Beefalo Roaming Back To Market -- Cross Between Buffalo And Cow Has Less Fat, Cholesterol Than Beef

Remember beefalo?

The combination of cow and buffalo was developed in Montana as a separate breed about 25 years ago, received a flurry of attention as a new kind of meat, then faded into obscurity.

One of its problems was that a key producer got in trouble for selling supposed beefalo meat that was actually cow.

Now beefalo is back, under a beefalo certification program. And while shoppers aren't yet stampeding to the beefalo bar, maybe this time around the time is right.

In an age when ``light'' is the rallying cry for healthful food, beefalo meat has a couple of things going for it: It carries a considerably lighter load of fat and cholesterol than does beef, its closest relative.

And it tastes good, if the samples served last week at a special beefalo luncheon hosted by Larry's Markets are a good indication. The local chain is carrying beefalo, as are at least two other stores, the Ballard Market and Town and Country Market on Bainbridge Island.

The luncheon offered a surprise for anybody expecting chuck-wagon fare. The chief attractions: Oven-Roasted Tenderloin of Beefalo with Wild Mushroom Cognac Sauce, and Classic Beefalo Burger. Both were succulent, tender and flavorful, similar to beef but with a little less beefy flavor.

The mushroom-cognac sauce served with the tenderloin was superb, but it illustrated a common temptation: jazzing up a lower-fat food with with a high-fat addition - in this case the creme fraiche used in the sauce. A lower-fat sauce would have suited the occasion, considering that low fat is billed as one of beefalo's top selling points.

For anybody trying to hold down fat and cholesterol intake, beefalo's numbers look pretty good. Some beefalo cuts check in with 40 percent less fat than their beef counterparts and with about the same amount of fat as chicken (averaging the light and dark chicken meat, minus skin), according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A beefalo T-bone steak has about 30 percent less cholesterol than a choice-grade beef T-bone, according to the USDA, the most widely accepted source of nutritional data.

Beefalo's fat figures look even better in a producer's brochure that uses data from the Canadian government and a New York testing laboratory. For instance, a 3 1/2-ounce beefalo T-bone steak has only 3 grams of fat compared with 12 grams of fat in a lean beef T-bone steak, the brochure says.

Also encouraging is that beefalo's fat is considerably less saturated (and believed more healthful) that beef's.

Mark Merrill, the Ellensburg producer supplying beefalo to the Seattle-area markets, had been raising cattle for about 15 years before launching his beefalo business, Beefalo Meats, four years ago. Merrill has a degree in animal science, and the beefalo project is a division of his Northwest Reproduction Center, a cattle genetics company. His herd numbers about 500.

Now a recognized breed, beefalo must be at least 3/8 bison, with the remainder any kind or kinds of cow the breeder chooses. Merrill says increasing the percentage of buffalo merely creates animals that are wilder in temperament without improving their meat or its healthfulness.

Beefalo look pretty much like cows, although their heads are smaller relative to body size, and they're usually a smoky gray color.

The crossbreeding of cow and buffalo produces an animal that's hardier and healthier than a cow and doesn't require antibiotics or hormones to survive life in a feeding pen, so his beefalo meat is free of these, Merrill says.

``I determined from the start that this is a health product and it's going to stay that way,'' he says.

But he says raising the animals without these growth-boosting aids costs more, and that beefalo prices average about 10 percent higher than beef.

Here were some prices at the Bellevue Larry's Market last week:

-- beefalo top round, $3.99 a pound; regular beef top round, $3.59.

-- ground beefalo, $2.99 a pound; leanest ground beef, $2.89.

-- beefalo T-bone steak, $5.99 a pound; regular beef T-bone, $4.99.

With its higher prices, beefalo is caught between two consumer trends: one favoring low-fat foods; another - partly grounded in recession worries - favoring cost-cutting at the grocery store.

Beefalo must also contend with being virtually unknown to shoppers - not to mention having a funny-sounding name.

Whether beefalo can rustle up anything like the consumer loyalty once heaped on beef will be worth watching.