How do you buy your meat?

Arnegard · February 2013

Random, I know.

The previous 3 years we bought a full pig. I am not a fan of pork chops, there is so much fat I'd have to cut off before I'd eat it. The pork roasts 1 of the years were the same which was gross.

DH makes counrty sausage with his family that they mix 1/2 unseasoned ground pork and 1/2 hamburger which we all love.

This year we are skipping the pork and getting a side of beef in a couple weeks I am beyond excited. Beef roasts, hamburger, steaks....

Chicken I buy whole or in a bag of frozen breasts from the grocery store.

How do you buy your meat? - whole animals processed or what you need from the store?

MainelyFoolish · February 2013

How do I buy my meat? With money. Ha ha ha!

I've never bought a whole or half animal. There are several cuts of meat I don't like or don't know what to do with, so I get what I use. Chicken breasts, ground beef, sirloin steaks, pork loin and tenderloin, occasionally a beef roast of some sort. The one thing I do to save money is buy in bulk packages and re-package into vacuum sealed bags for the freezer. I'll also get a whole or half pork loin and cut it into chops and roasts.

Andrewsgal · February 2013

We are looking into buying a fourth of a cow, but for now I buy ground beef as we eat it same with pork. I buy boneless skinless frozen organic chicken breast from Costco. We only eat organic or grass fed.

hjk5000 · February 2013

Stuff I use all the time like chicken and ground beef I buy in bulk from Costco and freeze. Otherwise I just buy as needed at the grocery.

dairygirl19 · February 2013

I live on a farm...so we have our own processed!

You girls are aware if you buy an animal whole you don't have take everything if you don't like it? Just tell them what you want or don't. They'll resell it to somone else or at the very least grind it into hamburger or sausage. I have a strong dislike for roundsteak, so I have all that ground into hamburger. Costs more, but I get what I like with no waste. You can also tell the butcher how much fat you want trimmed off, the thickness of the meat etc. as well.

I do buy chicken breasts as I need them. I don't cook enough with a whole chicken to ever really buy one.

jag101 · February 2013

We buy a half of beef, I love having the variety and found it to be way cheaper. I raise my own roasting chickens, which i don't know if that's any cheaper. I also buy chicken breasts form the store.

kcisthebombdotcom · February 2013

We buy everything (outside of fish) from our grocery store. I buy lots of large cuts of meat--pork shoulder, ham, chicken, roasts, etc partly due to the cost/partly due to laziness. lol. besides stuff like that, we eat lots of pork chops, boneless chicken breasts/bone in chicken, ground turkey. We do red meat every 2 weeks or so. We eats lots of fresh seafood (we live by the coast and my dad is friends with a fisherman so we get fish at ridiculously low cost).

I could go for a whole pig--what did the price end up being if you don't mind my asking? I know people who do whole cows but I don't eat red meat enough to justify it.

notreallyirish · February 2013

I just buy as needed once or twice a week, whatever I feel like. We do a lot of pork loin, pork chops, chicken breasts and thighs, turkey loins, ground beef and steaks. I am not good at planning and frequently end up wasting a lot. We are starting a grocery delivery service where we can buy from local farms and I'm hoping to try some new things that way and to get better about using what we have.

I would never have bought a huge amount of meat to freeze while we were living in New Orleans...too much risk of hurricane knocking out the power and everything going bad. I'd be more willing to consider it now that we've moved, but we'd have to buy a freezer to put in the garage and I still don't think I would use all the meat. Plus, even living away from hurricanes, we run into trouble with ruining what's in our freezer. Just a couple weeks ago DS left my freezer open a crack (it's a bottom drawer style) and ruined everything in it. If we had a deep freezer in the garage that would be less likely to happen, but you never know.

Arnegard · February 2013

Wow. I guess it is just norm around here for people to buy it from the farmer and have it butchered. Last year DH/BIL butchered their own pigs (butcher removed the heads and organs). They figured if they can process their own deer they could do their own pigs too. (Plus BIL has an uncle who is a retired butcher.)

I guess I am thankful to be in rural ND for tihs reason. We always get hamburger in a lot too. One of DH's co-workers has beef butchered for hamburger. We'd get 40-50 lbs at a time, each packaged in 1 lb bags.

Arnegard · February 2013

KC_13:
I could go for a whole pig--what did the price end up being if you don't mind my asking? I know people who do whole cows but I don't eat red meat enough to justify it.

I honestly don't remember. $300? No clue.

notkateanymore · February 2013

With money, like PP.

