Why we call it "common sense meat"

The great steak debate: salt only vs. marinade.

The Great Steak Debate: Salt Only vs. Marinade. We'll say it plainly. If you're marinating a good steak, we think you're covering something up. Not you personally. We don't know your steak. But statistically, probably. Here's our logic, and we'll defend it. Why Marinades Exist (And Why You Don't Need One) A marinade exists to do two things: tenderize a tough cut, or mask a flavor you don't want to taste. That's it. Those are the only two jobs it has. Neither of those is a problem you have with a good ribeye or sirloin. The tenderness is already there. The flavor is the whole point. Soaking it in a bag of soy sauce and brown sugar for six hours is like painting over a countertop made of good wood. You're hiding the thing you paid for. To be fair, there are cuts where a marinade makes sense. Flank steak, skirt steak, cuts that work hard during the animal's life and have a coarser grain. Those cuts benefit from a marinade. We're not touching that argument. This is a ribeye and sirloin debate only. What Salt Actually Does Salt doesn't hide anything. It amplifies. Here's what actually happens when you salt a steak properly: the salt pulls moisture to the surface. That moisture dissolves the salt. Then it gets reabsorbed back into the meat, seasoning it from the inside out — not just sitting on top of it like a coat you never took off. Give it 40 minutes before it hits the grill. That's the whole trick. Forty minutes of patience does more for a steak than any marinade recipe we've ever read the ingredient list on. And with pasture-raised beef? The flavor is already doing the heavy lifting. Our cattle live outside, eat a varied diet of grasses and forage, and develop real, deep beef flavor because of it. Salt lets that flavor come through. A marinade buries it. Why This Matters More With Good Beef Here's something worth knowing. Conventional grocery store beef tends to hold more water. Feedlot diets and industrial processing add moisture to the meat. That extra moisture works against you when you're trying to get a good sear or develop real flavor. Pasture-raised beef has less water and more flavor. Which means salt does its job better, the sear comes faster, and the crust forms cleaner. The beef is doing more of the work before you even season it. Starting with good beef and finishing with salt isn't a shortcut. It's the right call. We Know Some of You Disagree We've been informed, more than once, that we are wrong about this. Boring, even. Possibly un-American. So make your case. If you're Team Marinade on a ribeye or sirloin, we genuinely want to hear why. Chimichurri people, we especially want to hear from you — that's the one argument that gives us pause and we'll admit it. Leave a comment, reply to our newsletter, or shoot us an email. We read every one of them and might just feature the best rebuttal in a future post. Choose your words like you're going on the record. Salt only on a good steak. That's where we stand. For now. Looking For A Steak Worth Debating Over? Shop our ribeyes and sirloins here.

We got 72 new heifers! Doing out part to help rebuild the US beef herds.

