Eat a local cow

Some resort restaurants are serving grass fed beef and lamb that was raised less than 100 miles from your dinner plate. Local meat is trendy, and it’s also very practical and healthy.

At Snowbird, the Aerie restaurant plans to use “mostly local Utah ingredients with a focus on seasonal, organic and sustainable ingredients,” said Ken Ohlinger, the Aerie’s new executive chef.

Alta’s Jude Rubadue, executive chef and general manager of the Watson Shelter, enjoys eating right from the garden. “There’s no gasoline between the food and me,” she said. “Using local produce and meat is about being thrifty, good nutrition and being healthier.

Rubadue gets beef from cattle raised in the mountains outside Kamas and Chalk Creek Canyon while her lamb comes mostly from Morgan Valley and the La Sal Mountains. “Unless we support the local farmers and ranchers, there won’t be any farms and ranches. I even know many of them. I’ve visited their farms,” she said.

Consuming grass-fed beef is shown to provide increased health benefits because grass-fed cows are lower in artery clogging saturated fat and they provide increased levels of healthy Omega-3 fatty acids. Grass-fed cattle have about the same amount of fat as skinless chicken or wild deer or elk, according to the Summit County Beef Association.

In addition, energy costs are lower because it doesn’t have to be shipped thousands of miles to the table. And buying locally raised meats is an incentive for ranchers to keep their agricultural land and preserve open space.

During my career in Europe, buying local was a huge thing, said Ohlinger. A local guy with cows made butter. Local hunters brought us game and birds. “I’d rather support a local farmer than anything else,” said Ohlinger.