What Makes M5 Beef Different? (and SO good?!)

I hear from customers all the time that they’ve never had anything like Five Marys Ground Beef.

It’s different. It’s special. It’s a delicacy!

But what makes it so different?

The reason Brian and I started ranching was because when we owned and operated restaurants in the SF Bay Area is that we wanted to serve our customers only the very best quality beef - from a source we could always trust, from cattle with great genetics for marbling and flavor and from a feed and finish and animal handling program that was done right.

1) SUPERIOR GENETICS - First, our ground beef comes from the cattle we raise with the intention of producing really good steaks. It’s STEAK-QUALITY GROUND BEEF - and you can taste it!

Most of the ground beef on grocery store shelves actually comes from older dairy cows who aren’t producing milk anymore, from “cull cows” or mother cows that are culled from a herd when they aren’t producing babies anymore, or feedlot cattle trim.

2) TRACEABILITY - WE harvest cattle by the steer and in very small batches each week (usually about 10 steers)and now with our own Butchery (Five Marys Custom Meat Co) we have complete traceability for each animal we harvest.

You might think that all the meat in a small hamburger might come from a single cow but… Did you know one pound of ground beef might come from hundreds of different cattle?!

“Marion Nestle, Professor of Public Health at New York University, points out that in one study, the meat in a single pound of minced beef could be traced to 400 different cows reared in six different states in the United States. (!!!) So the chances of traces of pathogens getting into each helping of meat are massively multiplied, while at the same time the difficulties of tracing any outbreak of disease back to its source are correspondingly large.”

3) SMALL BATCH PACKAGING- At Five Marys, we harvest ten steers each week and our ground beef is ground only from those ten steers each and every week! We grind some premium cuts like brisket or sirloin to premium quality and aim for 80-20% or 85-15% lean to fat, with a really “clean fat” that just adds to the flavor! It’s packed fresh, flash frozen, has numbered bags so we know which set of steers it came from and we ship it out to customers soon after it’s packaged.

4 ) QUALITY FEED FOR CLEAN MEAT - What is “clean meat” and what does that mean? Often feedlots and finishing operations feed cheap protein to their cattle like leftover or castoff extra food from food manufacturing plants (cereal, onion rings, etc) - and depending on where cattle are raised geographically, corn can be a common finish ration, but can lead to a yellow, thicker fat in the meat.

We finish on alfalfa grass, grain hay and steam-flaked barley (note : all barley is GMO-free so there is no reason to say GMO-free barley) because it’s a fantastic mixed ration for cattle to easily digest but also yields a very clean, white marbling and fat - with all the best flavor!

A little story… when we bought our restaurant (Five Marys Burgerhouse) five years ago, we had the hood cleaned before we started operations in the kitchen. From there, we only cooked our own beef for burgers on the flattop. A few months later, we had the hood cleaned again and the hood cleaners emerged from their hood and were in shock. They said “what are you doing in here? That hood was CLEAN and the little amount of grease in it… it’s CLEAR!? I’ve never seen anything like it!” and THAT is what we mean when we say we raise clean meat!

5) DRY-AGING : Dry-aging meat is a craft tradition that used to be the norm, but is slowly being phased out commercially in favor of expediency and efficiency. Brian and I firmly believe that dry-aging creates the best possible beef with that amazing “steak house” taste and tenderness every time. We don’t cut a single steak or grind any meat until the entire carcass is dry-aged for 14 to 28 days after harvest.

Most beef sold in the stores is “wet-aged” or butchered into larger primal sections and put in plastic packages to age during transport to avoid evaporation loss (most places sell beef by the pound, so they are more concerned about volume than quality!)

Ground beef that is dry-aged giving it a truly stand-out and memorable flavor - it’s rare and a true delicacy!

6) GRASS-FED & GRAIN+GRASS FINISHED : Purely grass-fed and finished beef doesn’t always benefit from dry-aging as it is often too lean, but because we finish our cattle on barley, which results in natural marbling, dry-aging is an essential part of what makes our beef unforgettable.

Our cattle live a grass-fed lifestyle and graze our green pastures in the spring, summer and fall. We feed them high quality alfalfa in the winter months and our harvest steers get an extra ration of chopped alfalfa and barley for an extended finish time of 180 days.

6) NO HORMONES or ANTIBIOTICS : When we say this, we mean it.