Just curious if most of you guys buy your meat (like chicken breasts, beef and steak and turkey) at the grocery store or if you go to a butcher/deli. In my case, at the the butcher chicken breasts are $7.50 a pound but free-range grass fed. They are like $6 a pound for the grocery stuff like maple leaf and prime. Do you guys usually spend the extra money on better quality or just use the saved money and buy a shit ton from the grocery store?
My friend owns a butcher shop and gets them to me for 4.20 a pound. He also ages top cuts of steaks for me at no extra charge.
For chicken, i would save the money because i eat it daily and its nothing fancy anymore. For steak, i’d pay extra.
wherever it is cheapest…
God bless Costco.
18 chicken breasts for 20 bucks.
24 chicken thighs for 14.
Whole sirloins for 70.
6lbs ground beef for 20.
3lbs wild salmon for 20.
Portion. Bag. Freeze. Consume at your leisure.
If chicken was $7.50 a pound, I’d completely give up bodybuilding. I just watch the sales flyers, and buy the cheapest meat I can find.
-Sab
[quote]Hussayn wrote:
My friend owns a butcher shop and gets them to me for 4.20 a pound. He also ages top cuts of steaks for me at no extra charge.
For chicken, i would save the money because i eat it daily and its nothing fancy anymore. For steak, i’d pay extra.[/quote]
I’m so jealous.
I just get mine at the normal grocery.
[quote]Sabastian525 wrote:
If chicken was $7.50 a pound, I’d completely give up bodybuilding. I just watch the sales flyers, and buy the cheapest meat I can find.
-Sab[/quote]
X2…You have to watch the sales flyers and take advantage of the sale opportunities as they arise. I happen to be a meat dept. mgr. for the largest supermarket chain up here in the northeast. Here is what you find typically on sale during the course of a 4-6 week cycle…
- Boneless chicken breast $ 1.79 lb
- Some type of beef roast such as top round, bottom round, boneless chuck, etc. $1.99 lb
What you do with this is you select the quantity that you want and ask the butcher
to GRIND it for you. This would give you quality ground beef at approx, 85% lean. You
can take it one step further and ask to have it TRIMMED then ground. This would give
you approx. 90% lean or more. Or you could just buy it as a roast, roast the whole
thing,and pick from that for a few days. - Sirloin tip steak $3.99 lb
- Pork tenderloin $ 3.99 lb or, quite often, buy one get one free.
- Whole boneless pork loins $1.79 Lb. These usually average 6-8lbs each so if you do the
math you have yourself a good amount of protein for cheap. You can also have this
custom cut into chops and/or roasts, boneless country style spare ribs. - Top round steak $1.99 lb.
These are just a few examples of opportunities. Anothet thing to consider is to buy “bulk” products. By this I mean whole turkey breasts, whole lamb legs boneless or bone-in, beef roasts, whole chickens/turkeys. This way with just one cooking application you have a pile of meat that you can draw from for a few days. This approach will save you money AND time in the kitchen. At any rate, do your research, check the flyers, make a plan and go for it. It’s not a busy as it sounds.
That’s it for now…gotta go to work ! I’ll be looking for ya’s !
There’s no way I could afford to eat the way I do without COstco and BJs. Still, I have to get my Bison steaks at Traders Joes (about $6 for 4 6-8 oz steaks, not too bad), and usually grab some Tilapia there as well.
S
I buy right from the farmer…
Butchers around me seem to have the worse quality meat. Really taste crap compared to grocery store, and sometimes its even more expensive. I typically spend about $60 a week on meat, basically just breasts and steak.
Depending on how your cooking is, you can usually over-ride the taste of poor quality meat with other stuff.
BJ’s FTW!
Sometimes from the farm (Friendship Farms is a local grass fed meat source). Other times from shops that get grass fed directly from the local farms. One’s the East End Food Co-op the other is called Right By Nature. We’re lucky to have decent options for grass fed in this area. Occassionally you get some decent game food from friend’s kills too. Just had some venison chili the other day which was awesome.
Shit man the US experience sounds totally different from the Canadian. There seems to be far less in way of buying directly from farmers and I gotta check out costco but boneless skinless chicken breasts on sale at like no frills is still 3 or more likely 4 dollars a pound. Am I missing something…some of you other Ontario dwellers chime in here please!
[quote]esk221 wrote:
BJ’s FTW![/quote]
We have a winner!
-Sab
What is BJs? Is it a supermarket or a bulk food store like Costco…
There is a wholefoods 2 blocks from my house which sells grass-fed beef. I also looked up some farms on EatWild.com. there is a farm about 1 hour 10mins away from me which sells Organic-Grass-fed beef. They sell 20lbs of mixed cuts for about $8/LB. They even offer 1/4-1/2 of the whole bovine for like $700. which is a steal if you have the storage for it. . Before that I used to buy my eggs & chicken from BJ’s, Beef & fish from Trader Joe’s.
[quote]BrownTrout wrote:
I buy right from the farmer…[/quote]
I am envious, I buy most of my goods from Trader Joe’s and my chicken breast from Whole foods. Although I may have to check out costco!