I buy all my meat at Whole Foods or local butchers. Every year my BIL and his friends get a whole pig, so we get sausage from that sometimes. We also get duck, quail and venison from friends who hunt. Yum!

joyfullyfound · February 2013

What I need from the store. I've always wanted to get a whole animal though...

We have a butcher shop a couple blocks away who sells nothing but local, organic meat. That's where we get anything we need - sandwich meat, ground meat, cuts, sausage, etc. Oh, I do sometimes get pork loin or whole cooked chicken from Costco though!

Arnegard · February 2013

KateMW:
With money, like PP.
I buy all my meat at Whole Foods or local butchers. Every year my BIL and his friends get a whole pig, so we get sausage from that sometimes. We also get duck, quail and venison from friends who hunt. Yum!

Yeah, I think right now we have only fish in the freezer that DH caught ice fishing. We occasionally have pheasant, quail or grouse in the fall from hunting.
So different because we did not buy whole animals and DH did not hunt or fish before we moved up here!

holz · February 2013

We buy what we can from the farmers' market. We're looking into buying 1/4 cow, too. During the winter we just make do with the grocery store, but the organic selection at our local store sucks.

Lulobug22 · February 2013

From the grocery store. Probably not the cheapest but it works for us. I buy organic and grass fed.

Mrs.Hizzo · February 2013

Every year we get a side of beef, a side of pork, and a whole lamb. I get organic chicken from Costco.

barnwife · February 2013

I rarely buy it. We butcher our own chickens. Then we usually end up with a deer each year. And when we have needed to we raise and butcher pigs. Oh, and MIL raises sheep, so from time to time we get meat from her.

HarrietNJMommy · February 2013

We don't have many options of buying a "whole" animal like a pig or a cow, etc. Frankly, I don't have the storage for it either.

I buy my meat as needed from the butcher or Whole foods.......

nosoup4u · February 2013

There's a farmer who lives the next state over from us, but comes to the city once a month. We buy most of our meat from him. I get the rest from Whole Foods, as they have a bit more hippie meat than the usual grocery stores.

alake · February 2013

When living in Canada, I bought my beef from my uncle who has hormone free cattle. My parents and I would split a cow. I got my eggs and usually my chickens from the Hutterites along with my honey. My pork was bought from a friend of mine who was a butcher. I have found a good butcher by where I live and that is where I have been getting it since I moved to Florida.

AimeeL85 · February 2013

All from the grocery store....chicken breasts, sometimes a whole roaster, turkey cutlets, ground beef, stew meat....and that's about it, because that's all I know how to cook.

Not only do I want to learn how to cook more cuts and types of meat, but I also need to really look into buying organic/hormone-free etc. kinds. The labeling confuses me and I'm not sure anything offered at the food store is completely "free" of that stuff. We don't have a Whole Foods or anything like that here, that I know of.

shortstuff15 · February 2013

Arnegard:
Wow. I guess it is just norm around here for people to buy it from the farmer and have it butchered. Last year DH/BIL butchered their own pigs (butcher removed the heads and organs). They figured if they can process their own deer they could do their own pigs too. (Plus BIL has an uncle who is a retired butcher.)
I guess I am thankful to be in rural ND for tihs reason. We always get hamburger in a lot too. One of DH's co-workers has beef butchered for hamburger. We'd get 40-50 lbs at a time, each packaged in 1 lb bags.

It's the same around here. We haven't actually ever bought a 1/2 cow or whole pig, but we are probably going to in the fall. Until now we've bought from the local slaughter house in freezer packs. The last one we bought was around $350, we bought it in September, and we still have enough meat from that purchase to make it to April. The slaughter house also has sales on ground beef where if you buy 50 pounds you get it for $.89 a pound so we usually buy 50 pounds, packaged into 2 pound packs, then. Ideally I'd like to have a freezer full of moose but I don't have my hunting license yet so for now we do beef.

Chicken I buy from Costco but because we are going through a box every month & a half, I'd like to find a cheaper place to get that too, so I'm now shopping around. I may see if I can find a place to raise my own chickens because they taste so much better and are way cheaper that way too!

sdo_082989 · February 2013

We raise our own steer every year. It's around 600 pounds of beef, I buy chicken in the store if I really want it but we pretty much just eat beef. Our beef is always extremely lean and has the BEST flavor. You can count on 2 hands how many times I have had beef from the grocery store in my whole life, DH wants to get some chickens, which is weird to me because he doesn't even eat chicken.

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