The Bloom’s Beef Ribeye Roast

Seldom do we have a cut that receives the praise that our Beef Ribeye Roast gets. This flavor and tenderness of this US Choice/Wet Aged is unmatched when it comes to beef, especially beef roasts. For half of the price of the Tenderloin, you will take your holiday lunch, dinner or function to new heights. This is not the normal beef roast that people will be passing up at Christmas lunch or Old Year’s night.

The awaited

Bloom’s Beef Ribeye Roast

A Roast you will soon compare all Roasts to

This year we are offering roasts in customizable sized portions! Whether you are feeding 2 people or 18 people, we will custom cut your roast to fit your needs. No more leaving family hungry or buying a roast that is twice the size you need.

Tell us the weight you would like (or how many people you are feeding and we will gladly create a roast for you. A wide range of pre-cut sizes will also be available to select from.

How much you will need:

Bone-in Ribeye Roast – Average .75lbs to 1lb per person

Boneless Ribeye Roast – Average .5lbs to .75lbs per person.

Due to the marbling and inter-laid fats, The Beef Ribeye Roast is very easy to cook.

1. Rub your chilled roast down with coarse salt and crushed black pepper. Apply heavily. You can add additionally seasonings to taste. Let this roast sit at room temperature for 3 hours prior to step #2.
2. Pre-heat your oven to 500F
3. For a bone-in roast, you can cut the rack of bones away from the roast. Doing this allows you to create a ‘bone rack’ to place the roast back on while cooking. This makes it very easy to carve and produces excellent beef rib appetizers. You can skip this step if you like.
4. Place your roast in the oven for 15 minutes, fat side up to crisp the exterior of the roast. This can also be done on a very hot grill.
5. After 15 minutes of crisping, lower your heat to 325F until cooked. The average cook times are:
   1. 13 to 15 minutes per pound for RARE (internal temp of 115F to 120F)
   2. 15 to 17 minutes per pound for MEDIUM RARE (internal temp of 125F to 130F)
6. Your roast will continue to rise in temperature when removed from the oven. Let it sit before carving or serving.
7. Carve thick for Prime Rib steaks, or thin for slices.

Note: These roasts can also be done in a smoker for excellent results. Cooking temp and times (step #5) may vary.

Here is the list of bulk spices, currently in stock. For special orders of items not on this list or bulk loads, please call 633-5771 or sales@bloomsimports.com

Average 50lb sacks.

Prices are TTD per Pound + VAT.

No CC payments. Linx or Cash.

PRE-ORDER CLOSED. THANKS EVERYONE!

This year we are bringing back the Lodge line of Cast Iron skillets for the holidays!

Lodge has been making cookware for over 100 years and their products are heavy duty and last a lifetime. It’s a perfect gift for anyone who loves to cook, or addition to your own kitchen. Stop by Blooms in Diego Martin and check it out a few samples. Seared steaks on a cast iron are amazing. Burgers on a cast iron skillet stay juicy and give you that crispy edge of a steakhouse burger. You haven’t had a burger until you’ve cooked one on a cast iron skillet!

The enamel dutch ovens are one of those kitchen fixtures you have for a lifetime.

We are giving everyone the option this year of preordering whichever Lodge products they would like. The link below has the PDF catalog with the prices in TTD. Please note that a few items marked with a star indicate minimum purchase necessary. The minimum purchase is the full case quantity for that item (we may not be able to find someone to take the extra ones you don’t want).

Once you have the pans you would like, simply send us an email with the item code, your name and phone number. sales@bloomsimports.com

You can also use the form below. This year we hope to have the orders in by late November. These make for perfect holiday gifts.

THE PRE-ORDER FOR THE BOWLS IS CLOSED. HASHI WILL MAKE EXTRA THAT WILL BE SOLD FIRST COME FIRST SERVE. THANKS!

