BISON vs BEEF: The Ultimate Comparison | The Bearded Butchers

Hello everyone, welcome back. We have an amazing video planned for you. Scott will explain much of the scientific parts of the video. I'm going to process it through the whole process. This one is called

bison

versus

beef

. If you look here, you'll see a couple of

bison

and some meat carcasses hanging in our cooler. Scott is going to explain a lot of things throughout the video, just the differences, the cuts and then also the nutrients. and stuff like that, so without further ado, take it, scott, the great american bison, a tale of tragedy and come back.

The bison is now the official mammal of the United States, which is fantastic. This animal has gone through quite a storied history, in fact the bison and the reason why they are a great comeback story were nearly slaughtered to extinction in the late 19th century. An estimated 50 to 60 million bison once roamed the Great Plains of the United States, dwindling to fewer than 500 in total. In the wild and private herds around 1890 it took a huge conservative effort to return them to where we are today: today there are about 500,000 bison in the world, compared to about a billion head of livestock (currently bison and

beef

or, more accurately, bison and cattle we will first talk a little about their similarities and then we will talk about our differences They both belong to the bovine family, so they are actually brothers in every sense, they have much of the same. same genetic structure and cattle have been domesticated.

Bison do not have bison and are completely unaltered from the way they were created. Furthermore, bison are native to this continent on the North American continent. Cattle are not bison, they were created and. put here, they are specifically designed to make the most of our Great Planes in the sense that the bison is a fantastic animal in its ability to survive without shelter without the intervention of a veterinarian. They are not domesticated either. They're like the linebacker when it comes to the cattle family when you look at one of these. things look amazing now there are a couple of subspecies in the bison family we are dealing with the plains bison there is also the wood bison which is found more in Canada and then there is the European uh weisen which has actually been removed from the wild or not, they are only in captivity and some have been reintroduced.

I don't know much about them, I just know that we have one of the best sources of protein you can find. Now the term buffalo is um, it's a misnomer okay, but bison are not in the same category as the African buffalo or the Asian buffalo, they really are their own category, in fact the scientific name is bison bison, no you can mess it up so today we are going to be talking about the difference with the carcass, the composition of the carcass, the look of the bison, they are much leaner, they have a higher protein content, they have less cholesterol and they have less fat, which makes a great healthy option, they are absolutely the best protein you can find in the United States and that's really where we start and that's where the name white feather comes from.

We have another video planned on some of the history and how. White Feather became the name of our company, but it really had to do with our beginning which came in the late 80's when our father became involved in raising American bison, so we're going to talk about these ones that are going to break them down. now. One of the most interesting things about bison is that it has 14 ribs in total, whereas beef or cattle only have 13. So Seth divided it here between the fifth and sixth rib and then it's up there between the 13th 1st and 14th rib.

If you look at this carcass, the meat will be very different, in the sense that you will see a lot less fat covering the carcass, so we have this hump, this traditional hump that we have with the bison that you may have heard of. a hump roast there's not much there it's actually pretty thin mostly bone that's where they store extra calories and that's why it has more fat here on this hump but it's a lot wider than beef if you look at these feather bones right here. look at those feather bones, let's say versus these feather bones in this beef, now this is an angus beef and this is um and that's another thing with cattle, they've diversified through selective breeding into hundreds if not thousands. , of different versions, so to speak, with American cattle. bison, we only have an undiversified, undomesticated version, so if you take a good look at that carcass and some of the differences we have there, it's also known historically that bison are much better at using the resources around them In nature.

Most cattle spend their days seeking shade around water, they drink quite frequently, they use more resources with food, with bison, they can go, they have been observed in the wild, they really only go to a water source once a day and, um, just make much better use of its resources, like food and water resources, so you can take a look at this uh primitive right here, you can see that it doesn't have a lot of marbling and it has minimal fat coverage, but believe it or not, even without that marbling on the bison it is very, very tender and very tasty, so now that the bison is broken down, let's get to the meat, so with the meat we have discovered that what we are going to see here it's literally thousands of years of domestication, um and basically. selective breeding to get exactly what we want from it, so that's where you see a difference in the rib of meat versus bison, so as Scott mentioned, this is an angus dorado, there's not a lot of marbling on this, but you can see there's a much larger ribeye section here, you know, again, there's not a ton of external fat on the back, but you'll be able to see the difference between the meat and the bison.

The bison is a much darker red, it has a little more If you look at it pale, you can see that the bison will be much richer, much richer in iron, and that shows when you see the color difference in the meat, something we are going to do in this video. After processing them, we have a really cool kitchen utensil that we are going to use. Some of you have probably never heard of it before. It's called a birch barrel, so we'll take it out and fill it. with a little bit of charcoal maybe a couple of pieces of firewood and we're actually going to grill a couple of these um and I think we're going to do porterhouse steaks so maybe like a one and a half inch two inch porterhouse steak. thickness of the bison and outside the meat we are going to roast it all and we are going to do a taste test, stay with us, we will take them out to the ground, we will guide you through some of the processing. a little bit of the different style of processing that we have bison versus beef, but finally we're going to talk about sweet bison that actually has a sweet smell when you're on the grass, you can smell it, but the sweet taste of bison versus the buttery taste of the meat, we're going to compare the two, we're going to talk a little bit more about the nutrients, so stay with us as we take you through the processing floor and finally, like Seth said.

