Customer Reviews

The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook: Healthy Cooking & Good Living with Pasture Raised Foods

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As both producers of grassfed beef raised on our small family farm and avid cooks of pasture-raised foods, we are delighted with The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook! Shannon Hayes presents marvelous, doable and delicious recipes for excellent culinary results appropriate for pastured foods. She also educates the reader about the health, environmental, social, and economic benefits of pasture-based products/foods generated on small-scale family farms. In this time of mass-produced livestock, factory farms and foodlots resulting in animals and fowl--"foul food"--laced with chemicals, antibiotics, and hormones as well as inhumane treatment, the author points out that it doesn't have to be that way. She nimbly guides the cook through the preparation and enjoyment of high quality "clean" foods raised through sustainable farming. We continue to delight guests and ourselves with meat raised on our farm frequently using recipes from this highly pleasing book geared toward home-cooked meals. It makes a great gift for anyone interested in food preparation in the marvelous world of unique flavors and healthy eating with pasture-raised foods. Bravo Shannon!

I have far too many cookbooks, but when I leave town, this is the one cookbook I bring along. Shannon has taught me how to season grassfed meats to create some very delicious flavors. Several recipes for rubs are included. Instead of buying some MSG laced seasonings from the store, you can whip up your own and keep them on hand for healthful, quick and delicious flavored meats. I've used them on conventionally raised meats too, when I couldn't get my hands on the good stuff. The flavors still shine through.

The best meal I've ever eaten in my life were the maple brined grassfed pork chops, served over creamed leeks and topped with a tart and savory chunky apple topping. Truly gourmet eats! I also loved the bourbon steaks and have made this dish several times. (There was just one recipe I did not like - I made the sweet and sour chicken recipe, and found it was not for me - too much sugar, boiled veggies, not enough fat).

For the most part I am truly enjoying cooking my way through this cookbook.

Vicki

This is an amazing cookbook and includes a host of fine recipes.
With a refrigerator full of grassfed beef and lamb it's perfect to have ideas for each and every piece of tasty meat. The cookbook was given to me as a Christmas gift; now I'm ordering five more for my friends who want to eat well, eat healthy, and eat locally produced meats.

This book is a great resource for cooking grass-fed meat. It is built on the premise of low and slow cooking to get great tasting meat. There is also information provided about the grass-fed movement and the health benefits of grass-fed meat. There is a wide variety of recipes including beef, poultry, pork, goat, lamb, rabbit, and more. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because there are no pictures whatsoever. I'm a cookbook junkie and I hate it when there are no pictures! Overall, though, I would highly recommend purchasing this book if you're planning on cooking grass-fed meat.

OK, I'm endeavoring to buy local. I shop the farmers' markets, purchase my poultry locally, buy eggs from a farm, and do my best to cook (and eat!) in season. But... industrial pork (for one example) is generally more tender and moist than when I've cooked my locally grown and slaughtered pig. No longer! This book helped me understand that pasture-raised meat is more lean and therefore requires some nuanced cooking methods. Just last night I used the recipe for brined pork roast (water, salt, honey, cardamom seeds, black pepper, fresh ginger) -- brined a 5lb. fresh ham roast for about 24 hours inn this concoction. The results exceeded my hopes! Flavorful, moist, and tender! (And the roast was from the same half-pig we'd earlier found dry and tough.) I'm now eager to try more recipes -- I recommend this book!

If you are new to grassfed meats, this book is a must have. If you've tried grassfed beef, and found it to be "too tough", get your hands on this cookbook, grab a meat thermometer, follow Shannon's recommendations, and you will never go back to grain-fed beef, I promise! For everyone else, the recipes in all of the sections (beef, lamb, pork, chicken) are a pure joy.

I've owned this book for 2 years now and use it so much that I've given copies of it as Christmas gifts to 20 food-loving friends and relatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Everyone loves it. The recipes are mostly uncomplicated, foolproof and delicious. The book is also a great read: Shannon is an amusing, enormously knowledgeable person who will inform and entertain you with delightful style. I just bought her new book, "The Farmer and the Grill", a fascinatingly different slant on a familiar subject with a surprising and very promising Argentinian flavor. Can't wait to try it.

Yummy recipes. I've finally found how to eat chicken livers so that they're palatable. More than palatable actually; the chicken liver mousse is delicious as is the California pot roast. Grass fed meats are the only way to go!!

As a recent convert to grass fed foods it's hard not to notice the difference in flavor, texture and health benefits. The leanness of the meat is so clear that I have been wondering how to account for it when cooking. My usual recipes were good, but particularly as I began to experiment with new cuts of meat I wasn't sure the best way to go about it. Shannon's book is wonderful. It has just the right mix of information about grass-fed meat and recipes. The recipes themselves are exactly the kind of thing I make for my family, not fancy, but full of wholesome ingredients that--when made properly--taste better than many dishes I've had in restaurants.

I must say, I'm both thankful and impressed with this cook book. I'm an experienced baker, but I've really never had any experience cooking meat (let alone grass fed beef and lamb). We joined a very small, local, organic, grass fed meat CSA this winter and I didn't want to take the chance of ruining all that wonderful lamb and beef that we'd invested in, having cooked some pretty awful grass fed burgers in the past.

This book is absolutely essential if you're not familiar with cooking grass finished meats, or even if you're like me and have never really cooked much meat. As I said, I ruined several batches of grass finished beef burgers; we could barely chew them and they were totally overcooked. On my very first try using the recipe for simple grass fed burgers, I cooked the best burger I have ever tasted in my entire life (complete with caramelized onions and homemade BBQ sauce). I followed the directions precisely. Perfectly juicy, wonderfully flavored, out of this world burger. It's the kind of burger you think about for the rest of the week!

I've tried the herb roasted chicken recipe as well as the meatball recipe, both meats were perfectly cooked again. I think cooking the meat to the temperatures she recommends really makes a difference. I had no idea that chicken can be cooked to 165F and not be pink. The stock recipes (for boiling poultry carcasses) came out wonderful as well, we made both chicken and duck stock. The stock itself is so rich it's almost a meal in itself (we boiled it down to concentrate it).

I can't wait to try out the lamb recipes with our meat share next month. This book does not disappoint, so if you want a perfectly cooked main dish every time you prepare your grass fed meats, this is the way to go.