We are pleased to welcome Hashi this Saturday for a pop-up event at the front of Blooms in Diego Martin. They will be serving authentic noodle bowls and buns. Their soups are amazing and the pork/beef/chicken buns are excellent add-ons. Hashi doesn’t yet have a location, so these Pop-Ups are the only way to grab a taste. You won’t be disappointed.

For this event, we will be taking pre-orders. If you would like an order for Saturday, it’s highly recommended that you send us an email to let us know. We will put down your name, your phone number and your order and have it waiting for you on Saturday. We will make some extra, but due to the time and cost of the ingredients, we will do most via order.

Hashi will be at Blooms from 9:30am until 3:00pm preparing your orders.

Below is the description of the soups. Please email sales@bloomsimports.com with:

1. Name
2. Phone Number
3. Soup (Beef, Shrimp, Pork)
4. Bun (Pork, Chicken, Beef)
5. Extra Toppings

Rasengan Chashu Ramen $60
Made with love! Our Rasengan Chashu Ramen Bowl is topped with slices of succulent, silky braised pork, bean sprouts, baby bok choy, seasoned bamboo shoots, dukbokki (Korean rice cake dumplings) and chives in our signature homemade paitan (chicken based) broth with a splash of layu (chilli oil) for an extra layer of flavour. Add a seasoned soft-boiled egg for $5

Shinigami Shrimp Ramen $65
Succulent shrimp sits atop a bed of al dente noodles, baby bok choy, bean sprouts, dukbokki, seasoned bamboo shoots and cloud-ear mushrooms with a splash of layu (chilli oil) for an extra layer of flavour. Add a seasoned soft-boiled egg for $5

You can now purchase a Beef Shortloin from Blooms and we will cut it for you, free of charge. These are wet-aged, US Choice (or better), Grain-Fed, Nebraskan-bred/raised, Halal Beef Shortloins. This is one of the most tender and tasty steaks available. Shortloins are one half Striploin and one half Tenderloin, with a bone running through the middle.

When cut to about 1.25inches thick, you will get around 7 x Porterhouse Steaks, 7 x T-bone Steaks and about a pound of Face-cut T-bones. If you want thicker T-bones, just let us know. Each loin is cut to each customers specifications.

Once cut, we vacuum seal each steak individually. Use them when you like. It makes a great gift or group buy with friends.

Best of all, you save quite a bit of money buying the whole loin instead of individual steaks. Pay about 1/4 of the price you’d pay in a steakhouse.

Please call for current pricing.

Average weight of the loin is roughly 25lbs. Cut-up is free. Delivery is free.

Introducing our new Grass–Fed Beef Program!

Traditionally, all of Bloom’s products are sourced from Grain/Corn fed beef out of the mid-West, USA. Bloom’s primarily carries US Choice corn fed beef because of the flavour and the marbling of fat. We think he marbling, flavour and tenderness, are the best (and our customers over the years have seem to agree).

Because of the lifestyle and the diet of the animal, the meat and the fats of grass–fedbeef are slightly different.

Because of these differences, some customers do not like grass–fed beef when they have traditionally purchased corn/grain-fed. Others, on the other hand, love grass–fed. Different strokes for different folks. Whether you prefer grain or grass–fed, we want you to be happy with your steaks from Blooms. Try a steak or two, but understand that there are differences between the two.

We receive a lot of requests from our customers for a Grass–fed option, which is why we’ve spent over a year sourcing the best grass–fed product we can find. This beef is from Australia and is properly aged to advance its texture and flavour, just as with our normal steak programs. It’s one of the best grass–fed programs and we are excited to introduce it.

Currently, the grass–fed products we have available are:

• Beef Ribeye Steaks – ¾ inch thick
• Beef Culottes/Cap of Rump/Picanha – Great on the grill or cut into steaks!
• Ground Beef – 85% lean and 93% lean – 1 pound packs
• Ground Lamb – 85% lean

We are very happy to introduce Santa Fe Farms to the Blooms product line. This is Trinidad’s very first truly ‘all natural’ local chicken, reared without the use of antibiotics, hormones, vaccines or chemicals.

