Bison's ComeBaCk
Bison’s
Big
Comeback A century after facing extinction, the largest land animal in North America can be found grazing on ranches and served in restaurants, and much of the thanks goes to media titan Ted Turner. By Maria Hunt
62 montage | winter 2011/2012
W
hen explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made their way across the Great Plains of America, they are said to have each eaten nine pounds of buffalo meat … daily. That impressive historical factoid about Lewis and Clark isn’t in some dusty history book; it’s on the menu of America Eats Tavern, a new José Andrés restaurant at the Smithsonian that features a $120 bison tomahawk rib steak for two. “Some nights we can’t have enough of them in the house; it’s extremely
popular,” says chef Paul Yeck, who runs America Eats. “This is our way of paying homage and celebrating the buffalo because it’s such an important part of American history.” Nearly 100 years after bison were nearly hunted to extinction, bison meat is suddenly chic, showing up at both casual and high-end restaurants across the nation. It’s made the hyper-picky menu at French Laundry. True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach makes a popular bison mushroom burger with umami sauce blessed by health guru Dr. Andrew Weil. Heck, even Fuddruckers carries bison on their menus now.
63 montage“Danita | winter 2011/2012 Yellowstone NP, Wyoming; Rolf Nussbaumer/DanitaDelimont.com Delimont Photography”/Newscom
America develop a taste for it—Turner is credited with helping ensure a tasty future for the American bison. “I wanted to bring them back,” says Turner. “When I bought my first three bison in 1976, I never imagined I’d acquire as many as I have.”
Above: Ted’s Montana Grill; Upper right: Bison filet; Lower right: Bison burger; Opposite: Ted Turner.
From Three Lonely Bison to the Sesame Bun The big herder behind the bison culinary movement is no chef; it’s media mogul Ted Turner. The CNN founder and conservationist is also the world’s biggest bison rancher. He owns 55,000 animals spread over 14 ranches in seven states. And he makes it a star attraction at his chain of more than 50 Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants, which feature bison short ribs, bison chili and bison meatloaf. “Ted’s Montana Grill is doing a good job of serving folks their first bite of bison and getting them hooked on it,” says Jim Matheson, assistant director of the Colorado-based National Bison Association. “Mr. Turner has done a great job of bringing bison back to the American landscape.” By creating a market for bison—and helping Middle
64 montage | winter 2011/2012
Buffalo Soldier Turner got into buffalo ranching back in 1976, buying a bull named Big Sam and two cows. But it took him 10 years after owning his first bison to actually taste the meat. “You don’t eat your pets,” says Turner. But when he had too many bison to think of them as pets, he tried it. And he realized bison meat tasted really good. “It tastes better than beef and has half as much fat and cholesterol—less than chicken,” Turner says. “It tastes better and it’s healthier. How can you pass that up?” Bison meat is a deep red color because it has more iron than beef. Some people think it has a sweeter, cleaner taste, similar to grass-fed beef. Health-conscious, red-meat lovers will want to take note: 3.5 ounces of bison meat contains 2.42 grams of fat, 143 calories, and 82 milligrams of cholesterol. According to the National Bison Association, the same amount of beef contains 9.28 grams of fat, 211 calories and 86 milligrams of cholesterol. Bison is even leaner than chicken: Skinless chicken has 7.41 grams of fat, 190 calories, 89 milligrams of cholesterol. Matheson says 70,000 of the animals were processed
65 montage | winter 2011/2012
Back then, bison meat sales were strictly local. Few people outside Colorado were into eating bison. But in the ’90s, as the bison herd got bigger, they knew they needed to expand the market for bison meat. “It’s taken a long time, but now there’s a tremendous amount of awareness in places like Orange County [California],” Dineen says. “It’s a really big change.” These days, 70 percent of their supply is sold through high-end and natural grocery stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms.
Above & Right: True Food kitchen’s bison burgers
for meat in the U.S. in 2010, a record for the budding bison industry. By comparison, 125,000 beef cattle are processed every day, 365 days a year. Bison also serve as a romantic symbol of the untamed West. “They’re wild animals and you have to be cautious with them. Some are mean and some are nice and everything in between,” Matheson says. Take Heart, It’s Better for You The health benefits, and the fact that bison are raised naturally without hormones or antibiotics, are attractive selling points. But taste is what drives consumers. “Just because something is really healthy for you, if you don’t like it you’re not going to buy it,” says Bob Dineen, president of Rocky Mountain Natural Meats. Dineen’s Colorado-based company processes and distributes the bison meat from Turner’s herd. He got into the bison business in 1983; a few years later he founded his company to sell bison or buffalo meat to both restaurants and grocery stores under its Great Range Brand Bison.
