SRF BLOG

Fast Weeknight Meals Welcome to the working week. When Monday rolls around, meal planning gets a large share of our attention.  “What should I make for dinner?” is the question that comes up every day around 4 PM.  While you can always have a pizza delivered, here are five fast and delicious meals you can serve in a pinch. Just stock the freezer with a few Snake River Farms staples and you can pull off these recipes with ingredients you probably already have on hand.    30-Minute Beef and Veggie Stir-Fry By: Kelly Senyei of Just a Taste     Go from start to finish in just 30 minutes with this Asian-inspired dish from Kelly Senyei, founder of Just a Taste. The richness of SRF NY Strip Slices is balanced with a host of vegetables, including broccoli, bell peppers and sugar snap peas. Baby corn adds a whimsical and surprising touch. A sauce of sweet hoisin, savory garlic and soy, brings it all together. Just add steamed rice or noodles and dinner is served.    Sheet Pan Fajitas By: Mandy Tanner   Fajitas are the more polished cousin of the taco and this simple recipe is an easy way to put an appetizing meal on the table in record time. The fajita slices are marinated in lime juice and a flavorful spice blend you make from ingredients on your spice rack. Or keep it easy and use a packaged fajita rub or taco seasoning.  Marinate the meat the day before to for faster prep time.     Instant Pot Bolognese Sauce By: Meredith Deeds   Classic Bolognese is a rich, meaty sauce, but is also a time-consuming dish. Enter the Instant Pot to condense a day-long cook down to just an hour. SRF gourmet ground beef and Kurobuta sausage add deep flavor. We’re fans of thick pasta, like pappardelle, for Bolognese but use anything you have on hand. This recipe is great for lasagna, too.     American Wagyu Steak Cut Stroganoff By: Sarah Kelly   Beef stroganoff is a savory comfort food that's high on the list of best home cooked dinners. SRF Steak Cuts add luxurious flavor and texture to upgrade Grandma’s stroganoff recipe to a new level of delicious. It’s easy to pull this recipe off during the week, but the creamy, meaty sauce piled on thick egg noodles is rich enough for a Sunday supper.    All American Wagyu All Beef Chili By: Snake River Farms   Chili is a soul warming dish that is usually made from tough cuts of beef that are slow cooked for hours to tenderize the meat. This version used SRF Steak Cuts which do not require a long cook time, but this recipe needs about two hours.  It is possible to make on a weeknight, but it’s a great dish to make on the weekend and reheat during the week.   

It’s (much) easier than you think to add a little surf to your turf this season. Photographer and Instagram influencer Chad Montano has the perfect way to elevate your holiday meal in less than five minutes: JUST ADD SEAFOOD. "The seafood Snake River Farms is sourcing is all really good," Chad says. Whether you choose a surf-and-turf box of filets mignons, ribeyes, and seafood, or pick a standalone fish or shellfish delivery that can be added to any meal, SRF seafood unlocks a new level of flavor. “The classic is lobster tail and filet mignon because they go together really well,” he says. “Even though filets are lean, you still get a very rich texture from them. And when they’re cooked right, they’re mouthwatering with a nice crust and perfectly medium rare inside. “That’s amazing,” he says. “But when paired with seafood, your taste buds go wild.” SRF seafood amplifies meals with great texture, sweetness, and fresh flavors, Chad says, and they’re versatile enough to fit any menu or cooking style. As an avid griller from Southern California, where it’s almost never a bad day to cook outside, he’s adept at preparing seafood hot and fast over an open flame. It’s easy to cook shrimp, scallops, or lobster tails while your beef is resting. Shrimp and scallops cook in under five minutes and you can judge their doneness by sight. But for lobster, Chad recommends pulling out a quick-read thermometer, like the Thermoworks Super-Fast Pocket Thermometer, to test the internal temperature. He swears by 140°F. “That’s been the sweet spot for me,” he says.  “Usually people recommend cooking to 145°F, but carry-over cooking after you pull it off the heat will bring it up to that temperature. At 140°F, it’s perfect — nice and succulent and not chewy or overcooked.” If you’re not blessed with sunny San Diego weather, it’s just as easy to get perfect results with a cast iron skillet and a stovetop. “I really like scallops cooked in a pan with a little bit of oil to get a hard sear, and once they’re flipped, maybe a little bit of butter or some aromatics, and that’s it,” Chad says.  However you choose to bring seafood to your holiday table this year, Chad says it will make your gathering just a little more special without a lot of fuss. “It’s so good, and so simple, and you really don’t need to do much to let the flavors shine through,” he says.

