No more grocery store beef
 

Split a cow with some friends. Grass fed, etc etc

Got 1/8 for our household. Maybe 25lbs of ground and a big assortment of steaks.

Pretty sure I won't ever buy grocery store ground beef again. The burgers are just THAT good. Put a good sear on them and my goodness the flavor is for real.

Steaks are very good as well BUT I'm not wild about committing to all those steaks and not being able to pick through them for the best marbling, etc.

All told I think we paid around $5 or $6/lb.

Haven't bought red meat at a grocery store for years. I go to a meat market in the city, the same store my dad did. Better quality, lower prices. I can get goat, lamb, veal, ox tail , quail, rabbit and stuff that is a little harder to find at the local store. I go to fish markets too.

I will admit, I buy chicken once in a while at the grocery store, its not very often

When I want to make burgers, I buy a solid cut or two, trim off or sear the exterior, and grind it myself. You can use a meat grinder or cut the meat into cubes and use the food processor. I like to mix a fatty cut and a leaner cut, trim out any gristle.

This makes a tastier burger, and also I don't trust grocery store ground meat, I believe a significant percentage of it is contaminated with harmful bacteria. Since I like my burgers very rare, I'm eating nearly raw meat at the center of the burger. With solid cuts as I described, you can actually eat the home-grown beef completely raw, as beef tartare or in French, boeuf hachee.

buy it whole, age for up to 15 days on tenderloin, 30 for ribeye & 30-40 on top sirloin... then cut it yourself. Use/grind the "chain" on a tenderloin for hamburger meat... How to butcher (trim and cut) a whole beef tenderloin (a.k.a. “PiSMO”) into filet mignon steaks — The 350 Degree Oven

Grass fed beef is around $750 processed and frozen for a s side here in Southern California. I don't eat that much but have been thinking about splitting it with my extended family.

I split a 1/4 with my folks a few years ago, really good meat. It was a little overwhelming at first since I usually only have maybe 5 lbs in the freezer at a time. Prices have gone up a lot here lately as the local/grass feed market is so popular now. I never knew ground beef could be so good, not to mention the roasts and steaks. I really liked how I was able to get a few special cuts from the butcher, not something I usually do but it was great.

I do not eat remotely enough beef to justify getting a share of a cow, but I am fortunate to have plenty of good local options for good meat, including a market next to my office whose butcher gets their beef as whole cows ("local", grass-fed, etc.) and can butcher them however you like. It's great meat.

I dunno. Around these parts all the cows are grass fed, unless they're in a dairy producing milk.

I've been toying with the idea to buy some milk calves (under a week), and raising some meat cattle. Found a dairy that will sell bulls for 70, or weaned steers for 220. I like veal so one of these days I will buy a few head. :D

All my red meat is venison. Go to ground meat is antelope. Before upping the big game hunting I would buy a large chunk of sirloin from costco and grind it myself. I am with jyl on this one.

I would be hesitant to buy a fraction of an animal. I would worry I end up with poorer cuts than what was available. A steer is a bit large to deal with, but if I'd do this, I would pick it up whole, broken down in 1/4s and process it myself. I do this with wild animals - I don't trust a butcher - they are likely being wasteful and some of the good cuts may never make it back to you ...

G

how do you split an eighth of a cow?

everyone fights for the shoulder meat? or you stack it all up by location into 8 section piles?

my rancher friend. her USDA butcher retired and she took it as a catalyst to call it quits as well. i ate my last steak saturday. super bummed. her ground burger was as described. so much better than the store bought stuff.

having said that, i have a boutique butcher nearby that is so expensive, but his stuff is on par. if i get desperate.

For burgers...I like these...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595867265.jpg

Steve i LOVE those burgers!

To follow up we split another cow some time after the first. It was terrible. Steaks were awful and ground meat was greasy as hell. Bottom line is i've decided for the relatively small amount of red meat i consume it's best to just buy a-la cart.

I thought the same thing. Every cow out there is pretty much grass fed. It’s how one can “farm” land that grass can grow on but wouldn’t sustain growing food-crops. Grain fed is much more expensive because they take some grass-fed cows and move them to feedlots for another 4-6 months to fatten/marble up the meat.

I do a 1/4 just about every year. Get eight or ten steaks, some chuck, a london broil or two, short ribs and beef ribs. Everything else ends up ground.