66 montage | winter 2011/2012
The Start of a Stampede? Of all the ways people are warming up to eating bison, the most popular is as a good old-fashioned hamb—er, bison burger. The average American ate 32 pounds of ground beef in 2009, according to the American Meat Institute, reinforcing the notion that we sure do love our burgers here in America. Every week, customers at the Bristol Farms store in Newport Beach buy 30 to 40 pounds of ground buffalo, mostly for burgers. “I had 10 cases for the (Labor Day) weekend, and right now I’ve got two packages left,” says Jeff Rowe, a meat cutter at the store. The menu at Ted’s Montana Grill tempts diners with fanciful burgers prepared more than 20 ways. The Knife and Fork Chili Cheese Burger is topped with Flying D bison chili on a ciabatta roll while the Canyon Creek Burger is topped with cheddar, bacon, jalapeños, blackberry jam and a fried egg. Turner’s favorite is the bison burger with American cheese, bacon and onions; according to the menu, it’s “the only thing Ted finds more satisfying than winning the 1977 America’s Cup.” Turner admits he didn’t have much to do with developing the Ted’s Montana Grill menu. He was looking for a new business venture around 2000 when Longhorn Steakhouse founder George McKerrow Jr. approached Turner about opening a Western-themed restaurant with bison as the menu staple. He liked the idea and Ted’s Montana Grill concept was born. At True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach, where Dr. Andrew Weil consulted for the menu laden with antiinflammatory foods like salmon and blueberries, bison is the only red meat the restaurant offers. “Bison meat contains about one-third of the fat and two-thirds of the calories of a similar portion of beef,” says Weil. “Our grass-fed bison burger … was an instant hit when we first introduced it and remains one of our top sellers.” The bison burger comes on a flax seed bun with sautéed mushrooms, onions and a secret umami sauce. “We have a lot of regulars and it’s one of the most popular things on our menu,” says chef Nathan Coulon. “It doesn’t taste that much different from beef and it’s fairly mild for a grass-fed animal.” Bison burgers may have gone mainstream, but even dreamers say don’t expect McDonalds to be advertising bison Big Macs anytime soon. “We are 0.15 percent of the beef industry, 0.15 of anything is not very much,” says Dineen. “We are a cottage industry.” Will hungry customers eventually roam to bison? M
67 montage | winter 2011/2012
Big
Comeback A century after facing extinction, the largest land animal in North America can be found grazing on ranches and served in restaurants, and much of the thanks goes to media titan Ted Turner. By Maria Hunt
62 montage | winter 2011/2012
W
hen explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made their way across the Great Plains of America, they are said to have each eaten nine pounds of buffalo meat … daily. That impressive historical factoid about Lewis and Clark isn’t in some dusty history book; it’s on the menu of America Eats Tavern, a new José Andrés restaurant at the Smithsonian that features a $120 bison tomahawk rib steak for two. “Some nights we can’t have enough of them in the house; it’s extremely
popular,” says chef Paul Yeck, who runs America Eats. “This is our way of paying homage and celebrating the buffalo because it’s such an important part of American history.” Nearly 100 years after bison were nearly hunted to extinction, bison meat is suddenly chic, showing up at both casual and high-end restaurants across the nation. It’s made the hyper-picky menu at French Laundry. True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach makes a popular bison mushroom burger with umami sauce blessed by health guru Dr. Andrew Weil. Heck, even Fuddruckers carries bison on their menus now.
63 montage“Danita | winter 2011/2012 Yellowstone NP, Wyoming; Rolf Nussbaumer/DanitaDelimont.com Delimont Photography”/Newscom
America develop a taste for it—Turner is credited with helping ensure a tasty future for the American bison. “I wanted to bring them back,” says Turner. “When I bought my first three bison in 1976, I never imagined I’d acquire as many as I have.”
Above: Ted’s Montana Grill; Upper right: Bison filet; Lower right: Bison burger; Opposite: Ted Turner.
