By BEN KLEINE

Staff writer

Rancher Mark Harms has spent most of his life raising beef, but it turns out he’s not bad at cooking it, too.

Harms was part of a team of chefs that won best entree as a part of the annual Pasture to Plate Chef’s tour throughout south central Kansas.

Their winning dish was petite tender medallions of beef topped with blue cheese and a mushroom and red wine reduction served with kettle fried potato slices.

“It actually tasted like filet mignon,” Harms said. “It was medium rare, very tender.”

Harms owns Harms Plainview Ranch near Lincolnville, about 600 head of cattle. As a part of the Kansas Beef Council, he helped lead the chefs’ tour through each of the different phases of beef production. They visited McCurry Brothers Angus Ranch in Sedgwick, Pratt Feeders in Pratt, and Creekstone Farms processing facility in Arkansas City.

“I think they have a better understanding that there is a lot of hard work that goes into fabricating beef,” Harms said.

The processing facility was particularly eye opening.

“None of them had ever seen that before,” Harms said.

The goal of the tour was to impress on each chef, sous chef, and culinary student the value of having beef — and particularly value cuts of beef — on their menu.

“Some chefs put together the entire menu,” Harms said. “They get to make these decisions in some cases.”

A value cut is a cut of beef that lies between ground beef and high-end cuts like filet mignon. The best way to showcase the quality of the beef was to have the chefs prepare a meal, according to beefretail.org.

Each of the seven teams included a producer like Harms, a chef, and a sous chef. Harms was teamed with Chef Kent Nanni from Louisville, Ky., and Michael Pennington, who is a sous chef but also attends culinary school at Johnson County Community College.

It was a pantry challenge so the teams had their choice among 50 ingredients.

“You just started grabbing whatever you wanted,” Harms said. “We just kind of crafted it to our own taste.”

Harms made two crucial decisions in cooking: he thought adding blue cheese was a good idea, and he decided when the meat was done. Because the meat was the centerpiece of the dish, deciding when the meat was done may have been the most important job, Harms said.

“I wouldn’t have been able to pick out those things to put it together,” Harms said. “It was a team effort.”

After the dishes were prepared, each team voted on the meals. While Harms thought his team’s entree tasted the best — and the voters agreed — there were some kabob appetizers using a tri tip cut that he also thought were good.

Harms hopes the chefs and producers have a better understanding of each other’s livelihood after the tour.

“I hope (the chefs) can bridge the gap between beef producers and chefs,” he said.