Palate Pleasers: Historic cattle earn praise
April 29, 2010 – The rodeo arena might seem like an odd place to discover a great-tasting breed of beef, but Dale and Janice Price did just that when they were team ropers in the 1980s and discovered Criollo beef through the Corrientes cattle they roped. The two somewhat related breeds had merged in the public’s mind so much that little thought was given to the Criollo as a meat animal.
Dale said his first bite of Criollo beef was a revelation.
“I expected a Corrientes — to be as tough as boot leather, but you can cut it with a knife,” he said. “It’s got an intense, robust taste. I’ve had people say they haven’t smelled or tasted beef like that since they were kids.”
Dale and Janice came to try it because Janice was allergic to beef, or thought she was. As it has turned out, she was allergic to the corn that the beef consumed in the feedlot prior to slaughter. For a while, the only red meat they ate was elk and venison; both are avid hunters too.
Janice, a veterinarian and geneticist, decided to test her theory that it was the corn she was allergic to and not the beef. The first grassfed beef they had was Criollo. Not only did it not make her sick, but they both agreed that it was the best beef they had ever tasted. Further research and a round of genetic testing led to their forming the American Criollo Beef Alliance from their ranch in Runnels County where they market their beef directly to the consumer through Internet sales.
As a consumer, Dale likes the way the beef tastes. As a rancher, he likes the way the Criollo use an entire pasture, instead of milling around the water sources all day.
“You don’t have to rotate pastures with them,” he said. “They do it themselves.”
The Criollos also love to eat prickly pear, the bane of pastures in much of the state.
“It’s like ice cream to them,” he said. “They love it.”
The cows they have now are the product of the Prices’ research and genetic testing. They initially set their own standards for tenderness and marbling and got rid of the animals in their initial herd that did not measure up. That reduced the size of the herd by about 50 percent.
“We found a bloodline that worked and that’s what we’ve stayed with,” he said. “The response we’re getting from our customers tells us that we’re doing something right, that we’re not the only ones who think this is the best tasting beef they have ever had.”
The cattle the Prices are working with have been in the “New World” since Columbus’ second voyage, when he brought some cattle from the High Plains of Andalusia in southern Spain, where they thrived under harsh conditions. With the introduction of European breeds in the late 1880s, the Criollo all but disappeared. Still, some remained in Mexico and South and Central America, as well as parts of the Southwest.
The Criollo made a comeback, indirectly, in the 20th Century with the growing popularity of rodeo. Smaller, leaner and more athletic than common commercial breeds, they proved to be perfect for roping, cutting and team penning events. This strain of Criollo are usually called Corrientes. That’s how the Prices encountered the breed.
“All Criollo cattle qualify as Corrientes, but not all Corrientes are Criollo,” Janice said. “The native-bred Corrientes were developed by team roping enthusiasts in the United States, trying to create a horned animal suitable for team roping, steer tripping and bull dogging. Early breeders of Corrientes in New Mexico used Longhorn and Hereford cross heifers, with some Dexter thrown in. Once breeding animals were allowed to be imported from Mexico, a few Criollos were crossed in.
“The resulting animals were usually pure black, flat-horned, fine-boned, and matured slower and smaller than the true Criollo. The native-bred Corrientes did not have the mental toughness of the Criollo, and the Corriente bulls commonly got rank after age two or three. The Corrientes also tended to have poor DNA scores on tenderness and efficiency on feed.”
Dale said he thinks Criollo cattle will become popular with ranchers, especially those working on a smaller scale, because the breed is smaller and requires less forage and is also docile and easy for people to work with. At the same time, their hardscrabble lifestyle for so many years has made them a formidable opponent against predators.
“They don’t just try to defend themselves against predators,” he said. “They form a line and they attack. They have surprised a lot of coyotes that way.”
The American Criollo Beef Alliance is a non-profit association that serves as a registry for Criollo cattle. Every animal that is brought into the Certified Criollo Beef Program is DNA tested for tenderness and marbling. He said the standards have been raised since the cattle have tested so high for quality and tenderness from the first. Dale said the company that did the initial testing was skeptical of their own results at first.
“They told us the Angus people had been trying to get numbers like that for 45 years,” he said.
Two other ranchers have signed on with the alliance and Dale said he expects more participation as word spreads about the product.
“Right now, it feels like we’re straddling a rocket,” he said. “This thing is really taking off.”
For more information, visit AmericanCriolloBeef.com or call (325) 201-3201.