We've gone for a more primitive style of cooking and I'm pretty sure it'll be worth sticking around because this is going to be a fun video let's get this out on the floor let me get one bro oh yeah. we're on the bison versus beef processing floor, let's get the Victorinox ready to take them out here on the floor and let's start processing the front quarter of the bison, the front quarter of the beef, this isn't really going to be a competition between the two because being raised on bison meat we thought which one would probably win so this will be more of a

comparison

between the two we will run them simultaneously so we will do the front quarter we are we are going to cut it into all the primaries cut it into stakes into the bison repeat the process in the meat so let's go ahead and get started, we're not going to explain much of the process since you guys have already done it.

You've probably seen some of our other videos where we do more explaining. This will focus more on the breakdown, cropping and side by side

comparison

of the two. We think it will be fun, so stay tuned. We're going to bring out things like skirt steak, ribs, we're going to bring out flat irons, Denver's Chuck rolls, um in the front quarter and then in the back quarter, we're going to cut a porterhouse and ribeyes. the bone-in version because as we mentioned earlier, we want to get those big two inch thick steaks to throw in that birch barrel here this afternoon, so that's the plan, so like I mentioned yesterday, bison, a sweeter meat , some would say it is drier.

We think bison has a naturally high moisture content, it's just cooked and that's why we'll show you later this afternoon, but you have to be cautious and err on the side of caution when cooking bison ribs, I'll peel the membrane. I can't tell you about these that they wouldn't be good for the smoker spices and the breast by passing this through the saw, you can tell that the bones are super soft, the meat is super tender. I'm going to take this portion to Scott. which contains the denver irons and the chuck eye, so scott is going to invent this for us just as we pointed out in the cooler, the chuck really the big difference is this part here that I'll show you when he breaks this down. down below I talked about the energy storage or the fat storage that the bison has and they store it up there in their chuck and that hump so to speak you may have heard you know hump roasts and hump men mountains and all that ate the hump and I'm sure they did it because of the amount of fat in it, you might be wondering why exactly, if bison were almost extinct at one point, we're culling them and it really is one of the best ways to save a species or whatever, if you believe.

In terms of the bison, it wasn't until conservation efforts began that the bison were brought back from the brink of extinction and then it became, you know, it was that the numbers grew, but they weren't really where they were now. I think the bison have pretty much doubled in the last two or three decades, so when our parents started raising bison in the early '90s, I think the national herd size was around 200,000 and now it's 500 and you can attribute quite a bit of that. to commercial activity or otherwise to the raising and harvesting of bison for food and has become an excellent source of protein and is favored by many at first, in the early 90s, bison was praised as low in fat , low in cholesterol, high in protein meat and certainly still saturated fat, as we have learned, it is not as harmful to heart health as previously thought, so we are not as worried about the low quality of the fat, but It's always good to have a resource where you have less fat. fat, lower cholesterol, higher protein, as well as a higher content of vitamins and minerals, while it is an extremely tasty red meat, so you can talk this way, you can notice the tenderness and the bison as we said, actually They have a sweet smell. them, my victorinox is, I think I've had this one for over a year, you can see I've used it quite a bit on the stone, it's kept a really nice edge for me, there's a shoulder blade, now the bison was essentially the economy of Los Native Americans, the Plains Indians, used bison as one hundred percent of their basic diet and a whole series of resources, including things they did as shelter, so we know that this animal not only has the resource of meat but also the skin and hooves. and the bones and everything else that goes with it because of the length of these feather bones that I talked about, which actually makes it a little difficult in the slaughterhouse to get our splitting saw through there, so now that I pull of this pull, it's literally almost twice as long, this would be the hump here, it's almost twice as long as a steak and I'm going to take, we're going to make a nice roast with the eye of the chuck, so I'm going to take my knife and I'll be Cutting through this yellow cord is a pretty tough piece right here this tendon now everything we don't save for human consumption is saved for bones for bone broth or pet food we don't let go of any part of this wasting this yellow cord is going to continue this far but I want to show you that actually I will if we were looking for a roast hump this would literally be the top of the hump which in the adult males can be as tall as six and a half feet but I wanted to show you see that's where There is a large part of that fat storage, which is why the mountain men would have eaten this piece here very delicious.

If you eat a lot of that, you're going to get a lot of energy from the fat, so the rest of it is pretty similar to meat, we've got that nice square piece that we're going to cut out. in roast and then this mussel in the bison where we get the bottom or excuse me, the Denver is a little thinner, but we've noticed that the bison actually puffs up when it's cooked and some of these thinner cuts will end up coming out almost twice as long. thicker than when you started with Denver, our plate and of course our griddle, okay, it'stime to move this to things and he's going to finish it off with bison brisket, we're going to trim this down, you'll notice it from the beginning. bat which is much, much smaller than beef, even though these sides weighed very similar beef and bison, some of the cuts on the bison will naturally be smaller, one bone a little larger, a framed animal bigger, cut a little smaller on them, so you'll notice it. that right off the bat, you know, grain-fed big brisket, you're probably looking at 15 to 20 pounds of bison brisket, you know, you're probably looking at five and a half pounds, maybe we've smoked them, they're fantastic, mix it up. . with some hickory wood chunks, season this with a little beer to cut the black seasoning, get that nice bark, throw it in the smoker yum bison flat iron scott has trimmed this up nicely for me so I'm going to go ahead and remove this cartilage. seam in the middle there is a piece using that fish fillet method we talked about now.

