Cheap, Lean Cuts of Meat?

Hey everyone I’m a freshman in college, but I’m not living in the dorms so I get to buy all my own food. As far as meat goes me and my roomates have been living off of jumbo bags of frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts, eggs, and 80/20 ground beef. We don’t eat nearly as much ground beef as we do chicken or eggs, we buy it because its cheap and just make an occasional burger or put in chili. I was just wondering what are some cheap, lean cuts of pork and beef?

lean meats are overrated. save your money college boy and pick up a couple kilos of regular beef and chicken thighs with skin on

A lean and very under-rated cut of beef in my opinion is the flank. It’s gotten a little more expensive as people have figured out that it’s a great cut, but it’s still about the cheapest steak you can get and is usually sold in about 3 pound slabs.

You might also try going to the local butcher and seeing what kind of a deal he would give poor college kids on like 10lbs of sirloin or something. Provided you can freeze it, you should get a pretty good deal.

you should be able to find top round for 3.xx a lb, pretty lean cut of beef. a can of tuna or wild salmon once in awhile won’t kill you either to supplement your meat needs.

if you have a Trader Joes in your area, they have some of the best prices by far on meats/fish.

A good thing (and tasty)to do is get the cans of wild salmon with the bones and skin included, mix it with some cream cheese, and add chopped walnuts in the mix. Really tasty, cheap, a lot of calories, and a whole bunch of omega 3s.

Although, when the money is tight, you can’t beat 12 eggs a day.

Beef is good, but tends to get pretty expensive if you’re eating steak every night.

Get your parents to get you on a Costco/Sam’s account and go there for some frozen turkey & salmon in bags. Also, check out the uncooked shrimp, with tail on in a frozen bag.

Super easy to make, just boil for 4 minutes, and only have to pull the tail off to eat. Can be made lots of different ways too. Or as previously suggested go to the local butcher.

Oh, and if you are at a rather large school or one that has an agricultural or veterinary studies, you can often find the right person to talk at the university to for buttloads of meat very cheap. Such as beef, goat, chicken, etc… The ag people study for obvious reasons, and the vets need them to learn with.

[quote]jonesk wrote:
if you have a Trader Joes in your area, they have some of the best prices by far on meats/fish.

[/quote]

+1

I went to my local trader joe’s last night to look for good meats and found buffalo burger patties, 4 for 6 bucks. Each patty is 12g fat, 43g protein, and effin delicious.