Gran Roca has the freshest, highest quality, most delicious foods you can buy. You can see and taste the difference. We offer a large selection of sustainably grown fruits, vegetables and herbs, milk products, eggs, chicken, beef and pork, all grown in enriched soil or raised on pasture on our permaculture farm in the Yunguilla Valley about an hour southwest of Cuenca.
This week we’ll shine a spotlight on our healthier, award winning, sustainably raised, grass fed beef. We are currently butchering our latest steer and will have most cuts available for next week. Our beef is rotationally grazed on pasture 24/7 on our land, then dry aged and butchered by hand in our commercial kitchen into the cuts you would find in a North American butcher shop.
You may not think there is much difference between the beef from Gran Roca and other vendors, but there are considerable differences. Important factors include rotational grazing on pasture 24/7, the quality of the beef, the butchering of the beef, and whether the animals are grass fed or some/all grain fed.
If you are looking for the healthiest beef, you want the animals both pastured raised 24/7 and rotationally grazed so that they are always eating fresh grass with minimal pathogens on the ground. This requires a good system and good people to manage it. In addition, the quality of the grass matters. We’ve observed animals grazing on land that would hardly qualify as pasture.
We raise Charolais beef, which is known for its high-quality meat. There is no comparison between our quality beef and cows that are normally raised for producing milk. Yet, if you go to the slaughter houses, most of the animals slaughtered are milk producers. So, ask yourself the question, why would an owner of a milk cow want to have it slaughtered? The only reasons I can come up with is that the animals are old or sick and therefore are not producing milk. Would you really want to eat that beef?
We pride ourselves in the way we carve up our meat for you. Our cuts look like what you would expect to see in a high-end butcher shop. Our roasts, for example, are hand tied, as are a number of our steaks to help them cook more evenly. We have packages of meaty short ribs, stew/kabob meat and thin cut breakfast steaks that can be cooked up quickly in a fry pan. In almost all of our cuts the bones have been removed by hand and the meat is carved with knives. Our belief is that the heat generated from electric saws can denature the meat. This certainly takes more time than throwing everything on a band-saw, but we believe you are receiving a superior product. Exceptions are cuts that include the bone like the short ribs or osso bucco.
Finally, the beef at Gran Roca is grass fed; the animals receive no grain. Grain is not a natural or healthy food for beef animals. And if they eat enough grain, it can, in fact, kill them. It does fatten them up, but the meat is less healthy. (Good for the farmer, not so for the consumer.) The grain fed to the animals usually comes in bags of commercial “balanceado” feed that almost always contains antibiotics and possibly hormones and who knows what else and how long those bags have sat around. It is certainly cheaper to produce beef this way, but both the animal’s and, therefore, your health is being compromised.
To make an order using our on-line store for any of our products, please subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter. It’s easy. Go to granroca.net and click the Newsletter tab, fill in your name and email and press subscribe. That’s it. Newsletters are sent out on Saturday mornings for order delivery or pick-up on Monday afternoons. All the information you need to make and receive an order can be found in the Newsletter.
Gran Roca has received many GringoPost awards over the past 4 years.
Deliveries: Are made to your personal address.
Pick-Ups: 2-4 PM, next Monday, August 23rd, Smokehouse on Colonel Talbot 8-66 across from Parque San Sebastian
Rob Gray: info@granroca.net