One thing we notice when we cut bison is that the meat is much drier, it's leaner and drier, so when you process things seem to stick together. to the blade a little more than you would when cutting a domestic meat, you know, beef or something like that and the tables and things like that just dry out more during the cutting that process three planks of bison bison roll from a couple of different ways you can do this, you can cut it into fillets and then you have oxeye fillets. What we like to do with these is cut them into a two to three pound roast and make a boneless roast.

Our customers love them and will throw them in a netter you can slow roast this whole roast and eat it whole, there is no gristle, minimal fat, literally cook it and it will just fall apart and eat the whole thing, run it through our netter, this keeps the meat together very good when you are cooking. It is a good presentation in the case of meat. Customers really like the way these roasts look with the net and it's helpful too. It doesn't just look good. Spice pitted and roasted in a cold Dutch oven on a winter's day or in a crock pot.

Throw your favorite. Favorite vegetables there, cook them until they fall apart, tender, they are an amazing food, one of the main possessions of any animal. The rib section, we're going to trim it and cut the ribeye steaks today, so the first thing we're going to do is remove the membrane. remove the bones and you've seen this process before in some of the other videos we've done, like Scott mentioned the bones that aren't going to go to waste and that are going to be used for bison bone broth by making those cuts and using that pressure with your hand right just to separate that seam remove the padding I'm going to remove these bones here we're going to save them as bison ribs something like baby back ribs you can do this with beef bison elk whatever species that way someone can come into the store and you can buy those ribs and throw them in the smoker.

Trim a little. I always trim my primaries before cutting them into stakes that way they are nice and uniform. I don't have to re-cut each individual fillet, they are already cut and ready to go. Now I can go down there and cut them into fillets now that I have it all trimmed. What I want to do is I want to wait to cut this into steaks until I make the meat that way. I can have the beef ribeye section next to the bison and then we'll cut each one into steaks and do our comparison. for now I'm going to put that one aside and we're going to go ahead and start with the meat, you can see that the cuts that we have on our table are already from the bison of the bison. front quarter we're going to go ahead and do the same thing on the beef front quarter and as I mentioned, then we'll go to the hinds, we'll match everything on the table bison against beef let's start with the brisket steaks, if you've never had brisket steaks brisket or bison flank steaks, get some, the fibers run this way, you can see between the muscle fibers there is a decent amount of fat, super tender, super flavor, flavorful, just a delicious, fun cut of roast. you can grill it, cut it into steaks, you can make fajitas with it, a really good cut, it's an internal diaphragm muscle that doesn't get used much, a little underrated steak that a lot of people don't What I know is that recently a good friend of ours told us He said it's his second favorite steak in a beef carcass.

I should mention that he said his favorite steak is a ribeye, so here again, Chuck Eye Flatiron Denver, I'll pass this on to scott, he'll do what he does best, here's that piece of meat like I mentioned, it's pretty much flat on the back, really no hump. I'll show you once I get to those feather bones how different it is, so I haven't. I mentioned it was drier, you can definitely see more fat cap here, as Seth mentioned, although this side of the meat weighed on the rail a little more than the bison, you can really see that the biggest differences are in the forequarters between the two.

I can see how dramatically different those feather bones are and then if I cut this one the same way through that yellow cord to get that square roast, there's that same piece a little bit different anatomically here, probably the biggest difference comes from this. front right from this front chuck area between the two so I also have the bison brisket here and you'll be able to see the biggest difference in the size comparison between the two when they're side by side like this now in this half of The beef was about 350 pounds hanging from the weight on the railing, so you can imagine if it was big, you know, 500 pounds, half of what it would be even from what's here, so you can see the difference between the breasts, although it is quite significant.

The carcasses on the rail were very similar in weight, how much different in size, some of these cuts are the second most tender fillet of an animal, they are the plates, the top blade fillet is very little seen, if I don't know, maybe Maybe almost useless in the casing due to its location on top of the shoulder blade, you just don't see any movement, that's why it's so tender, a little marbled, delicious, throw them on the Victorinox 10 inch grill, so I have this touch It's very brief here, a ten inch, eight inch, six inch bone knife, everyone knows that one which is kind of an arsenal for processing some of the larger cuts.

Take out your 10 inches, which makes it easier to get up there with minimal cutting back and forth, so these are the chuck eye roasts here again, very little fat, no gristle, no bone, You can throw bones in the pot with them if you want more flavor, get them in a net, perfect for a roast meal, on top of the beef ribeye steaks we are going to prepare. do the same thing you did with the bison, let's save the back rib, someone will have a good time grilling them, just remove our bones and remove them so over the years you learn different tricks and things like that.

When I remove this bump here, you can just hold the knife and then pull it back and you can see it's cutting at the same time, so I don't want to make a cut here because then I'm going to cut into the ribeye steak, so if I hold my knife here and I do a little trick for you, go ahead and remove the bones, staying as close to the bone as possible now, as mentioned in some of our other videos, if I leave this bone on these stakes. in these sections here, if I leave it there, that would be called a rib eye steak, I removed the bone which is now a rib eye, if I leave the bone I cut it into a roast which is a rib eye, if I remove the bone, I cut it into a roast which is just a ribeye roast, so there's the meat, let's take the bison, put them side by side and cut them into ribeye sections.

