NYT -- Ranchers are betting that yak burgers will soon be on more menus.
May 21, 2003
A Yak Attack on Beef and Bison
By MELISSA CLARK
QUESTA, N.M.
As the sun sets on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains here in
north central New Mexico, the dun-colored topsoil turns as
red as blood itself. Long black shadows creep down the
slopes in varying shapes: low and gnarly from thorny
sagebrush, tall and majestic from oak and pinyon trees, and
squat, shaggy and handlebar-horned from roaming yaks.
Yes, yaks. These woolly animals, originally from the
Himalayas, have been turning up on ranches in the western
United States and Canada. And although their numbers are
still minuscule compared with those of bison and cattle
(North America counts about 2,000 yaks, 350,000 bison and
over 100 million head of cattle), ranchers are increasingly
betting that, like such low-fat red meats as venison and
bison, yak burgers, stews and sirloins will soon be on
menus all over the continent.
That may be a long shot, but the quality of the meat makes
it a possibility. Yak is as lean as venison or bison (about
5 percent fat, compared to about 15 percent for beef), and,
to some, tastes juicier, sweeter and more delicate.
Certainly the people of Tibet and Nepal think so. There,
yaks have been an integral part of the culture for 5,000
years, used not only as pack animals and for milk but also
as a source of meat. Originally brought to the Western
Hemisphere for zoos a century ago, yaks have been bred
commercially here for only about 15 years. North America
now has more than 30 yak ranches.
Tom Worrell, who grazes 125 yaks on his 3,300-acre Latir
Ranch here, estimates that he is the third-largest yak
rancher in North America. Mr. Worrell, an entrepreneur who
also owns Dharma Properties, which builds environmentally
friendly resorts, is a solidly built man with blue eyes, a
leathery tan and eyebrows as dark and bushy as a yak hide.
He delights in the merits of his hairy, humpbacked beasts.
"They only eat about a third of what a cow eats and can
forage for food without damaging the environment," he said.
"They have small hooves and are nimble, so they can move
over rough mountainous terrain. They don't need much
attention. Unlike cows, you don't have to get up in the
middle of the night and calve them. They are pretty
disease-resistant, so they don't need any hormones or
antibiotics. And unlike bison, they are docile and easy to
maintain."
Since yaks thrive in forbidding, rocky landscapes at
elevations up to 14,000 feet, they can easily forage in
places that most cattle could never even reach. Ranchers
generally leave them alone to search out grasses, weeds and
wildflowers. In winter, the yaks are in their element,
cavorting in the snow without the need for shelter and
eating ice instead of drinking water.
"Yaks are what you'd call free-range animals," Mr. Worrell
said. While they are never put on feedlots, some ranchers -
though not Mr. Worrell - add grain to their diet a few
weeks before slaughter to whiten their fat. Meat from
exclusively grass-fed animals has a yellow tint from the
carotene in the grasses.
"It's just for looks - American consumers aren't used to
yellowish fat," said Bob Hasse, president of the
International Yak Association and the owner of Desert End
Yaks in Montrose, Colo.
The grain fed to yaks has no hormones or antibiotics,
because it's not necessary. Much of the meat, Mr. Hasse
pointed out, would satisfy the Agriculture Department's
definition of organic, though no rancher but Mr. Worrell
has filed the paperwork required to label it organic. All
yak meat sold today is inspected by the department.
Mr. Worrell's yaks are raised by the ranch manager, Chuck
Kuchta. With his worn Levi's, 10-gallon hat and bowlegged
gait, Mr. Kuchta is the very picture of the cowboy he once
was. But don't call him a cowboy. And definitely not
"yakboy."
"We like to say Chuck's a recovering cowboy," Mr. Worrell
said. "You've got to be careful about what you call him.
For a while we were saying yakeroo, but I think Chuck
prefers yakalero."
Mr. Kuchta is among a small group who have made the switch
from cattle to yak, some going by way of bison, or American
buffalo. But why should yak succeed where other exotic
meats like ostrich and emu have failed? And the bison
market is suffering from a huge oversupply after a decade
of speculation (despite Ted Turner's best intentions). At
the height of the bison bubble, the animals were selling
for as much as $3,000. Now the price is less than a tenth
of that. Yaks, which are about two-thirds the size of
bison, are selling for an average of $2,500.
"The bottom fell out of the bison market because ranching
bison doesn't make sense economically," Mr. Hasse said.
"You need more capital to start out with. You have to put
in a lot of sturdy fencing, and bison are much harder and
more expensive to handle and feed than yaks. People wanted
to raise bison because they have good eye appeal. They look
good on the plains, and there's a romance to having this
native animal on your land. But they just aren't feasible."
That is because at their core, bison are wild, ornery
creatures that don't take to fences or, for that matter, to
people who try to lock them up. As a result, a ranch needs
more hands to manage the same number of bison as yaks or
cattle. "You can never turn your back on bison," Mr. Hasse
warned. "They're too aggressive."
Mr. Kuchta, who also raised bison in his post-cattle days,
agreed that yaks require much lower maintenance.
Domesticated yaks, he said, are so tame they are often
considered family pets in Tibet. "You even hear stories
about them sleeping inside the huts of their owners," he
said. "I wouldn't try this with a buffalo."
Yaks are efficient eaters, needing less food pound for
pound than either bison or cattle. To gain one pound, yaks
need only 6 pounds of forage, as against 8 pounds for
cattle and 12 for bison.
But even if yaks are more environmentally friendly than
cattle and easier to handle than bison, finding a market
for their meat has been is a challenge.
"Most people don't know what a yak is - that it's a
Himalayan bovine related to a cow," said Jerry McRoberts,
who has been raising yaks for 15 years at the McRoberts
Game Farm in the Nebraska panhandle near Sidney. "But if
you get them to try it, they love it."
There is indeed a lot to love about yak meat. Although it
is low in fat, it is very succulent, with a deep crimson
color and a mild, rather than gamy, flavor.
"It's sweeter than even farmed venison and more tender than
buffalo," said Joseph Wrede, the chef and owner of Joseph's
Table, a restaurant in Taos, N.M., that is in the process
of moving elsewhere in town. He serves cubed yak meat in a
savory stew with aromatic vegetables, and "yakballs" in a
heady red-wine sauce, atop pappardelle pasta or simmered in
a chili. "We sell a lot of it," he said. "The people who
are brave enough to try it really get into yak."
About a dozen restaurants in the United States regularly
offer yak. They include De la Tierra at the Sundy House in
Delray Beach, Fla., where Johnny Vinczencz coats yak
tenderloin in a mustard crust, and the Cosmopolitan in
Telluride, Colo., where Chad Scothorn serves yak steaks as
a special, using the same kinds of sauces he would with
beef.
De La Tierra, which is owed by Dharma Properties, gets its
yak from Mr. Worrell's ranch. Mr. Scothorn buys his from
Mr. Hasse, who also sells the meat retail, as does Mr.
McRoberts. In the western United States, yak meat
occasionally shows up in supermarkets and health food
stores, where, at about two and a half times the price of
beef and one and a half times that of bison, it remains a
tough sell.
"A lot of people are turned off by the word," Mr. McRoberts
said. "They think yak? Yuck."
"We wanted to change the name to woolly Himalayan beef," he
added, "but I don't think the U.S.D.A. will ever approve
it. Someone suggested we send it to David Letterman and
have them come up with 10 alternate names for a yak. Who
knows, it just might help."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company. |