With an SRF American Wagyu tenderloin roast, you can bring that daydream into real life. We use the same cut for both our tenderloin roast and our top-selling filets mignons; the full beef tenderloin has a distinctive narrow shape and the power to make any holiday meal deluxe and delicious.

Despite their luxurious reputation, crab legs are easy to prepare. No special equipment or techniques are required to cook delicious, restaurant quality crab legs in your kitchen. Learn how to cook crab legs in the oven, grill or stovetop.

Pot roast is a classic American dish that many think of as the ultimate comfort food. A perfect pot roast is tender and melts in your mouth, all the while filling it with rich, beefy flavor. How do you choose the best meat for pot roast? There are many options, but we’ve found a specific cut, all but guaranteed to make your next pot roast memorable.

Find the Silver Lining - Introducing SRF Silver Label™ American Wagyu Beef  If you're a Snake River Farms enthusiast, you know about our Black and Gold marbling designations. SRF Black® (also known as Black Grade) represents our standard high level of marbling for our American Wagyu beef. Those looking for our top tier marbling select products with the SRF Gold®.   A third option for Snake River Farms American Wagyu beef is SRF Silver™ with marbling that falls below SRF Black®.      How to Pick the Right Grade for Your Tastes To understand how we classify SRF beef grades, it's good to know the basics of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) beef grading. The USDA separates domestic beef into eight grades based on intramuscular fat, also known as marbling, and other qualities like tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. The two highest grades are Prime and Choice. Prime is the top grade on the USDA scale and features abundant marbling.  At Snake River Farms, we produce beef that measures above USDA scores. We use the 12-point Beef Marbling Score or Beef Marbling Standard (BMS) from the Japanese Meat Grading Association (JMGA) to measure the higher levels of marbling and quality that make our beef stand out.  SRF Black® and SRF Gold® both score above USDA Prime, while SRF Silver™ has marbling scores like USDA Prime: SRF Silver Label™ has a BMS of 4 to 5 with similar marbling to USDA Prime grade beef. SRF Black® has a BMS of 6 to 8 with significantly more marbling than USDA Prime grade beef.  SRF Gold® registers a BMS of 9 or higher and contains the highest level of marbling we offer.      Much More Than Marbling Marbling is a primary factor in determining beef quality. Other elements that affect flavor and texture are the cattle breed and how the animals are raised. Snake River Farms American Wagyu is a cross between purebred Japanese Wagyu and high-quality American cattle. These unique animals are raised on family-owned ranches and fed a special diet over a longer period of time than commodity beef. Both factors influence the final quality of SRF beef. The result is American Wagyu beef that has the rich marbling of Japanese Wagyu and the robust beef flavor that most folks associate with top-tier steaks and roasts.     Why Choose SRF Silver Label? While the marbling of SRF Silver Label™ American Wagyu is very similar to USDA Prime, it has other qualities that create a superior beef-eating experience. Meat scientists (yes, there really are meat scientists!) have run comprehensive taste tests and found that American Wagyu is significantly higher in buttery aroma and flavor, juiciness, tenderness, and umami. Although the results are from a scientific test, the differences are easy to detect for anyone who enjoys a good steak. SRF Silver Label™ offers a new option to our full line of American Wagyu and USDA Choice and Prime beef. This new addition is a delicious option worth exploring.     

Snake River Farms Kurobuta hams are savory and delicious simply heated and served. If your taste buds are craving a little something extra, it’s easy to add a special touch of flavor with a glaze. A ham glaze can be as basic or fancy as you desire. Adding a glaze doesn’t have to be time-consuming with this fast-and-easy glaze. A great glaze combines elements of sweet, acid, and spice.