I bet you guys can guess which beef bison you can see. Scott talked a lot about that hump. that bison, you can see it's revealed here through this slightly narrower ribeye section on this end. Color-wise, bison is definitely a much darker red, a little bit, you know, a much richer color, the meat has more white fat and more. of that cherry red look, so let's go ahead and cut these steaks to see what they look like, an inch and a quarter, I can tell when I'm cutting around here, that very tender cut doesn't require a lot of pressure on my knife to get a little bit of fat through it. nice on those, those will be a very, very good steak, you hear us talk about butcher's take every time we cut these primals this way, we end up with these little pieces that don't cut evenly, so that's normally what we take home and roast ourselves, we own these animals, we raise bison, we'll get into that in more detail here after a while, we buy the meat from local farmers, so when it comes to saving some of these , we want to cook and eat ourselves, we certainly can because we own the animals now, if you had a custom process of beef and your butcher told you you would probably be a little worried because you certainly shouldn't take any of that.

It belongs to you, okay, so let's put them here. I want to count them. They are cut to exactly the same thickness. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, then, I would have guessed what it looked like that there was more beef here than bison, but it's because of its size and it fills more of the table if we take a couple of these nice ones from the center here with that nice ribeye cap that we make. our comparison, the bison you can see is a leaner cut, the fat content is very similar, as mentioned, we chose a beef carcass that was similar in size just to make the comparison a little easier, you know, it's easy to see if it was a larger case, obviously.

Prime ribeye will probably be twice that size in the meat, so the darker red in the bison will be a slightly paler cherry color in the meat. Wow, put them in the right place, that's your side by side comparison between bison and beef in ribeye steaks. It's time to tackle the hindquarters of bison meat. You can see that the bison are a little wider. The meat will be rounder and much thicker. Put those two next to each other and you can also notice the color difference, more of a white fat on the meat. more yellow on the bison so we'll take out flank steaks, we'll take out tri-tips and we'll cut the bone-in version that I mentioned before porterhouse and t-bone if I make those boneless steaks We'd have filet and strips, we'll cut the sirloins out of these and just work and we'll continue with our comparison first, taking out those flanks, which is the flank stake of the bison, take out this rose meat from here first.

It only goes into the cuts for the burger, now we are not going to mix the cuts of the beef and the bison during this entire process. Shawn and Scott keep each species separate as we go, let's go ahead and take out this bison flank first so you can see one of their friends in the pen must have had it with a horn a little bit there, but we'll just remove that part, discard it , what we have left will be fine, that made it a little smaller than it should be, you can see. when I pull these, those muscle fibers run down like this one of our favorite dishes with a skirt steak and we have a video about this is where we actually take it, butterfly it and then stuff it, you can stuff it with your favorite fillings.

That was my New Year's Eve dinner. Scott had that for New Year's Eve. It was delicious too, right? It was one of our favorites, so on the flank is the beef versus the bison, obviously I had to remove a little bit of that end because of those bruises, but you can see the color, the size throughout this whole comparison, that's going to be the biggest difference and then of course we'll get to the end, we'll do the three flavor tips, another one of our favorite cuts, we start by taking out these knuckles. it's where you get the sirloin tip rows of round tip some places are called you have to be careful when you take them out of here or you'll cut that triple tip you have to find that seam that seam comes out of there without hacking where it's located, it's a Kinda hard to get out of there, so take that out, sew it up and I'll show you where the tri-tip is located.

Delicious cut to throw in the smoker and there again we have a video explaining where it comes from and how we cook it, we trim it a little bit, we like to try to get this cartilage out of here that way after it's cooked, when you cut it, You're not cutting through that cartilage and trying to eat that bison tri-tip. I'm going to continue with this bison hindquarter and then we'll take out all these cuts and then we'll start on the beef bison kidney suit. We save this many times what we do. We mix this with our ground venison and make some really good venison burgers.

Now I'm just going to separate the round portion of the sirloin. My hand saw tells that in the old days the

butchers

were paid for that piece. right there and no matter how many of thosethey produce in a day is how they got paid so you know you got your cut right, it's called a butcher's dollar, butcher's dollar, so it should be shaped like a dollar coin, interesting. made for you bison round tip cut this into a nice two to three pound roast this is one of my favorites season it I would probably use it normally what I do is I use our original beard butcher's mix seasoning and then we cook it in a pot clay pot or Dutch oven until it falls apart and then we pour our barbecue sauce on it and make shredded sandwiches on the grill.

There's nothing better than I'm going to break this, uh, the short tenderloin here, I'm going to take the sirloin off and then I'm going to cut the porterhouse and the ribeye and then I'm going to take the round portion and I'm going to hand it to Scott and he's going to make it like does with the front portion of the animal's plate, so Scott will receive this as soon as he's done with that. let me remove the remove the handle, get that out of the way remove the bone H. I talked about that before, but that's why it's important to wear chain mail when you're breaking up corpses like this, if your knife is going to slip, this is where this. it's going to happen and if it slips it's going to stab me and that wouldn't be good that's why I'm wearing the chain mail I trim this outside part off it just gets a little darker through the dry aging process in the refresh for scott the rounds of bison and beef really aren't much different, first we start by taking out this huge femur bone here and then we divide it into the top round, the bottom round, the eye around the only thing that's bigger.

