At the butcher counter, two pieces are placed side by side. One of them is more marbled: a fine network of white fat that spreads inside the muscle. The hand reaches out to him almost of its own accord. That's how we learned: more material, more quality.

And the stone really tells something. He tells about texture, about juiciness, about how the cut will behave in the pan. But there are things that this mirror has no way of telling: where this animal stood, what it ate, how much space it had, and what entered its body along the way.

The quality of a steak doesn't start at the counter. It starts long before him.

Two ways to raise cattle

Beef is a ruminant. His digestive system, four stomach cells and an entire population of bacteria living within them, evolved around one thing: grass. fibers. Rough vegetation that most animals would not be able to digest at all.

Grass-fed cattle live exactly like this. He moves in the field, shepherds throughout the day, belongs to the herd. There is nothing innovative about it and there is nothing trendy about it. It's just what cattle do when given.

The absolute majority of meat in the world comes from another system. There, too, the cattle begin their lives in pasture, but during the fattening phase they move to a closed enclosure and receive a concentrated and high-energy diet, based mostly on grains. The goal is clear: to gain weight quickly and produce uniform and marbled meat.

This is a very efficient system. But efficiency and quality are not the same thing.

A diet high in grains does increase the animal's weight faster, but it also fundamentally changes the environment of its digestive system, and sometimes to the point of digestive and metabolic disorders. In simple words: it is a diet designed to optimize the growth process, not to imitate what the animal was built to eat.

And here you should stop for a moment on the word itself. "grass-fed" sounds like an absolute promise, but in many parts of the world it only describes the beginning of the road. An animal can graze for most of its life, switch to grain fattening in its final months, and still be sold under the same title. It is precisely the last months that leave the biggest mark on the composition of the fat and the taste.

Therefore the important distinction is between "grass-fed" and "100% grass-fed": cattle that ate grass from weaning to the end, with no grain fattening phase at all. This is the difference between a breeding method and a label.

Up until now we have talked about only one thing: what the animal ate. "Organic" is a completely different question, and the two are not synonymous. Beef can be 100% grass-fed and non-organic, if the pasture grass is not organic or if antibiotics and growth hormones are used on the farm. And vice versa: beef can be organic and still be fattened - simply on organic grains.

In other words, grass-fed answers the question of what goes into the animal. Organic answers the question of what not.

What doesn't go in

In some countries it is allowed to use conventional growth with growth hormones, which are designed to accelerate the growth rate. In the European Union, however, this use is prohibited. You don't need a doctorate to navigate between the positions: you can accept the authorities' determination that use is safe under limitations, and still prefer meat from an animal that didn't receive hormones to grow faster in the first place. In organic farming, this choice is already built into the method.

The same with antibiotics. It is an important medical tool, and when an animal is sick, it is treated. But there is a difference between treating a sick animal and a system where antibiotics are a routine part of herd health management. Widespread use of animals is one of the causes of antibiotic resistance, a problem that concerns health systems all over the world.

In organic farming, the rule is simple and a bit crooked in favor of the animal: if it got sick and received treatment, it is treated to the end, but its meat will no longer be sold as organic. The welfare of the animal comes before the label.

What happens inside the slice

Studies conducted over the years indicate a consistent trend: compared to grain-fed meat, pastured meat tends to contain more omega-3 fatty acids, a more balanced ratio between omega-3 and omega-6, and sometimes also higher levels of CLA and antioxidants such as vitamin E and beta-carotene. The exact numbers vary between races, regions and seasons, but the trend repeats itself over and over.

There is no medical guarantee here. There is a simple principle here: what the animal eats changes the meat we eat.

The difference is also noticeable in the taste: meat from grain fattening is fatty, soft and uniform - the taste profile most of us grew up with. Pastured meat is leaner, and its taste is distinct, deep, sometimes herbaceous or mineral.

Three words you should not confuse

• grass-fed: Cattle raised on pasture and fed on grass. In many places in the world, the term does not exclude the addition of grain fattening in recent months.

• 100% grass-fed: Grass only, from weaning to the end, without a fattening phase at all. This is the difference between a breeding method and a label.

• Organic: A standard that mainly defines what is prohibited - without antibiotics and growth hormones, with grazing requirements and monitoring of cattle welfare.

Meat that asks for time

An animal that moves in the field throughout its life develops different muscle and connective tissue than an animal that stands in a pen. The meat that comes out of it is structured differently: less internal fat, more texture, more character. And this is exactly the kind of meat that long and slow cooking knows how to break through: hours of low heat dissolve the connective tissue into gelatin, and the cut becomes soft and deep in a way that a quick sear will never achieve.

Hence most cuts of pastured beef call for a pot rather than a pan. For those who still want a quick sear, the solution is thin slices that are intended for this in advance (Minute steak, Minute sirloin), or go in the complete opposite direction, to the carpaccio, where the meat does not touch the fire at all and all that remains is the taste itself.

And the thinness, by the way, is a challenge only in a whole portion. In ground products such as kebabs, hamburgers and sausages it is actually an advantage: there the percentage of fat is determined in the kitchen and not in the feedlot.

And what about the price

Let's put it simply: organic pastured meat costs more. sometimes more significantly. It's not marketing, it's arithmetic. A grazing animal gains weight more slowly, consumes space, requires more time and more work. Organic standardization adds oversight and costs. No one will find magic here.

The real question is not how to get cheaper meat, but what we get for the difference, and if it is better to eat meat less often and choose better each time.

So which meat is better?

If quality means maximum utilization, grain fattening has a clear advantage. But if quality also includes the life that preceded the dissection, the food the animal ate, its freedom to move, what was not injected into its body and the nutritional composition of what ends up on the plate - the picture is reversed.

Until recently, this question was mainly theoretical in Israel. There was no organic beef here, there was no 100% grass-fed meat here, and certainly not the combination of the two. Today he is.

The choice, in the end, is everyone's. But the next time we stand in front of two pieces and reach for the marble between them, maybe it's worth asking one more question: what was the life like before it?

Four rules for cooking pastured meat

Most people who are disappointed with pastured meat simply treated it like a piece of marble. He didn't.

• The default is a pot or oven, not a pan. Most cuts are built for long, slow cooking. A heavy pot on a low flame works great, and an oven is even better: 140-150 degrees, closed vessel, three to five hours of enveloping heat.

• For searing, choose a cut intended for this. Minut steak and minut sirloin are cut extremely thin, just to work on high heat and in a short time.

• Minutes count seconds, not degrees of action. A slice this thick will not remain medium-rare even if you insist. A hot pan, a few seconds on each side, and immediately take out.

• Grinds love direct fire. The hamburger comes out great on a pan, grill or barbecue. Kebabs and sausages prefer a grill or barbecue, and only after them a pan. To thaw: in the refrigerator a day in advance, or in water half an hour before.

For the first time in Israel: a beef series that is both organic and 100% grass-fed. Cuts for long cooking, minute steak and minute sirloin for quick searing, carpaccio that is ready to be defrosted on the plate, and ground products (kebabs, hamburgers and hot dogs) with a precise and targeted fat percentage.