On Losing a Cow + Lazy Man's Enchiladas

What happens when knowing your farmer isn't enough.

Towards the end of last year, Mrs. CWD and I took great care to map out our meat consumption for the ensuing 12 months. We had a few pounds of bison from North Bridger Bison, seventy-five pounds of venison, two or three 15-pound bags of meat from our local farm, a dozen one-pound portions of Alaskan salmon, and a whole galaxy of cured meats, bacon, sausage, salami… also, a few hundred pounds of beef from the cow we were planning to split with

Sam Sager

¹. 

Needless to say, we were feeling pretty good about our supply of protein, for at least the first few months of the year. So, when I got a text from Sam alerting me to the fact that the slaughterhouse which was processing our cow had “lost it,” I thought he was joking. How does one lose a one-ton animal? Did someone forget to close a door and the cow made a break for it? Was it hiding? Did the slaughterhouse package it up and give it to someone else? Were they using “lose” as a euphemism and just bungled their butchery, rendering the meat inedible? Were it not happening to me, I would have been laughing — the whole situation bordered on hilarious absurdity.

But, it wasn’t fiction; our animal — and the resulting steaks, roasts, shanks, and bones — was simply gone. 

You’ll often hear folks — the ones who, like me, want you to get closer to your food — say that you need to “shake your rancher’s hand.” You need to get to know them, because that’s the only way to really know you have a sense of security with your meat. Something could disrupt the industrial beef supply chain, but if you have a good relationship with the guys or gals who raise your cows, you can still eat your ribeyes. Meat shortage at the grocery store? Don’t sweat it. Societal breakdown? No problem. Zombie apocalypse? We still grillin’. What those same folks don’t tell you, though, is that even if you know your farmer, things can still go haywire. There are more links in the chain that can fail — and you might still find yourself meatless. 

Fortunately, Sam and I found another cow from another farm. Unfortunately, in New England, the limiting factor isn’t really the farmers, it’s the processors. There are only a handful of USDA certified slaughterhouses where a rancher can take their meat. Our cow, our new cow, is headed to the very same place which lost the first one². That place shut down shop from January³ until May — went “on break” if you will — so we’re not getting our influx of beef for a few months still. That has had the horrifying consequence of forcing us to buy meat from the grocery store!

I say that mostly in jest — while I would prefer to have only one or two degrees of separation from the animal I’m eating to our plate, I do think you can source high quality meat from commercial sources. Most grocery stores these days sell grass-fed and grass-finished beef⁴. Many of them even label the meat with where the meat was raised; some of them even tell you the farm. Companies like Force of Nature are trying to bring to scale the same principles that Matt and other small, biota-focused producers are doing. Heck, in Boston and many other cities, you can even subscribe to a “local meat delivery service” like Walden Local Meat. We’re certainly not lacking for high quality meat options at the grocery store⁵.

All that’s to say: Whenever you can, I do believe it’s important to be intentional about how you source your food. If you can shrink the supply chain, do it, but you shouldn’t be tyrannical about it. Stuff happens. Cows get lost — somehow⁶. But we can adapt and we can get by — much in the same way we do when life throws us any sort of curveball.

Until the new cow comes, we’re down to the bottom of our chest freezer. The other night we pulled out the last few pounds of venison stew meat and made a lazy man’s version of enchiladas. Here’s how we did it. Feel free to sub out whatever meat you have on hand, even if it’s from behind the butcher counter at the grocery store.

Liberally season a few pounds of stew meat⁷ with your favorite Mexican seasoning⁸. Let the meat sit while you slice a few peppers and a few onions. Heat up a large pot or Dutch oven with ghee or tallow and brown the meat on all sides, working in batches if needed. Take the meat out, but it in a large bowl, replace it in the pan with the onions, and cook until they are browned and fragrant. Season as needed, then do the same with the peppers. Dump everything back in the pot, deglaze with bone broth, scraping up any brown bits stuck to the bottom, and then add your favorite enchilada sauce⁹ . Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally and adding stock as needed, until the meat falls apart — 4-6 hours depending on what you used.

Right before you’re ready to eat, heat the oven to about 400(F) and line a baking dish with a layer of tortillas, a layer of shredded cheese, a layer of the meat, and then another layer of tortillas. Repeat for as many layers as you feel appropriate, then top with cheese. Bake for 10 minutes and then switch to broil until the cheese and tortillas are browned on top.

Serve with your favorite fixin’s, sour cream, avocado, and maybe some hot sauce.

There ya go folks, lazy man’s enchiladas. I call these lazy man’s since there’s no rolling involved — maybe this is more like a Mexican lasagna, but who am I to label any dish? It tastes good and that’s all that matters.

With that, I’ll leave to your weekends. Busy one here on the Ranch, where we’re welcoming a slew of college friends¹⁰ for a weekend of revelry¹¹ and paella. I’m sure you’ll be reading more about it soon.

*Ha! Yeah right!

1. Once you get locked into a serious meat collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

2. The woman who raised our new cow — who, by the way, is 88 years old, still out working the cows, and was born on the farm she now runs — told me she used to take her cows to a place in Maine to have them slaughtered. But that was a 5+ hour drive, which stressed out the cows and the amount of time just wasn’t realistic for a small producer like her. This new place is minutes from her farm. Convenience wins.

3. Coincidentally the same month they lost our cow!

4. Yes, Nana – even Walmart. Yes, even in the dead center of nowhere.

5. And, above all, it certainly is much more convenient. Having subsisted largely for the last 3 months on local meat, cuts that I processed myself, I have a new found appreciation for how much effort it takes to support this industrial system. Each animal nets you only a handful of cuts. The summer cookouts we love so much? For the Family CWD, at least, probably requires somewhere in the vicinity of Old MacDonald’s farm to provide enough steaks, chicken, sausages, and burgers to feed us all. Heck, just the four of us – two being toddlers! – finished a lamb and a deer in about three months. The two of those totaled about 120# of meat — but I think the Family CWD consumes more meat than the average family of four!

6. We still don’t have complete clarity on what happened here, but the general theory is the slaughterhouse forget to check in the cow upon arrival. So, after they processed it, there was no record of who it belonged to or where it was going. Still seems a little suspicious to me, but I suppose that’s more probable than a the cow playing hide-and-seek in the meat locker.

7. Stew meat, for those curious, is typically cut from the shoulder of an animal. Instead of breaking it down into roasts or steaks, you debone the shoulder and take all the meat and cut it into chunks.

8. We use Meat Church’s “Dia de la Fajita” but a mix of salt, pepper, a ton of cumin, chili, paprika, onion, garlic, and some cayenne would work just as well.

9. We used a tomatillo salsa.

10. Welcome to Dr. and Mrs. Roomate CWD, MD. and Mr. and Mrs. Roomate CWD, MPP! I don’t think the other pair that;s coming reads CWD, so they will remain unnamed. Maybe we can rectify that this weekend.

11. Well, as revelrous as you can get when you reach over a decade past your college graduation.