The muscle on these bison is the eye around them, we'll get to that in a second. It should be noted that Seth will do things a little differently because his role is purely that of a manufacturer, in other words, he only produces the cuts. I have two. roles because while I fabricate and prepare cuts for further processing or further presentation, I also share responsibility with Sean for the decorative pieces, so many times when I'm fabricating, I trim along the way and when Seth is fabricating, he it goes. that until he has the ability to throw it on our table, but sometimes I get a little ahead of myself because I know it's going to end up being me or Sean doing it anyway and what we're going to do.

What to do with these rounds is we're going to there's a seam right here that I'm working with, we're going to separate them and cut the jerky and the yuck out of them, so I think it's commendable that you've been at this for a while. It's been over an hour since Seth Shawn and I now with the bison were raised right here on our farm and I think it's commendable and maybe a little remarkable that we're with the three guys we have here on our floor in just a little over one hour we are going to take the animals that we slaughter, which again is a very important step in the process of turning animals into food.

I think the slaughter step is often overlooked, but here are three men who are not only capable, but I assume we are well versed in converting animals into packaged products and can do it all with the same three people , our industry has become very consolidated over the years and although there are people who can make the sacrifice. step, they can't do the processing step and take it all the way to further packaging as well and we can do it not just with one species, but we have the ability to do about six or seven different species here we do beef, pork, lamb. most common type of domesticated animals, we do bison, which is really interesting.

The bison is considered exotic. It is classified as exotic by the USDA, which is backwards in my opinion because it is the only one of those species that is native to this continent, but bison anyway. being the fourth and then we also make elk, we make venison, we make goat, we make um, we've made ostrich, and if we can get an ostrich, we'll show you that process from slaughter to processing as well, I just think it's It's extraordinary to have three people. who have the ability to produce these products in a short period of time doing what we are doing from the slaughterhouse to here.

You also have to take into account the fact that you are not only raising the animal you are also raising the food to feed the animal, that's right, it starts a long time ago and goes through the whole process. A fairly closed loop system that is Shawn's responsibility. He's been raising these bison for over 30 years and it's great, it all comes from one place. Everything is done by the same people and we have the knowledge and ability to do it and turn animals not only into food but into very tasty marketable food. My first step will be to break down the sirloin here, so remove that portion of sirloin. then I can start cutting my steak and ribeyes and squaring it up.

The first thing I'm going to do is get that piece of steak out of there, so I'm going to get a steak out of here like now. We're going to go ahead and cut off a two-inch quarter and that baby is what we're going to put in the birch barrel and cook. There are fewer bison steaks than beef, so you can go down here towards this end. I can see the tenderloin disappearing quickly when you cut into the bison rib and there you have bison porterhouse and bison ribeyes working into the tenderloin. I removed a piece of tenderloin from there, this is where the nut comes from, probably seen in some of our other videos, so go ahead and cut it up and square it.

We're not going to save that nut today as a separate steak. We're going to leave it on our sirloins while we're cutting our sirloin steaks, so let's go to this knuckle out of here, we're going to trim that triple tip of meat just like we did on the bison, finding those seams, just taking it out like that, we start to run out of room on my table, which we knew was going to be a The question is how were we going to put half a whole beef and then half a whole bison on our tables, but they're going to be full, but we'll manage, we want it, we definitely wanted to cut everything up and lay out everything for that. visual that nice side by side comparison image we wanted to do so some people don't crop them as much, it's definitely a personal preference our customers in our store like them to come pre-cropped like that so we go ahead and do that for They like that two to three pound round tip beef roast if you don't store them as a roast this makes fantastic sautéed stew meat etc. so keep that in mind if you want to go to the store and buy a handle for make your own beef stir fry stew at home take a round tip maybe labeled as sirloin tip in some places but it makes a great roast move the kidneys here again we save it we have soap makers that come and buy it we have people who they like to feed their birds, etc., there's that butcher's dollar we talked about, there's the beef tenderloin and the ribeye, we'll put this here in the mountains, we'll do the same thing with the beef round that we did with the bison.

I'm going to go ahead and break it down a little bit and Scott will do the rest by moving the back leg, removing the H bone and Scott will take out the top part around the eye of the round and the bottom part of this for me, we normally do that. re-cut London roasts save a round iron roast and make jerky remove that sirloin the same as a bison let's go ahead and remove a stake raise it two inches look at that dandy cutting the rest off about an inch and a quarter so that the ribeye remains which starts with the ribeye, just remember folks, the difference between the two ribeyes, let me scrape them up a little bit here so you can see them better.

The ribeye steak will have that portion of the steak there the t- bone will have a very small portion of that steak there, just remember that's the difference between a sirloin and a ribeye. You get to the end of this spine and there's practically no piece of that spine there. I mentioned that the eye around the bison eye is noticeably larger than the meat, so Scott, yeah, it's like Scott's biceps, Seth's biceps, let's look at it, I have a long sleeve, that's right buddy, 25 years of skin and cattle will suffice. We're in third place and heading home. about his beef versus bison, I still have these tenderloins to cut, so let's go ahead and make that bison tenderloin.