We Bought 72 Heifers — Here's the Bigger Picture We went to buy 65 heifers last week. Came home with 72. Kim says I have a problem. But there's a real story behind why we did this. It's bigger than just adding to our herd. If you've noticed beef prices climbing at the grocery store lately, this post is going to explain a lot. The US Cattle Herd Is at a 57-Year Low Most people don't realize how serious the state of the US cattle supply is right now. The national herd is at its lowest point in 57 years (and some say even longer). And it didn't happen overnight. A few years back, wildfires in Texas wiped out hundreds of thousands of cattle in one of the biggest ranching regions in the country. Those animals don't get replaced quickly. Rebuilding a herd takes years. A heifer has to grow, breed, have a calf, and that calf has to grow before the numbers start moving in the right direction. The ripple effect of that loss is what you're feeling at the grocery store every time you buy beef. Supply is down. Prices are up. And it's going to take time and a lot of ranchers making long-term investments to turn it around. Why We Bought 72 Heifers Most of these heifers and their calves (we'll breed them naturally with our South Pole bull) will eventually be sold to other beef farmers to help rebuild their herds (anyone who's looking can contact us here). That's how you move the needle on a 57-year low. One ranch at a time. We won't sugarcoat it. Good stock isn't cheap right now. These girls weren't far off $3,000 a head. Multiply that out and you're talking about a significant investment before a single calf hits the ground. And the payback period? It's long. Here's what that actually looks like: A heifer typically doesn't breed until she's around 15 months old. She carries a calf for 9 months. That calf is born, raised, and if it's a heifer herself, she won't be ready to breed for another 15 months after that. If the calf is destined for beef, you're looking at 18-24 months before it's ready for harvest. From the day we bought these girls to the day we see a meaningful return... we could easily be looking at 2-3 years. Minimum. That's not a complaint. That's just the reality of the cattle business. It's a long game, and you have to be willing to play it. Kim and I are truly blessed to be in a position where we can make that kind of investment and sit with it. Not everyone can, and we don't take that lightly. We're doing this because we love this land, we love these animals, and we believe the beef industry is worth investing in. About That Unloading Now. About the unloading. I was told the trailer would be a ground loading trailer. It wasn't. So there we were (72 heifers, no ramp, no chute) unloading from the side. It got a little chaotic. We did the best we could with what we had and kept things as calm as possible. We got some pushback on social media about how it looked. We get it. It wasn't the prettiest unloading you've ever seen. But I'll tell you what... every single one of those girls came off that trailer just fine. Not a scratch on them. We don't use electric prods, we don't rush the animals, and we don't take shortcuts when it comes to how our cattle are treated. Ever. That's not who we are. When you're dealt a situation you didn't plan for, you adapt and you figure it out. That's ranching. They were a little skeptical on day one. By day two they'd figured out the grass was good and nobody was going to bother them. Funny how that works. Watch the Full Unloading Day We filmed the whole thing. All the action, a little Tennessee rain, and 72 heifers hitting fresh pasture for the first time. Watch Part 1 right here: If you want to keep watching: ▶ Watch Unloading Part 2 (in the rain when the stragglers get off) ▶ Watch Exciting Short Clips (for some quick highlights) Thank You for Your Support We don't take it for granted. Every order you place helps us do things like this... raise good animals, take care of the land, and do our small part for an industry that needs it. The most direct way to support what we're building here is simple: choose 2 Coots when it's time to stock the freezer. You can SHOP GRASS FED BEEF HERE. We're grateful for every single one of you.

Why air chilled chicken is superior to 97% of the other chicken that's dunked.