Earlier this year, we reached out to the public in search of a farmer who could help us produce a local and all-natural chicken. Blooms sells a plethora of antibiotic-free and hormone-free chicken, but until now it was all imported from the USA. Our interest was in working with a farm that could produce a similar product here in Trinidad, using the same guidelines followed by those all-natural farms in the USA. This would not only help us offer a fresh product, but it would help promote the Trinidadian economy and put a small dent in our ever growing food import bill.

The response from our Youtube Video and subsequent Guardian Newspaper Article was incredible. Dozens and dozens of emails and phone calls poured in from all around Trinidad and Tobago, and people from all walks of life called with their support and/or interested in helping. We visited several farms and had numerous meetings with perspective farmers.

One of the farmers who contacted us revealed to have exactly what we were searching for. His farm was beyond exciting and required very little changes to achieve the product we were looking to produce. Many of the practices he uses were developed over years of trial and error, in hopes of accomplishing an all-natural product. In the chicken business, the faster and the cheaper way to do things is not always considered the best when your goal is to produce the healthiest birds.

Why is Santa Fe Farms chicken different and why is it better? Well, the two primary answers to that question is FEED and ENVIRONMENT.

ENVIRONMENT

The environment a chicken lives in has a significant influence on the life the chicken leads and the natural health of the bird. The same could be said for most animals, humans included. Unfortunately, the better environment given to the chickens by a farmer almost always has a negative correlation with the profit of a farm. The goal with most chicken farms is to get as many conceivable chickens out of the smallest space possible, creating an increased amount of bacteria in the air that the chickens are breathing and on the ground on which they are standing. It also means they get less exercise.  This is not ‘natural’ and simply results in more illness, which then needs to be treated. This is done with medicines in the water and in the feed (more on that below).

Chicken houses are constructed to help maximize space and for complete environmental control to take place. It also allows for chickens to be exposed to light for more hours of the day, increasing the amount they eat. The faster chickens eat, the faster they achieve slaughter weight and the sooner more chicks can be brought in to complete the cycle.

When a batch of chickens leaves one these industrial pens, the ground is left with a thick layer of chicken waste that is now a hotbed for bacteria, which often makes the birds sick. This requires medicine to treat. If the waste were to be treated properly, the bacteria level in the ground would return to levels that would be naturally manageable for most birds. But again, for the sake of time and efficiency, it often is not treated correctly. A new batch arrives soon after and the process begins again.

So, how do we change that? The first step is to remove ‘maximize output’ as the priority. The focus should be on the overall health of the bird. This is done by giving the chickens more space to live, instead of trying to get as many birds into a pen as possible. Think of it as if you ate and slept at night with 40 strangers; you’d probably need to go to the doctor quite a bit more as well. When chickens have more space, they exercise and move more. Giving the chickens things like sunlight, open-air flow and clean water also strengthens the chickens’ health. Basically, anything that is just a physiological necessity to any living organism.

The floor that the chickens live (and defecate on) is also cared for very carefully. Rotation, resting and even burning by fire takes place in a specific schedule to help reduce the bacteria levels. This allows chickens to be exposed to a natural amount of bacteria to build their own immune systems. Instead of being shocked by their environment and needing medicine to survive.

FEED:

Did you know that every commercial produced chicken feed in Trinidad contains antibiotics? Anything from starter feed, finisher to scratch, contains a vitamin pack that classifies the feed as ‘medicated’. Commercial feed mills include this pack because it prevents diseases such as coccidiosis in the birds. These bacterial diseases are prevalent wherever chickens are raised and much crueler under harsh conditions (please reference ENVIRONMENT above). In addition, there are several other elements added to the feed to help it maintain a longer shelf life. Companies usually do not wish for feed to spoil in storage, and the feed is often engineered to prevent mold/mildew. These antibiotics and shelf-extenders are par for the course with any commercially produced feed. Are they bad? Not necessarily. So, when buying a chicken from a local farmer, make sure you ask the farmer where they get their chicken feed. If they buy it Trinidad, there is a good chance that it contains antibiotics and it should not be sold as antibiotic free, organic, or all natural. .