We usually cut these first one or two tenderloins, we usually cut them in half just because they end up being pretty big if you don't and if you notice, I'm kind of crammed at my table so we're definitely running out of space, but this video It's going to be great because I was able to capture a full half of the bison. half the cut of meat and then we're going to go over and do the detailed explanation of what we got in the end, but it's been a challenge to get everything on my table, but we'll work on it and it'll be great, using my tornox breaking knife from 10 inches works great on these, get through it in one pass like this, so you can see the comparison here, side by side, beef versus bison with a much darker red tenderloin there again on the tenderloins compared to the meat definitely more fat coverage on the meat similar amount of cuts looks like we have one extra small on the meat versus the bison but we have three large three small three small three four large that's a bit of a workout but we did it bison versus beef of beef, everything is laid out on these two tables, we had to use both tables to achieve this now it's time for the overview, let's review.

I'm going to show you the cuts that You can see the comparison and we'll start with everything outside the forequarters and move on to this chart, which is everything outside the hindquarters, so starting from here, Scott wanted to save some small roasts, so that will be our appetizer. as we cook, so we're going to cook those steaks later and these are going to be the appetizers, so we've got some grilled skirt steaks, some soup bones, asabuko, we've got bison brisket, we've got Denver, we've got short ribs. rib stew meat bison rib, by far one of my favorite cuts that we sell in the store is a delicious bison ribeye, some arm roasts, some of those net roasts, moving on to the beef soup , bones, skirt steaks like I mentioned, don't skip on a skirt steak next time you see one, buy one, they are phenomenal skirt steaks, ribs, short ribs, arm, roast beef, rib eyes, some meat guisada, beef brisket, let's do a side by side comparison with the little beef humps that are there. very few nuggets denver beef some planks those net roasts now let's move on to the back table let's go over the hindquarters bison meat I have a little mixed up here but I'm going to go over and separate them to show you what's what bison top round bottom round meat same round bison meat eye seth vs scott tri-tips bison meat skirt steaks bison meat we have some steaks these are all meat steaks the same amount these are bison steaks dandy dandy we have some tenderloins bison tenderloins beef tenderloins sirloin tips round tips those are bison these are beef so we have our bone-in steaks don't forget that if we made them boneless they would be filet and strips but we left the bone so we have porterhouse and ribeye these are beef these are bison now let me go ahead and take out that steak we're going to cook we're going to take these two side by side bison versus beef beef bison we're going to put them in the birch barrel we're going to cook them and we're going to eat them and I can't forget that funny little story I told you about the butcher's dollar and I have two dollars, today I'm worth two dollars, so there it is, that's the breakdown, I hope you enjoyed that part of the video , stay with Scott and I'm going to go fire up the birch barrel and if you've never heard of a birch barrel, it's a cool grill based out of Bozeman Montana, those guys are. located next to Cody who we went moose hunting with in Bozeman, really cool unit, it's a tripod grill, something you've probably never seen before, let's fire it up, let's have some steak, time to fire up the barrel of birch, now you can burn. charcoal, you can burn wood today we're going to use the rock wood charcoal, something we really like right now here is the charcoal tray, which actually has nine different levels of folding handles, so I'm just going to leave it where it is.

Right now I add my charcoal and we're going to add some wood too just for flavor, but our main heat source for cooking is going to be this charcoal. I don't know what it is, but as soon as you get some. Things lit feel much warmer and friendlier. That's the great thing about the birch barrel. It's that you can lift it up with a pistol grip and it takes off the cooking rack and then you just put the cooking rack down, unlock it. And you can get this out of the way and I can adjust my charcoal bed appropriately for my kitchen.

We'll let this charcoal begin. Seth is in the store finishing up and then it's time to cook and eat now that it's nice and lit. I'm going to add some pieces of walnut wood for a nice woody flavor. Oh yes, with himPistol Grip Lift and Lower System with the birch barrel, you can raise the grill to cook, add more charcoal, add wood chunks to whatever you want to do, it's simple. Twist the lid and the cooking grate stays where it is. Lift the lid. You can also do this if you have food here and find that it needs to be removed from the heat source for a minute or two.

Stick it up. here, paste it here, in fact, we're going to do some of that because we just want to do a slow sear, kind of in reverse, so we're going to put our fillets in and we're just going to keep the pace going. them here on the cover while we make some coffee and drink some coffee and hang out, seth, it's time to open these bad boys, bring them to our block and season them, there's the meat and out with the bison, look at that original.

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butcher's mix seasoning goes with the og, we talked about lifting it off the surface so a little higher it distributes the seasoning a little better, let's go ahead and coat all sides of these steaks, there's so much surface area here to cover and really We're not going to be able to season them too much because they're so thick that there's going to be a lot of parts of the inside that won't even, obviously, not even be seasoned, so do it like this. covered, very nice, perfect, you can see I used maybe not half of this six ounce shaker for these two large fillets.

Just remember if you order the shaker online you'll get this for free and then we start offering the replacement bag as well. for the bucket, so in that order, grab the bucket and get the shaker for free, order the replacement bag until its shelf life, you guys will be good to go, let's put these steaks on the grill, let's put these bad boys on the grill , beef and bison so I can bet we're going to have a good time with these, so what I'm going to do is be very cautious with them just for the fact that we want to go low and slow.

