A HISTORY OF BEEF

Today many different cattle breeds roam the plains of the world.  All these breeds stemmed from a single ancestor, the aurochs.  Many believe that cattle where first domesticated in Europe and Asia during the Stone Age.  Remains of domesticated cattle dating to 6,500 B.C. have been found in Turkey and other sited in the near East.  Around 55 B.C. the Romans recorded seeing red cattle in southwestern England. The red Devon cattle from that area of England are considered one of the oldest beef breeds in existence today.
In 1623, two Devon heifers and a Devon bull were imported to the Plymouth Colony from Britain.  These three cattle were probably the first purebred cattle to reach North America.  The Texas Longhorn cattle breed stems from ancestors that were brought to the Americans by early explorers.  Texas Longhorns survived as primitive cattle and occupied the Great Plains following the destruction of the buffalo herds.  Other beef cattle breeds of today that were among the first to be imported into America are Angus, Hereford, and Shorthorn.
Today, the United States and Australia are the top beef producing countries in the world.  All 50 states have beef cattle and 30 states each have at least 10,000 cattle farms and ranches.  The United States produces about 25% of the world’s beef supply with less than 10% of the world’s cattle population.
Over 900 different breeds of cattle have been reported in the world.  Breed associations maintain breed registrations for many of the individual breeds, with some cattle breeds being able to trace their ancestry back 600 years or more.  Many of the beef cattle produced in the United States today are crossbred.

A HISTORY OF GROUND BEEF

Chopped or minced beef is certainly not a new innovation.  It's long been used in savory meat pies dating back to ancient times.  Beef tartare, consisting of finely chopped raw steak or high-quality beef mixed with various herbs and spices, dates back to Russian medieval times.  The Tartars were known to shred their meat and eat it raw.  These days the raw experience is enhanced by the addition of a raw egg placed in an indentation on top of the mound of seasoned raw beef.

Take the idea of tartare to the fire, and voila!  Hamburgers. Although the term hamburger is derived from the city in Germany, the original Hamburg steak was a piece of meat which was pounded until tender, not chopped or ground.  The Hamburg shows up in print in 1834 in America on the menu at New York's Delmonico Restaurant, where Hamburg steak was a prominent item.  The burger on a bun is claimed to be the concoction of Charles and Frank Menches.  It seems these two vendors ran out of sandwich pork at the Erie County Fair in 1885 and switched to beef.

In the late 19th century, Dr. James Henry Salisbury came up with chopped beef patties to cure Civil War soldiers suffering from "camp diarrhea."  The patties were made of meat from disease-free animal muscle fibers with no fat, cartilage or connective tissues, seasoned, and broiled.  Dr. Salisbury advocated eating beef three times a day for a healthy constitution.  The term "Salisbury steak" dates back in print to 1897, and is considered a forerunner of the current hamburger.

By 1902, hamburger had evolved to the meat being put twice through a grinder and mixed with onion and pepper, much closer to the hamburger we know and love today.  By 1912, the hamburger as ground beef on a yeast roll had caught on, and the term burger soon stretched to include other meat and seafood cooked meat sandwiches.  Cheese as a topper shows up in print at least as far back as 1938.  The distinction of being the first hamburger stand belongs to White Castle whose first store opened in Wichita, Kansas in 1921.

Hamburgers on a bun are the ground beef form most consumed by Americans, with the average consumption being three hamburgers a week per person.  However, enterprising cooks have come up with a variety of new ways to use ground beef in other home-cooked meals.

A HISTORY OF STEAK

Beef was not an important part of the American diet before the Civil War.  Cattle were not indigenous to the Americas, so you could not find cattle in the New World until the Spanish introduced them into in Mexico in 1540.  In the 18th century, the Spanish and French colonist began to raise cattle. As the railroads developed, they used trains to transport to herds from San Antonio to New Orleans. However, this industry collapsed because of the cold winter, and 90 percent of the herds were wiped out.
Eventually, technology, animal husbandry, and barbed wire changed the industry.  In 1871, a Detroit meat pecker named G. H. Hanharmand brought refrigeration railway cars west, transforming the industry.  Slaughterhouses had been set up in the Midwest for shipment of meat back to the east where the appetite for beef was beginning to develop.  After the Second World War, beef became a symbol of American prosperity.  Americans were eating 62 pounds by 1952, 99 pounds by 1960, and an all time high of 114 pounds in 1970.  Nowadays, that rate is increasing everyday.

In: www.thomcooks.com/ edited and adapted by Leopoldo Costa