The same goes for chickens (or eggs) that are sold as ‘Free Range’. The definition of ‘Free Range/Free Roaming’, according to the USDA, is the ability of the chicken to access outside. In Trinidad, it commonly means chickens that are roaming around the yard instead of in a pen. This, unfortunately, speaks nothing to the chicken’s diet and what it’s being fed. While chickens with access to more space and room live much healthier lives, many are given normal mill ‘feed’. It’s uncommon that chickens can find enough ‘bugs’ in the yard to fulfill their appetite and grow to slaughter weight. So, just because a bird is ‘Free Range’, it may not be antibiotic free or necessarily ‘healthier’ than a non-free range bird. As you see, we feel it’s very important to make sure everyone is very clear on what they are buying.

Currently, the only way to get non-medicated feed in Trinidad is to either import it or mill it yourself. Imported organic feed from abroad is very costly (mainly because of duties/vat and shipping) and comes with a limited shelf life. The chickens at Santa Fe Farms are given feed that has been custom milled fresh weekly, right here in Trinidad. Milling is defined by simply taking whole grains and kernels and grinding them into a mix that the chickens can eat.

The feed that the chickens at Santa Fe Farms are given every day contains: Corn Meal, Soy Bean Meal, Wheat Middling

That’s it. It’s milled and mixed fresh, which means it doesn’t need to sit on a shelf or in a barn for 3 months.

Note: A lot of people have asked if this chicken is ‘organic’. Technically, in order for something to be labeled ‘organic’ according to USDA standards, the feed given to the chickens must be milled from non-GMO corn/soy/etc. It’s currently not feasible for us to source non-GMO raw materials here in Trinidad. For customers that require the feed that the chickens eat to be non-GMO, we carry a fully organic chicken out of the US that achieves that.

Because of what the chickens are feed and the environment they are raised in, Santa Fe Farms will most likely not be able to supply all of Trinidad’s chicken. It’s not a product for the masses, and by it’s nature, probably never can/will be. We are limited in how many chickens we can produce with this format.

And yes, it does cost a little more than it’s imported or local chicken counterparts, with the reasons for that explained above. This is not going to be a chicken for everyone, as some customers prefer the cheapest chicken/meat they can find. We understand that every household is different. We do think, however, that most people will find the quality and healthiness of the product far surpass the margin increase in price.

From the onset, this project has taken quite a while to reach the point we are at today. The ability for us to supplement at least some of our current demand for an all-natural chicken has been an outstanding accomplishment for us. As this project grows, we should hopefully see more supply and more customers able to enjoy.

On the Santa Fe Farms website www.SantaFeFarmsTT.com, you can view information on the product and also what outlets are currently carrying Santa Fe Farms chicken.

Blooms is working on a new project that will help promote the local production of food to help us rely a little less on imported products. In addition, we are hoping to provide a BETTER product at a lower price, by avoiding the high import duties. We are looking for farmers (large or small) in Trinidad that are interested in raising all-natural chickens for us. If you are someone (or know someone) that may be able to help, please watch. Farming partners will be asked to abide by a series of guidelines for the production of this chicken and those guidelines will be verified on a regular basis. We will be able to advise the farmer in the setup of their farm and possibly make ourselves available to assist financially. In exchange, Blooms will provide a guaranteed purchase order for your chickens on a weekly basis. We are the market for the chickens, we are just looking for the supply.

There is so much chatter in the news today about developing and diversifying the Trinidad economy away from oil. We also all know that we need to rely less on foreign imports, especially when it comes to food. Here is an initiative that kills two birds with one stone (no pun intended). There is no reason that all-natural (or even organic) chicken cannot be produced here in Trinidad. We have plenty of farmland, access to raw materials and a climate that is perfect for farming. Help us stop TALKING about changing the way we do things and start DOING something about it.