If you don't care, people don't want what you produce.
If you don't care about what you're cooking, people don't want to eat it.
When I joined with Certified Angus Beef,
I knew next to nothing about raising beef.
I was fresh out of culinary school, and in the ten years that I've spent
with the brand, I have learned
the entire world of raising Angus cattle.
It's been more about meeting the people behind all of the work
that's really resonated with me and impacted me the most.
If I'm cooking one steak,
I think about the families and where this steak started.
And that, as a chef, is very meaningful to me.
When I think of the opportunities
that I've experienced meeting the rancher in their world, I think there's probably
one unifying thing among them all that just wows me.
It's it's this tenacity.
It's this work ethic that you just so respect.
Adversity is every day for them.
As a chef, you get adversity.
That happens.
That is what they live is adversity.
Being up close,
meeting rancher families, that's when it really drives home
how much they care for these animals on a daily basis.
I know that certified Angus beef is raised with care because I've met
the farmers and ranchers who raise the brand.
Really looking at a cut of beef,
there's no way to know if it was raised with care .
You have to trust where you're getting your beef.
What brand of beef,
just looking at a steak, if it's a well-marbled and red,
you know, you're thinking that's going to be a good steak.
But that's all you can really tell just by looking at it.
You really have to have some trust in your purchase.
Where you're getting that beef; you have to have trust in them
and you have to have trust that they're getting it from the right people.
When you're seeing Certified Angus Beef, you know, you're getting
cattle raised with care.
It's all of the love and the families and all of the love
behind the care that's given to the cattle.
That has kind of stained my mind and my heart with, ok,
you have a very important job now to cook this properly and present this
well because of everything that's gone on before it got to me.
I believe that Certified Angus Beef family farmers and ranchers
absolutely care about the environment
and they're helping the environment by doing what they do every day.
Working in tandem with the seasons is something that we think
about as chefs, right?
But it comes from just serving a strawberry
when a strawberry is the right time of year and,
you know, asparagus in the spring.
We look forward to the the springtime because of certain vegetables
and other things that are available at that time of year.
They work so in tandem with the seasons and Mother Nature
that it's an everyday consideration.
People in agriculture,
the environment is their livelihood.
They're more connected to the environment then I think a lot of people are.
Caring about the environment is not just important to their livelihood,
but it's important to their future and their kids futures.
It's hard for me to imagine really taking care and caring for that amount of land.
I mean, I have enough trouble mowing my yard, let alone
thinking about preserving all this land for future generations.
And I think that, to me, it would be incredibly intimidating,
but to a lot of these ranchers, it's just part of their life.
It's really cool when you get to see
a family, generations of a family, raising these cattle.
And it's not just a job they wake up and they go do in the morning.
To me, it's like the same thing as being a chef.
If you don't care, people don't want what you produce.
If you don't care about what you're cooking, people don't want to eat it.
And you can tell when there's passion and care and experiencing
those people firsthand and the generations of
this family all raising cattle together, you can see the passion and care
for what they do.
And I think that's where
I connect with that feeling.
This is very heartfelt work and it's very hard work
and it's very family oriented work.
Words like
big and words like factory don't belong
in any sentence, in my world,
when it comes to talking about what the brand is and what we do here.
There's families behind all of this and that's
what puts the humanness in all of it.
Certified Angus Beef is way more than a label.
It's these ranchers getting up and doing
what they do and bringing the best product they can to the table.
And, as chefs, it's it's our job to make sure that comes through.
And we are at the very end of that process.
And we either are celebrating with the rancher did or, God forbid,
(laughing) we aren't doing it justice.