Last year was $4/lb on the hoof, about 800 for a 1/4 angus. This year 4 of us bought an angus cow, and will grow it out and have it butchered. All in that works out to around $3/lb finished, much better deal, but you need a farm or farmer.

I've been buying my beef by the 1/4 for years. The butcher refers to it as a "half of a half". Only way to fly.

Well la tee da..what a bunch of swells...talkin about their gourmet beef preferences when the American food lines are growing longer because they are broke.

Talk about letting them eat cake.

^^^
The 'Prime Rib beef steak burgers' are $8.95 for a pack of 4 patties.

Nah, I been buyin up all the cake mix in the stores too!

That's nothin! Go buy some of those impossible burgers. Yeah I know, "why the hell would I want to do that?". My daughter is a vegetarian

He's on his way to the $17.95 buffet.

Let him eat cake! All that he can for $17.95

You're on a porsche forum tabs, did you expect a thread about dried ramen ?

The best steaks I've had were in Zimbabwe. the cattle eat scrub and bushes (herbs and spices). It really came through is the meat.

In NZ all our beef is grass feed, so buy the New Zealand stuff if you can get it. We don't ever have barn raised cattle.

I've refined my system to include ground chuck only for my burgers and for steak I buy a large tenderloin and get it cut into 1 3/4" thick Filets....freezing what I won't use within' the next couple days.

I put 'em in individual baggies and cook 'em with shrooms and onions. Medium-rare.....YUM!

So, basically they are cheaper than a fast food restaurant.

Yep...and they are delicious!

I go to a great butcher out here for meat. Local grass fed. They offer quarters, and this thread has made me think about it.

so, has anybody ever made a cake out of ground round steak?

Yeah, these guys know which sides of beef to buy then hang them in the cooler for the right number of days. They say it's the hanging of the carcasses that makes the difference. Real butchers do this, supermarkets don't bother.

This is our 4 year old bull. He’s a purebred Hereford and we raised him. He’s served us well but he has a date with the abattoir next week.

He’s grass fed. We will be putting an angus bull in with our herd as a clean up bull. If anyone needs some beef, let me know. I have some presold (spoken for) but not all.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595910030.jpg

All Alberta beef is aged 28 days in a cooler after slaughter and before cutting up. Ground beef is not aged.

Dibs on the rocky mountain oysters! :D

I'd imagine getting this shipped to the US will cost more than the beef. Great looking animal and pasture!

G

Nope, they can't even eat cake any more

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/business/costco-sheet-cake-discontinued.html

Same bull when he was a few days old...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595946809.jpg

oh man. cute when young. regal looking when matured.

that is a harshest reality of meat. something has to die.

So this guy is actually quite an arse hole. It was weird on Sunday morning when he sauntered over to the fence for a pat - not like him at all. Our animals are all really tame and this guy was probably the least tame in our herd. The only reason we kept him 4 years ago is that his genetics worked with our other Herefords. We are to the point now where only about 1/2 of our Herefords can be bred by him so he isn’t of much use to us.

He has lead a great life, almost triple what he would have if we sold him as a yearling. He’s been out on the prairie with the cows for 4 summers, not something most grocery store beef get to experience.

We are going to replace him with one shorthorn bull that we can run with our registered shorthorn herd as well as the Herefords and Angus in our herd.

We have a couple more bulls going to the auction this year as well as few steers. We have 2 or 3 bull calves that we will hold back this year and sell next year as yearling bulls (one shorthorn, one Hereford from this bull, and one red angus). These are very tame and have had lots of human contact. Any one of them will make a great bull.

i'm sure he will be delicious!

hey, beautiful country you got there. you have moose running around up there?

When I was a kid we raised our own cattle. My sister and I would each get a calf, which we'd bottle feed until they moved on to solid food. We'd pet them, brush them, even ride them. And then one day the butcher would show up, we'd lead the chosen one to the far corner of the field... The other would get sent to the auction, and dad would come back with 2 more calves.

Yes but I call it a hamburger. Layer of bread, layer of meat, layer of cheese, another layer of meat, then lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions. For icing I go with dijon and mayo.

meatloaf, with a ketchup glaze! i wouldnt use ground round tho

We have a couple resident moose and a huge elk herd that passes through every fall.