Your Kurobuta ham was the hit of the holidays. After the kitchen is cleaned and the good china is put away, there’s a generous amount of ham in your refrigerator. What’s the best way to use this precious ingredient? While ham and cheese sandwiches are tasty, there’s so much more you can do with this versatile meat. Here are some tips for using leftover ham for quick and satisfying post-holiday meals.

You cooked a perfect SRF prime rib and impressed your friends and family with your culinary skills. Now that dinner is done, you find there is some of the savory roast left to enjoy tomorrow. Here are some handy tips on storing and reheating your leftover bounty, as well as some of our favorite recipes.

Prime rib is an incomparable meal for holiday or special occasion dinners. One way to make this iconic dish more extraordinary is to prepare it in a smoker. This adds an enhanced layer of flavor to an already rich cut of beef.  Smoking prime rib is not difficult. Read on to learn how to smoke prime rib on a variety of smokers and grills.

Stewardship  The world has changed a lot since Robert Rebholtz Sr. founded Agri Beef back in 1968. New conversations around sustainability, conservation, and the humane treatment of cattle, have pushed us to become peerless stewards of the land and the herd. Many companies will tell you who they are, then separately tell you what they do. At Snake River Farms, we are what we do. “Transparency is education, and education is trust,” Robert Rebholtz Jr. says about his desire for Snake River Farms to be known as a company of integrity when it comes to issues of stewardship. He wants others within this industry and consumers alike to understand the lengths we go to combat real problems with innovative solutions.   Sustainability At Snake River Farms, we’ve embraced constantly investigating new ways to minimize our carbon footprint and keep our cattle healthy. One change sends a ripple down the line. When we decided to procure crops from farmers within 150 miles of our feedlot, we knew we’d be getting fresher and more nutritious ingredients for our feed. We saw the immediate benefit to our cattle, but also knew we could cut down on emissions from transportation, too. With the local farmers, we recognized the opportunity to use animal waste in a composting program, selling nutrient-rich fertilizer back to the same farmers who provided us their crops. When we decided to graze our cows in the foothills of the Cascades, we thought the location would be an optimal high-altitude environment, in an ideal climate, for the well-being of the herd. But we also recognized we had to take care of those precious mountain meadows and instituted a grazing rotation to keep the rangeland healthy.   Cattle Welfare  For the welfare of our cattle, we see great benefit in keeping our feeding facilities as serene and quiet as possible. All our handlers are specially trained in calming methods, with the simple idea that calm cattle are healthier, and healthy cattle make for better beef. SRF Program Manager, Jordan Sparrowk, says, “We don’t treat them as a mass. Each cattle is tagged and treated as an individual, care taken to their specified needs in health, feeding, and comfort.” As proud as he is of the Gold-grade ribeyes the floor-workers produce, VAP Superintendent, Nate Dyun is equally as proud we’ve been able to reduce Washington Beef Processing Plant’s water use by 40% per pound of beef and use a bio-dome to capture methane to be recycled for 20% of our natural gas needs. “We’ve designed our stockyard at the specifications of Dr. Temple Grandin,” Dyun says of the yard that’s sun-shaded, with water always available to the stock, curved fences to avoid sharp angles that might injure the cattle, and cobble-stone floors especially suited for hooves to grip. “It’s top priority to keep the cattle calm and watered and safe.” Healthy lands and humanely treated cattle makes for a better environment and sustainable practices. Some might suggest there’s no bottom line benefit to being overly concerned about conservation and animal welfare. But the synergy of where healthy land and animals not only meets the important concerns of the day but also adds quality to our product drives us willingly and urgently into innovation and transparency. At Snake River Farms, we’re proud of what we’ve done. We’re dedicated to do more and are constantly searching out emerging technologies to move the industry toward the best environmental and animal welfare practices. When your business model is care and quality, what’s best for the environment, the cattle, and business, are one and the same.

Beef production requires many different entities independently contributing to the supply chain. The bulls are bred by ranchers, the feed yard operates on its own, and cattle is sent to a processing facility.How can one company control quality across the entire process when so much was out of their hands?