Anybody who has been to a slaughterhouse, or watched the now infamous video taken by a Humane Society investigator at a California slaughterhouse that caused the largest beef recall in U.S. history (story with link to video here), will appreciate the significance of this. These bovines don’t experience the stress of being corralled and loaded onto trucks or being driven down the slaughterhouse line. And according to Carman, this stress-free life is reflected in the flavor of the meat.

The slaughtering process is something I learned about only after signing up for my share. My main reason for seeking out grass-fed beef had more to do with nutrition. I’d read about the benefits of animals raised on grass: The meat is lower in saturated fat and calories, and higher in beneficial fats such as omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, which has recently been much touted for its cancer-fighting properties. A couple of years back, Carman decided to find out for sure how much better her beef was than conventional beef, so she sent it to a lab to analyze the fatty acid profile. Conventional beef has a 30 (or even 50) to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. Based on a rib-eye steak, Carman was pleased to find out that her beef had a ratio of 1 to 1, a much healthier ratio according to today’s research.

This is not to discount the environmental reasons for eating grass-fed beef. Raising cattle on grass encourages plant biodiversity, improves soil fertility, and eliminates the considerable waste-management problems associated with confinement feeding operations. And in many instances, the ranchers who have made the commitment to raise grass-fed animals are also committed to improving the health of their land. For example, every year Carman works to eliminate invasive species by letting the cattle overgraze them. On the portions of their ranch made up of sensitive native rangelands, they are careful not to let their cattle overgraze. Though it’s slow going, Carman believes that they are making a difference.

Strangely, the angle I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to was the flavor of grass-fed beef. I’d heard and read that this type of meat was harder to cook than the “conventional” corn-fed variety. Since grass-fed meats are lower in fat, they cook differently. Fat helps to insulate the meat, so the leaner the meat, the faster it cooks. Just a few extra minutes can turn your beautiful, pink steak into a gray, tough hockey puck.

Even if I managed to cook my steaks to medium-rare perfection, how would they taste? “There are a lot of myths out there; first of all, the idea that fat equals flavor, and second that fat equals tenderness. These things just aren’t true,” says Carman. I’m ashamed to admit that I had fallen prey to both those ideas. I assumed that my steak, even if pink, wouldn’t be as tender as a conventional marbled piece of meat, and that the lack of fat would also mean lack of flavor.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first steak my husband and I cooked up was a rib eye, which, admittedly, wasn’t as much of a gamble as other cuts. It’s traditionally one of the more marbled of steaks, and though the grass-fed steak looked much leaner, I was pleased to see streaks of white fat in it. To avoid covering the flavor of the meat, I simply rubbed the steak with freshly ground pepper and kosher salt and slapped it on the grill. When it seemed done (I use the finger-prod method), I took it off and let it rest a few minutes to seal in the juices.

My husband and I cut into our steaks — cooked to a perfect medium-rare — and looked at each other across the table with delight: We had just bitten into some of the best steak we’d ever had, right off our own grill. It was juicy, had a robustly beefy flavor, and was so tender that we had no problem cutting it with our cheap serrated butter knives. If I had to compare the flavor to corn-fed beef, I would simply call it “beefier.” My two-year-old scarfed it up as fast as I could cut it.

Since last fall, I’ve managed to cook my way through most of the cuts in the freezer, including beef short ribs, flank steak, sirloin steak, chuck roasts, rump roast, and tons of ground beef. These are the basics: Use a meat thermometer instead of relying on the timing given in conventional recipes, and cook steaks and burgers medium-rare (130 degrees). It’s also important, as with any type of meat, to know which cooking method works best for which cut. In general, dry heat and quick-cooking techniques, such as pan-frying, broiling, grilling, and stir-frying, work best for more tender cuts of meat. Moist heat and long-cooking methods, including braising, stewing, and crock-pot cooking, are better for the tougher cuts like chuck roast and short ribs.