Red meat hailed for versatility, health benefits and rich flavour

Shelley Boettcher
Calgary Herald

Bison’s a tricky meat. Cook it right and you’ll be in a carnivore’s low-fat, healthy heaven.

Leave it too long and you’ll be in hell. Or, rather, the meat will be – overdone, dry and dreadful.

I’m one of those people who has overcooked bison – badly. A friend and his girlfriend from Mexico came for dinner one night. Eager to introduce her to fine regional cuisine, I made a bison roast, hoping to recreate a delectable dish I’d had in a local restaurant.

Not a good idea. At least, not in my kitchen and not with that particulate recipe (my slap-dash adaptation of a beef dish). I don’t remember the last time I had meat so dry and so, well, inedible. My friend’s girlfriend is now his ex. She’s back in Mexico, probably spreading stories about Canadian women who can’t cook. I hope she’s forgotten my name.

Since that time, however, I’ve been obsessed with learning how to prepare bison properly. The red meat is slightly sweet and slightly gamer, full of rich flavour and low in fat.

But should I broil or roast it? Serve it as steak or smokies, burgers, carpaccio or perogies?

Turns out I’m not alone. Bison is a $239-million US industry in the United States according to the National Bison Association (bisoncentral.com) and is one of the fastest-growing markets in the North American meat industry. Consumption grew 17 per cent in 2006 and 21 per cent in 2005.

You don’t have to tell Kelly Long that. She’s a Calgary-based co-founder of Carmen Creek Gourmet Meats, one of Alberta’s biggest and best-known bison marketers. They have contracts with more than 100 ranchers across Western Canada and, through those contracts, they’ll process more than 7,000 head of bison this year.

Long and her partners have watched their business grow a whopping 3,363 per cent from 2003 to 2005. In 2006, the company was ranked fifth on Profit magazine’s list of Canada’s top 50 emerging growth companies.

Carmen Creek products are now available around the world including at Safeway and a slew of local restaurants, including the Calgary Petroleum Club, River Café and The Rimrock at the Fairmont Palliser.

And the company hit big time with an East Coast distribution deal with Whole Foods, a major natural foods grocer based in the U.S.

What makes bison so great? Plenty, says Dean Andres, one of the Carmen Creek co-founders.

“They’re amazing animals, and they’re hardy, too” says Andres, who lives on a 1500-head bison ranch in southeastern Saskatchewan.

I just think bison meat is, bar none, one of the best products out there. It’s very tasty.”

Long agrees. Like Andres, she may be biased – after all, they work in the biz – but she also has science on her side.

“It’s a great alternative to beef,” Long says. “It’s nutrient-dense. It’s high in protein, very high in iron. It’s hormone-and antibiotic-free, and it tastes great.”

Bison is also low fat but high in selenium, zinc, protein and iron. Plus, it has naturally high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which act as anti-inflammatories for the body and protect the brain against Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, according to Alan C. Logan, author of The Brain Diet (Cumberland House, 2006, $31.95).

Yes, bison is good for you and, despite my first experience, it’s not hard to cook properly, either. With a bit of attention and a meat thermometer, bison has the potential to be both healthy and full of flavour.

The trick? Cook it on low heat and only to medium-rare, says Long, and remember bison will cook slightly faster than beef.

“That’s because it’s so lean,” she says. “It doesn’t have the fat inside to insulate it and keep it moister.”
The most popular cuts include tenderloin, rib-eye, striploin and ground bison.

Long uses ground bison whenever a recipe calls for ground beef – burgers and lasagna, for instance.

 Don’t want dried-out meat? Choose rib-eye, which is “the fattiest cut, even though it’s still low in fat,” she says. “If just has the most marbling.”

And if you’re going to stampede into the world of bison cuisine, be sure to get the name right.

According to the Bison Producers of Alberta, the real name for North American buffalo isn’t, in fact, buffalo, but bison. Buffalo technically refers to the Cape Buffalo or Water Buffalo of Africa and Asia.

But many North Americans, unfamiliar with the bison-buffalo difference, still conjure up images of the heavy-chested, woolly-coated animal, technically a bison, when presented with the word buffalo.

That’s why Calgary tax lawyer Tom Olson opted to call his bison operation Wild West Buffalo Ranches (High Country Buffalo is how the meat is marketed to the consumer).

The company has about 4,000 bison on nearly 4,900 hectares; the land encompasses four ranches near Bragg Creek, Milk River, Cypress Hills and Waterton National Park.

“In the name of our businesses, we use buffalo because everyone knows what a buffalo is,” he says. “But when we talk to our consumers, we use both interchangeably, and we list it on our ingredient lists as bison, so over time, people who buy our meat will learn it’s the same thing.”

About 250,000 bison are being raised in Canada; about the same number are on farms and ranches in the United States, according to statistics from Canadian Bison (canadianbison.ca).

Numbers have increased dramatically since the turn of the 20th century, when there were as few as 1,000 left in North America. But we’re still low compared to the 60 million or so that roamed our continent’s prairies in the early 1800s.

Those numbers will likely never occur again, but at least today’s animals still roam relatively freely.

Olson says for him, it’s important that his animals aren’t raised in a feedlot-style arrangement. And unlike most cattle operations, his bison calves aren’t separated from their mothers until the mothers wean them themselves – usually after about a year.

“If you go to a ranch and you see healthy pastures with healthy animals, you know that the meat’s going to be healthy, too.”

Despite those nutritional benefits, not everyone is convinced at first bite that bison’s the meat to eat.

Josef Wiewer, culinary chef for Creative Restaurants, which includes Wildwood and Bonterra, first tried bison in 1999, but he wasn’t impressed. The bison producers didn’t stop trying to convince him of the meat’s merits, however, and after considerable persuasion and practice, he added it to Wildwood’s menu in 2000.

“I didn’t cook it that well the first time because I didn’t know how to cook it. I didn’t like it at all,” he admits. “But the producer was telling me, ‘Cook it this way and this way,’ and over time, I think we mastered it.”

In fact, bison has become something of a specialty for Wiewer, who eats it three or four times a week. And he especially appreciates the fact Canadians can find the top cuts of meat, unlike our country’s best beef, which is often sold to Japanese or European markets.

These days, Wildwood’s menu offers what must be one of the broadest ranges of bison dishes in Western Canada, if not the world – carpaccio, a Reuben sandwich brisket, sausage, even liver.

He knows how to cook it and he knows it’s good.

“Now I love it,” Wiewer says. “It’s a great staple… I’m really enjoying
working with it.”

For more information:

Dean Andres
Vice President Sales and Marketing
403.215.2325

Kelly Long
President
403.215.2320