feed. Fat from grass fed cattle is significantly different from grain fed. Then throw in a breed difference that impacts fat composition, Wagyu. Wagyu fat has a higher percentage of monounsaturated fats which are "softer" and actually deemed to be good for your health. The flavor is quite different from what we would consider native cattle here in the USA (angus, herefords, simmentals, etc.)

Environmental issues include harvest techniques, environment immediately preceding harvest, post-mortem handling (aging, temp, boning etc.), feed composition, etc. etc.

I worked for many years as a retail meat cutter—Missouri—Minnesota—Ontario and I owned a meat processing shop where I did mostly Moose and Deer but did process some locally raised beef and hogs.

I also had a lot of fishing and hunting clients who raise their own beef from MICHIGAN, Montana and Virginia and they brought their own meat with them.

In my opinion,for what it’s worth, grass fed beef sucks—so does locally raised pork on leftover restaurant and grocery store waste.

Pretty hard to beat Iowa corn fed beef and I have always preferred hogs from southern Manitoba—maybe those hogs are raised on barley.

This is maybe a good time to point out that the current Angus breed is a far cry from what we saw back in the 50's and 60's. As a breed they were way smaller and used a lot for breeding heifers. I don't know how they got the size where it is today, whether is was by selecting the larger of the breed, for breeding stock, or outcrossing. Back then a grown Angus would top out around 700 lbs. miles

Miles makes a good point on the size of cattle. In the 80's, boxed beef came in. No swinging beef, and the local store cutting what the customer wanted. The beef cuts needs to fit in a box.

Karl is on the mark, as usual. It would be a pleasure to serve Karl a cut of Iowa corn fed beef someday when we are in Wabigoon.

Rumor has it the Canadians introduced some Limosin into the breed.

Grilled up a flank steak last night. Grass fed. It actually tasted like beef.

No idea what breed it was.

You would sure be in luck down here.

Some ranch sold out their entire longhorn herd not long ago. I had the misfortune of sitting at the auction when they were running through the ring... They were bringing half, or less than half of what any European breeds were bringing. Cattle buyer sitting next to me commented that you could have several 18 wheeler loads of those, and still have nothing...

Our neighbor has some of those, pretty cool. He said they are slow gainers though...we have a baldie heifer , grass fed, in the freezer. Very good!

Can't say much about one breed vs. another, but I can comment on one especially delicious beef animal.

When I was a teenager, I had a Brown Swiss cow. She was smaller than the Holsteins we had, by quite a bit. And she was kind of a pet. She'd follow me around and nudge me with her nose to get scratched behind her ears.

Life was a little too busy for me to milk her, so we bred her Black Angus and let the calf run with her. The first day of his life, that calf got out of a pole corral with net wire waist high. And that dang animal got out every day of his life after that. He was trained to the point that all you had to do was find him and wave a stick at him, and he'd get back in.

After a year, he was big and milk-fed. And delicious. And he didn't escape anymore.

I don't remember ever enjoying beef as much as I did that beef.

What was funny when I was a kid is very few people had a corral. Most just had a lot made out of woven wire with a couple of strands of barbed wire and if they were big time some kind of head catch in the barn. Most folks had a old chute and hauled their calves off with a stock rack a few at a time.

Then the crossbred craze hit and everyone got a Bramha bull. There's no telling how many gooseneck stock trailers that sold. For a while there was lots of cattle to be caught for $50.00 each or on the halves if they was sure enough bad azzes. Good times.

I worked in a Wisconsin packing house when I was going to school and we only killed what I considered "good" range type cattle (Angus and Herefords) on Tuesday afternoons. The rest were all burned out old milk cows. No farmer is going to ship a good producing dairy cow until it is either sick, didn't breed or it's milk production has gone down. Once you get the hide off them, it is all about the marbling in the meat. Our neighbor supplied the upper end restaurants with their meat and he said that you can't buy USDA prime beef in the store because that all goes to the high end restaurants. All we buy for steaks is Certified Angus USDA Choice tenderloin and six of our retirement age friends have all said that the steaks that I barbecued for them "Are the best steaks that they have ever eaten."

Packing houses hate Texas Long Horns because those horns kill everything in the truck and they don't fit down the chutes. I remember the day that the foreman told me to go skin a still warm prime Angus steer that had been gored and died in the truck. I rolled that skinned carcass into the bone truck for the junk that we got a nickle a pound for. I should have punched out and took it home.

We made a lot of MacDonald hamburger in those days (Remember those .15 cent burgers? They were 10 to 1. Ten patties to a pound!!!) I was working the grinder and the boning room foreman told me "That's too good for McDonald's." So I threw in some big chunks of kidney suet. I don't eat at McDonald's much these days.

Where the animal comes from does make a lot of difference in how it tastes. Sorry Wisconsin, but Florida Certified Angus tenderloin tastes better than Wisconsin Certified Angus tenderloin.

I was watching one of those cooking shows on TV once and the chef said that for burger, the ground chuck has the most flavor. Your cardiologist might not agree with your choice, but fat burger like 80/20 has more flavor than the ultra lean 90/10 stuff.

Question... I've certainly noticed some beef tastes better than others. I'm curious what would make beef taste so bad. I had beef in central america that was what you'd have to call stringy and a strong taste similar to wild game. Actually stronger than a lot. This was a tropical environment and I'd see cows surrounded by grass that was taller than them, along with a lot of plants.

Any idea what would make beef taste like that, so strong? Was the toughness and stringiness due to breed, feed, or both? Thanks in advance for any answers.

I’m not sure what breeds they raise in Argentina and Chile but the steaks there are on average way better than what retaraunts in the US serve. They my age them differently or something but the flavor and tenderness is generally outstanding.

Any animal tastes relevant to their diet. (Deer, elk, goats, pigs, beef... no matter)

Toughness and stringiness is directly related to marbling and age and sex.

No marbling, it will be tough.

Too old and it will probably be both tough and stringy.

Bull meat ain't good for much other than hamburger meat.

Breed has a lot to do with it as well... Holsteins, longhorns and a few others may taste ok, but no matter how much you feed them, or what you feed them, they will not marble up like the other breeds. So, they will be tougher. In my opinion, these breeds are only good for hamburger meat and cubed steak.
YMMMV.

It goes beyond Angus. Here, if they’re black, angus or not, they bring 11 cents per pound more. I’ve seen the skinny black Corrientes bring more per pound than well filled out beef calves that were any other color than black. I think the best mix here is any really beefy black calf. Black simmentals or sim/angus do well.

John