From Three Lonely Bison to the Sesame Bun The big herder behind the bison culinary movement is no chef; it’s media mogul Ted Turner. The CNN founder and conservationist is also the world’s biggest bison rancher. He owns 55,000 animals spread over 14 ranches in seven states. And he makes it a star attraction at his chain of more than 50 Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants, which feature bison short ribs, bison chili and bison meatloaf. “Ted’s Montana Grill is doing a good job of serving folks their first bite of bison and getting them hooked on it,” says Jim Matheson, assistant director of the Colorado-based National Bison Association. “Mr. Turner has done a great job of bringing bison back to the American landscape.” By creating a market for bison—and helping Middle
64 montage | winter 2011/2012
Buffalo Soldier Turner got into buffalo ranching back in 1976, buying a bull named Big Sam and two cows. But it took him 10 years after owning his first bison to actually taste the meat. “You don’t eat your pets,” says Turner. But when he had too many bison to think of them as pets, he tried it. And he realized bison meat tasted really good. “It tastes better than beef and has half as much fat and cholesterol—less than chicken,” Turner says. “It tastes better and it’s healthier. How can you pass that up?” Bison meat is a deep red color because it has more iron than beef. Some people think it has a sweeter, cleaner taste, similar to grass-fed beef. Health-conscious, red-meat lovers will want to take note: 3.5 ounces of bison meat contains 2.42 grams of fat, 143 calories, and 82 milligrams of cholesterol. According to the National Bison Association, the same amount of beef contains 9.28 grams of fat, 211 calories and 86 milligrams of cholesterol. Bison is even leaner than chicken: Skinless chicken has 7.41 grams of fat, 190 calories, 89 milligrams of cholesterol. Matheson says 70,000 of the animals were processed
65 montage | winter 2011/2012
Back then, bison meat sales were strictly local. Few people outside Colorado were into eating bison. But in the ’90s, as the bison herd got bigger, they knew they needed to expand the market for bison meat. “It’s taken a long time, but now there’s a tremendous amount of awareness in places like Orange County [California],” Dineen says. “It’s a really big change.” These days, 70 percent of their supply is sold through high-end and natural grocery stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms.
Above & Right: True Food kitchen’s bison burgers
for meat in the U.S. in 2010, a record for the budding bison industry. By comparison, 125,000 beef cattle are processed every day, 365 days a year. Bison also serve as a romantic symbol of the untamed West. “They’re wild animals and you have to be cautious with them. Some are mean and some are nice and everything in between,” Matheson says. Take Heart, It’s Better for You The health benefits, and the fact that bison are raised naturally without hormones or antibiotics, are attractive selling points. But taste is what drives consumers. “Just because something is really healthy for you, if you don’t like it you’re not going to buy it,” says Bob Dineen, president of Rocky Mountain Natural Meats. Dineen’s Colorado-based company processes and distributes the bison meat from Turner’s herd. He got into the bison business in 1983; a few years later he founded his company to sell bison or buffalo meat to both restaurants and grocery stores under its Great Range Brand Bison.
66 montage | winter 2011/2012
The Start of a Stampede? Of all the ways people are warming up to eating bison, the most popular is as a good old-fashioned hamb—er, bison burger. The average American ate 32 pounds of ground beef in 2009, according to the American Meat Institute, reinforcing the notion that we sure do love our burgers here in America. Every week, customers at the Bristol Farms store in Newport Beach buy 30 to 40 pounds of ground buffalo, mostly for burgers. “I had 10 cases for the (Labor Day) weekend, and right now I’ve got two packages left,” says Jeff Rowe, a meat cutter at the store. The menu at Ted’s Montana Grill tempts diners with fanciful burgers prepared more than 20 ways. The Knife and Fork Chili Cheese Burger is topped with Flying D bison chili on a ciabatta roll while the Canyon Creek Burger is topped with cheddar, bacon, jalapeños, blackberry jam and a fried egg. Turner’s favorite is the bison burger with American cheese, bacon and onions; according to the menu, it’s “the only thing Ted finds more satisfying than winning the 1977 America’s Cup.” Turner admits he didn’t have much to do with developing the Ted’s Montana Grill menu. He was looking for a new business venture around 2000 when Longhorn Steakhouse founder George McKerrow Jr. approached Turner about opening a Western-themed restaurant with bison as the menu staple. He liked the idea and Ted’s Montana Grill concept was born. At True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach, where Dr. Andrew Weil consulted for the menu laden with antiinflammatory foods like salmon and blueberries, bison is the only red meat the restaurant offers. “Bison meat contains about one-third of the fat and two-thirds of the calories of a similar portion of beef,” says Weil. “Our grass-fed bison burger … was an instant hit when we first introduced it and remains one of our top sellers.” The bison burger comes on a flax seed bun with sautéed mushrooms, onions and a secret umami sauce. “We have a lot of regulars and it’s one of the most popular things on our menu,” says chef Nathan Coulon. “It doesn’t taste that much different from beef and it’s fairly mild for a grass-fed animal.” Bison burgers may have gone mainstream, but even dreamers say don’t expect McDonalds to be advertising bison Big Macs anytime soon. “We are 0.15 percent of the beef industry, 0.15 of anything is not very much,” says Dineen. “We are a cottage industry.” Will hungry customers eventually roam to bison? M
67 montage | winter 2011/2012