So I went ahead and hooked up my grill. My grill is now suspended with the lid, as you can see, and I'm just going to put these here. I'm in them. Smoke. It builds all that nice flavor. Heat slowly. I mean, they're over two inches thick, about two inches thick. That's the best thing about birch barrels. We can adjust the heat by just moving this lid up and down, so now that they're in there doing their thing, I'm going to make some coffee and um, take my little roast and cut it into very fine pieces. I'm going to pick these up and throw them on the grill real quick and we'll have a little appetizer while they're smoking.

We don't talk about our coffee often enough because it's something Seth and I drink every day and we have how long have we been drinking our own coffee since we stole it from Dad's thermos and You're okay, I know, but I'm talking about our own blend, oh, seven years, ours is seven or eight years, it's a blend of Costa Rican, Guatemalan, and Ethiopian coffees, and a friend of ours roasts this for us and has been for several years. of years and that's how we start every day. I wish they could smell it. They want a cup.

That's why coffee is available online. It gets great reviews from everyone who tries it. It's similar to the setup we had in Montana. pours on the only difference is that we don't have mountains on the back of the mountains. I think the coffee tasted better in Montana. I think we should go back. I think it's very good. I'm sure if you like it, Ben, you want a cup. Time for my hump steaks, if I had to guess they might be a little chewy, oh they will be, I've had them before, tons, but they make up for it with flavor, yes there will be a little, I'll use them to clean up all that spice .

How does that great plan sound? And, of course, it's snowing on us. Okay, that's what the mountain men would have done. It's about the experience. That's right, there is no seasoning left. We chose the original just because it was the og and all. I just felt good about the buffalo, I want to transport myself up there, Scotty, I'm going to throw these, he's going to have a quick run, he's going to have a quick run on the poles, look now, something I noticed right away and that's Pretty neat with this birch barrel is that I can just lift this up in the air where the steaks are cooking and you would have direct access to those coals, very handy.

Have you ever had a humpback steak, seth? I don't think I have it, in fact I do. Although I love cooking caveman style, so I think I'll like it you'll see better if I do that I can't see I can't see steal I can't see they're not quite ready this is what matters to us they're done yes even if they're partially raw, already They're ready, there's our appetizers, they'll cool for a minute and then we'll go to town, so you know what I think I'm going to do, Scott, well, those are sitting there cooling. Wait a minute, I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to go ahead and give them a spin now, put that lid back on, twist it, lift it off the heat a little bit, let's do the other side, who wants a nice rare hump steak?

Look at that, oh, what's up, tasty guys? Was I wrong to say it was chewy? Yeah, maybe a little bit hmm, that's a snack I can get with a jump there, jump there, guys hmm, wow, that's delicious, have some Spencer, I don't mind if I do. I just remembered that I need to change my company, I mentioned that the bison is a big part of our history, specifically the white feather mark, and I was, I'm actually outside a log cabin that my dad built well, we help too . We were a lot younger then, we have a real affinity for the log cabins my grandfather lived in, there's like an apartment built next door, but I was there snooping around and found some really interesting stuff, I'll take it and sit back.

Down here and I show you that my dad and my mom called the business white feather because they started raising bison in 1986, 1987. I was about five or six years old at the time, but I was going through some of the things in my grandfather's cabin. . and i found these old newspaper clippings this is from 1990 seth and me here the other kids this is when he says this herd may end up on the browns training table my dad was working with the cleveland browns introducing bison into their training silly there An old business brochure and the name white feather comes from the peace symbol that the Native American tribes gave to our ancestors, they put a white feather over their door, so when our fathers started the bison business they called it white feather, uh white. for the bike compartment, that one is from 1993.

Here's the carnage, right here, the white feather is as it looked. This was an old business plan. Our father was actually one of the first buffalo to roam the Range and Creston while Rome was the owner. Internet, he was one of the first to have an online company in this area, I think you know, late '80s and early '90s, the Internet was pretty new, these are really cool, there he is, right there, in our store, we still have it. The same panoramic window, Fred, the owner of Fred Perkins, White Feather Meats, himself, found his career in Buffalo.

This whole basket is literally full and it expanded like the local men's news daily in 1995. So you see, as the years went by, it, um, started getting more and more national recognition and it's really unique and It's what we got from our great marketing prowess from the vision that our father had for me, so I thought it was really cool, there's a little bit of history. Bison, they're really the cornerstone of our business because that's how our meat business started with selling bison meat and, um, and butchering them right where they are now, um, our father bought the business in 1994. .an established slaughterhouse and that's where Seth and I grew up, that's how we learned all these different species, but it really is the cornerstone that was built with bison, so as you know, the bison have been on this farm for more than 30 years and that's why Seth said We're a little biased just because we love the animal just for what it means to us, we can't even appreciate that we can't even make this a competition because the bison will automatically win in our book, but I wanted. to bring a little bit of that and we have, we have a feature plan that we're going to do, we actually have our father, doing his, you know his version of the story and how he started the company, all of that.

Well, we have that movie, we're going to do a little bit more with the brothers and bring that out more as a historical look at each of us and how we got to where we are now, so I thought I wanted to. to interject that real quick and see what you thought, it's time for another 90 under 90 degree turn on the meat, we'll keep a closer eye on the bison because it's going to cook, see, it's almost 15 degrees hotter now, so let's go. to keep a closer eye on it, we're almost ready to sear them, so we'll get the bison out to the side of the meat tube, get ready to sear them, let's get them out in time to get these bad boys out, let them rest and then head back to the birch. barrel, come on, so what were we on Scott 110?