Most of the chicken you've eaten in your life took a bath after it died. A big communal one. Here's how it works: after processing, the vast majority of commercial chickens (about 97% of what's sold in the United States) get dropped into large vats of chlorinated ice water to bring their temperature down quickly. It's efficient. It's cheap. And it means your chicken spent time soaking in a cold tub with hundreds of other birds and whatever they brought to the party. That's the standard. That's what's on the shelf at basically every grocery store in America. There's a better way, and it's what we do with our pastured chicken. First, what actually happens during chilling After any chicken is processed, USDA regulations require the internal temperature to drop to 40°F or below within a set window of time. It's a food safety requirement, and a reasonable one. The question is how you get there. Water chilling solves the problem fast and cheap. Drop the birds in cold, chlorinated water, cycle them through, pull them out. Done. The chlorine is there to manage bacterial load (because when you're dunking hundreds of carcasses into shared water, bacteria from one bird can spread to all of them). The antimicrobials are doing cleanup duty on a problem created by the method itself. The downside: chicken is porous. It absorbs what it's sitting in. Studies show water-chilled birds can absorb anywhere from 2 to 8% (sometimes more) of their body weight in that water. Which means when you pick up a package at the grocery store, a meaningful percentage of what you're paying for is bath water. It also shows up in the package (that pink-red liquid pooling in the bottom of the tray isn't just chicken juice, it's also the bath). Air chilling takes longer and costs more. Each bird is hung individually and moved through a series of cold air chambers over the course of a few hours until it reaches safe temperature. No water contact. No shared vat. No antimicrobials needed because there's no communal bath creating the cross-contamination risk in the first place. Nothing gets absorbed. Nothing gets added. The bird comes out of processing weighing what it actually weighs. Why it cooks better This is the part that should matter to anyone who's ever wondered why their chicken skin came out pale and rubbery instead of the golden, crispy situation they were picturing. Water is the enemy of browning. The Maillard reaction (the chemical process that creates a proper sear, a crispy skin, real flavor development) requires surface heat. If the surface is wet, the moisture has to cook off before browning can even start. By the time that happens, the interior is often already overcooked, the skin is steamed instead of crisped, and everything looks a little sad. Our air-chilled chicken comes out of processing with a drier surface. Put it in a hot pan or a hot oven and it browns faster, more evenly, and with more flavor. Skin gets genuinely crispy. Not "pretty good for chicken skin" crispy, but actually crispy. It also absorbs marinades and dry rubs better because there's no water barrier sitting on the surface preventing contact. It cooks a little faster too, since you're not burning time and energy cooking off absorbed moisture. Why it's cleaner The chlorine in a water-chill tank isn't there by accident. It's doing active work managing bacteria in shared water. That's the honest reason it's in there. The birds are cross-contaminating each other in the vat, and the chlorine is the solution to a problem the process created. Some processors have moved away from chlorine toward alternatives: peracetic acid (a vinegar and hydrogen peroxide compound), lactic acid rinses, or cetylpyridinium chloride, which is also in your mouthwash. Some market these as more natural or consumer-friendly options. Apple cider vinegar rinses show up occasionally from processors trying to make the intervention sound wholesome. They're all solving the same problem. The problem exists because of the method. Air chilling removes the problem at the source. Each bird stays separate through the entire chill process. There's no shared water, no bacterial mixing, no antimicrobials needed to manage what the method introduces. Research has found air-chilled chicken carries significantly less bacterial load than its water-chilled counterpart (one University of Nebraska study put the difference at 80%). Our pasture raised chicken isn't treated with chlorine, peracetic acid, lactic acid, or apple cider vinegar. Nothing but cold air touches it after processing. Why you're actually paying less (in a way that matters) Chicken is sold by weight. The water that water-chilled chicken absorbed is part of that weight. So when you're comparing prices at the meat counter, the water-chilled bird has a built-in padding on that number that air-chilled doesn't. Beyond the pricing math, there's the cooking yield. That absorbed water cooks off. You're not eating it, you're evaporating it... and then paying to heat your oven or pan long enough to do so. Air-chilled chicken loses less weight during cooking because there's no added water to cook off. What you buy is closer to what actually ends up on the plate. Why 97% of chicken is still water-chilled Simple: it's faster and it's cheaper to operate at scale. The equipment costs less. The throughput is higher. When you're processing millions of birds, speed and volume run the math. Air chilling requires more space, more time, and more upfront investment in equipment. Smaller processors can make it work. The massive industrial operations optimized for volume and margin generally haven't made the switch... though that's starting to change as water costs rise and consumers start asking more questions. Europe figured this out a while back. Air chilling has been the standard there since the 1960s. The EU eventually banned water immersion chilling altogether because of bacterial concerns. The US is, characteristically, a couple decades behind on this one. The bottom line Air chilling is better because nothing gets added and nothing gets in the way. Better flavor, better browning, cleaner process, no hidden water weight. The only thing you're paying for is chicken. That's a straightforward reason to do it, which is why we do with our pastured chicken.

Why we call it "common sense meat"

What "Common Sense Meat" Actually Means

Not Industrial. Not Ideological.

Here's What That Looks Like on Our Ranch

Not a Trend. Just What Makes Sense

The Real Difference

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The great steak debate: salt only vs. marinade.

We got 72 new heifers! Doing out part to help rebuild the US beef herds.

Why air chilled chicken is superior to 97% of the other chicken that's dunked.

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