Beef Continued from Page 9
When the frozen meat arrives back at the processing plant, Rawhide Meats hangs it in a cold room for three weeks to dry age. “The meat gets way more tender and has more flavor,” Hurst said. Dry aging is a centuries-old practice used to make meat more tender and fla- vorful. It involves hanging cuts of meat in a humidity-controlled environment, which must have constant air circulation to prevent harmful bacteria from damag- ing the meat. The process generally takes anywhere from a few weeks to as long as several months, a practice larger meat plants have neither the time nor the space to do. “It’s another reason our meat tastes different and better,” Hurst said. After aging the meat, a team of butch- ers trims off the outside layer. Then they process some of the meat into large quantities for specific buyers while the rest is processed into various cuts: round steaks, cube steaks, ground beef and oth- er cuts. The meat then gets packaged, labeled and put on shelves in the retail store, where the owners rotate shifts at the cash register. Each piece of meat is tagged with the rancher’s name who raised it. When the piece gets sold, the money goes directly to their account. Overall, the business earns enough to keep going, with the
Butchers Andy Pingree, left, and Dennis McWells process meat at Rawhide Meats in Tuolumne County. Five local ranching families operate the business, which features a processing plant and a retail store that sells beef raised by the owners along with other local meats.
larger aim of providing a healthy and cherished product to local customers and a valuable processing service to small- scale ranchers. “We didn’t get into this to get rich,” said Tricia Gardella, another of the Rawhide Meats owners, who initially purchased the processing plant with her husband before the other co-owners bought in, turning it into a collective. “The best pay- ment is hearing people say how much they appreciate it.” In addition to their own beef, the Rawhide Meats retail store sells a variety
of meats, including chicken, pork, ribs, bacon, jerky, more than 20 kinds of sau- sages made in-house, marinated meats like the popular Bloody Mary tri-tip and other specialties. Those products, while also mostly local, are kept separate in the store from the beef the owners raised themselves. “It’s doing better all the time,” Gardella said of the business. During the height of the pandemic, Rawhide Meats gained some new cus- tomers who were wary of entering larger grocery stores or wanted to support
local business. “They came to our little store,” Hurst said, “and once we got ’em, we keep ’em.” She credited Rawhide Meats’ hold on customers to its products’ flavor. When asked to describe it, Hurst strug- gled to find the words. After a pause, she said, “It tastes the way it did when I was young.” (Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert and may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com. This article was first published in the March/April 2023 issue of California Bountiful magazine.)
Saturday, JUNE 24 Coon Creek Trap & Skeet Club 5393 Waltz Rd. Lincoln, California 95648
REGISTER now $100 per person
yf&r farmpac Trap shoot Fundraiser
$450 for a team of five includes traps and lunch Limited to100 shooters EVENT Timeline 8: 30a.m. – 9: 30 a.m. Check-in 9: 30 a.m. Shoot starts Lunch and awards to follow Participants bring ■ Gun ■ Ammo ■ Ear and eye protection
Benefiting the Fund to Protect the Family Farm ( FarmPAC ® )
For more information and to register, visit www.cfbf.com/farmpac. Paid for by California Farm Bureau Federation Fund to Protect the Family Farm (FarmPAC ® ). Contributions or gifts to FarmPAC are not tax-deductible.
20 Ag Alert April 12, 2023
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