Yes, now what we're going to do is move our charcoal basket, we're going to grab our cold basket, we're going to raise it as high as possible. come on so we can brown these stakes real good I'm going to go ahead and put the lid down let's go ahead and get this lid out of the way and lift that basket up to this baby all the way up let's put our lid back down now that we've got the coals right under the grill, we can sear very well, so now that we've been resting for a few seconds and a few minutes here, it's like the meat registers about 117 bison, about the same, maybe just a couple of degrees, no, more or less Same thing, hearing that civil again, so this time I'm going to leave the lid in the air and we're going to look at them very closely, we're going to brown them on one side and we're going to turn them over. them on the other side we're going to pull these probably no more than 135 degrees and then we'll cut them off and see what we have.

I think it's time to take a look at he's just trying to hump me. steaks, yes, these are not going to take much time, I have to watch these puppies very closely, I prefer to eat them above rather than below, we have known the temperature, there is the bison, there is the meat, very beautiful, so we overcome 120 in almost both. of them we don't want to continue with them just for fear of them overcooking and that's certainly something we don't want to do so I'm going to start with the meat first and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this steak out like this and then I'm going to move down along this bone here and I'm going to cut the strip portion like this and then what I'm going to do is start here at the top, working my way down and we're going to put the steak back together in its original shape, look that, look how juicy, look how juicy, wow, there's a side that we weren't really planning on in the snow, so the snow is adding. a little bit of moisture on our table here, but hey, we'll do it either way and don't worry about the meat left on that bone, we'll know from there too so you can see that bison on that strip.

The side is much narrower than the meat side and the loin, although these come from the exact same place on the short loin of those animals, the loin is actually a little larger, I know it will be amazing, the first sample, Scott, I can't. Wait, so which one are you going to try first? The B of bison. I think I'll choose. I mean, I don't know why I wouldn't go straight for the best bite I could get here. I'll split it with you. How so? Oh, I'm going to get my own piece thanks for the gesture, but my goodness, you get the sweetness almost immediately, only the texture is so soft it's like it's like red meat sushi.

To chew it you would like to use your palate, your tongue, just crush it and eat it, it is the sweetness that catches you from the beginning. Now a lot of people think that bison is going to be a game, not a game at all and As we mentioned before, we can hardly make this a competition because you already know which one we are going to choose. Scott just went over all the story stuff. Let's choose Bison. The other thing they also say is that when you go up like. Have you ever heard that people start to look like pets or yes, we raise buffaloes and it should be pointed out with the beard and the bigger they are, the bigger the shoulders they start to look like babies, we look a little longer. "You go, you go that way, yes, straight to the beef fillet, not so tender, it's fantastic, I would do it if you ordered from this restaurant, I would be delighted, but the first thing I noticed is that it doesn't have that sweetness." I know and um, it's excellent, it's fantastic, it has more of that, um, the meat is not butter, but a meaty flavor, yes, it is meaty, but it doesn't have that sweetness.

Now the other thing I noticed as well is that these steaks were cut to the exact same thickness. and the bison, even though we prepared them at the same temperature, they weren't cooked as long as the beef and I think, I mean, you can see here that it's pretty darn rare on the inside of that steak, so just one interesting fact is that the bison actually looked like I undercooked it even though they are the same thickness and wereon for the same amount of time, oh my goodness, humidity too, very very good, very happy with the way this turned out.

I mean, it's the peace of mind that I knew we'd get knowing that we've been eating bison for over 30 years and that it would be fantastic and phenomenal if someone cooked them side by side and didn't tell you that you'd just think that bison meat is really good, um, but it wouldn't confuse you to the point where you're like, "Oh, I'm not going to eat bison because it'll be, you know, we mentioned games or something, not at all, I mean serving." this could be served in a fancy restaurant across the world with some of the best steaks you'll ever eat, guaranteed one of the best things I've ever eaten, oh yes absolutely, I think my beard just grew half an inch. so you will find the

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putting their stamp on the bison every time we hope you enjoyed the video we hope you enjoyed learning a little more about the native meat, the one that belongs to this continent and we are very proud of the Over 30 years We have been around these animals, we are grateful that our father was a visionary.as he was and started raising bison because it really got us to where we are today, so we want to encourage you if you have the opportunity, be the bison, the best way to ensure a long future for these animals, the great story of the return. it's supporting the associated trade around the commercial activity which is raising, cutting and eating this fantastic red meat absolutely and you know, we've talked about this before where we don't have a big fancy kitchen island, you know, patio . behind our house we're we're cooking this food in um you know we're on our farm that's how we do it so we have the cool birch barrel that we use here today, you've seen we use theTragerers you've seen us use the big ones. green eggs um but you know we started this video this morning we did all the processing we did all the packaging we made a bunch of smoked sticks later this afternoon and then we just went out and lit the birch barrel and cooked and ate some food so no There is nothing very sophisticated about our environment, however, this is real, this is us, that is what you will get, so we hope you enjoyed the video once again, don't forget to follow us. us on all our pages instagram facebook youtube can't forget tick tock now um but anyway we hope you enjoyed the video um thanks for following us we have almost 600,000 subscribers on our channel and over 51 million channel views that's incredible.

I started with bison thanks for watching, see you next time, appreciate it until next time, see you.