Buying grass fed beef in bulk?

[Stayseeliz]

Have any of you found this to be worth the money? Right now I can get ground beef for about $5.50 a lb. I know of one place that does a whole cow for $3.50 lb or 1/2 for $3.75 lb hanging weight. But I wonder what it comes out to realistically when it comes to packaged weight. I also try to stick with ground beef since I can make it stretch farther than a sirloin. Even at $4 a lb a chuck roast won't go a long way with a family of six. Tonight I used one lb of ground beef and made a faux hamburger helper with homemade ingredients and that went a LOT further than a chuck roast would have. I'd love to hear input!

[cjzimmer1]

We buy a half every year and then another 30-50 pounds of hamburger. For the half by the time you figure in meat costs and processing costs, the cost per pound of the take home meat is within a few cents of the price of just buying hamburger by the pound. So buying the half isn't really saving us per pound but it does give us the opportunity for meat like steaks or roasts that we simply wouldn't even be able to afford otherwise. Sure it doesn't stretch as far but it sure is nice for the variety at a reasonable cost. If you are only looking at costs and stretching the meat, then you are probably better off just buying the hamburger.

[klmama]

A hamburger helper type of ground beef dish seems like it goes farther than burger patties because of the extra ingredients, even though the amount of beef is the same. The same is true with roasts. I make a chuck roast in the crock pot, remove any chunks of fat, set aside a third or a quarter of the meat, and serve the rest with several veggie dishes my family loves enough to want second helpings. I make a pot of beef-vegetable soup with the roast drippings and the set-aside and left-over beef. If I want to get yet another meal from it, I can serve bread and salad with the soup, then use the left-over soup as a base for a casserole. Just add the ingredients you want, such as noodles or rice, cheese, sour cream, salt, and more veggies.

 

With steaks, I often debone them and cut them in thirds before serving so that everyone starts with smaller portions of meat, along with potatoes or rice pilaf, several veggies, and bread. Served that way, our whole family is usually fed well with two steaks.

[UrbanSue]

In my experience, the final weight of the beef has always made the cost fall below what I usually pay for grass fed ground beef. Around here the price is the same, or slightly cheaper to buy in bulk. Generally you will get a LOT of ground beef and, then, for the same price, some nice roasts and steaks which for us is always a nice change. Any farmer you buy from should be able to give you a pretty close estimate as the final weight you are bringing home and the approximate mix of the cuts.

[UrbanSue]

A hamburger helper type of ground beef dish seems like it goes farther than burger patties because of the extra ingredients, even though the amount of beef is the same. The same is true with roasts. I make a chuck roast in the crock pot, remove any chunks of fat, set aside a third or a quarter of the meat, and serve the rest with several veggie dishes my family loves enough to want second helpings. I make a pot of beef-vegetable soup with the roast drippings and the set-aside and left-over beef. If I want to get yet another meal from it, I can serve bread and salad with the soup, then use the left-over soup as a base for a casserole. Just add the ingredients you want, such as noodles or rice, cheese, sour cream, salt, and more veggies.

 

With steaks, I often debone them and cut them in thirds before serving so that everyone starts with smaller portions of meat, along with potatoes or rice pilaf, several veggies, and bread. Served that way, our whole family is usually fed well with two steaks.

 

 

 

These are all great ideas and we do this, too. I like to stretch my meat . . . and I also like to eat the nicest meat I can. But no way can we afford quality beef in the nicer cuts. We stretch a 3-pound roast for three meals, usually. And we can eat on two steaks but cutting small ones or slicing the steaks thin for salads or stir-frys.

[RoughCollie]

I bought 1/2 of a grass-fed, grass-finished steer. There were 93 lbs. of ground beef. The meat totally filled my large, upright freezer. It was an economical purchase, lower-priced per pound than the beef at the grocery store. It tastes delicious. I am not much of a beef eater because I think grocery store beef doesn't taste good. I enjoy eating beef now.

 

To make the meat last as long as possible, I portion serving sizes. The 4 men get 6 oz. servings of cooked meat. This looks pitifully tiny to them, especially when they think a 1 lb. steak is just about the right size. (They aren't like this with chicken and fish.) My DD and I get 4 oz servings, weighed before it is cooked, because that is what we prefer. I use half the meat and double the veg in mixtures like spaghetti sauce, chili, and stews. None of us are in any danger of not getting enough protein.

 

One really great thing is that a lot of people don't want the bones, so I bought 40 lbs. of them very cheaply. I use them to make beef broth, which I freeze. I still have 2 very large bags of bones in my freezer. If you like liver, that's another part most people don't take. I asked for 3 livers, because I like it and to make treats for my dog. I got the tail too, for oxtail soup.

 

My half steer ended up being 337 lbs. of meat. I paid $960 to the farmer and $217 to the butcher, which works out to $3.49/lb. That is less than ground beef costs at the grocery store. The oxtail ($1 ea), livers, and extra bones are included in this price, but not in the 337 lbs.

 

The meat I bought included:

* Chuck, shoulder, sirloin tip, and rump roasts

* Short ribs

* Stew meat

* Rib, t-bone, sirloin, cube, round, and flank steaks

* Ground beef

 

The butcher called me to ask how I wanted the meat butchered -- mostly bone-in or out, and weight of roasts. I asked for 5 lb. roasts, and just so you know, they barely fit into a 6 qt crock pot. The shoulder roasts are bone-in, because I had no clue how large a shoulder bone is -- they won't fit in the crock pot. I bought an inexpensive stainless steel 16 qt. stock pot to use for boiling bones and for cooking roasts that don't fit into a Dutch oven or a crock pot.

 

Also, I asked the butcher to grind the beef instead of doing it myself. First, I made sure the beef would come only from the steer I was buying 1/2 of, and that the ground meat would not be mixed with meat from other steers at any stage in the process. They had no reason to lie to me about this because I made it clear that I was happy to grind my own beef.

 

I like knowing where my steer has been, and how it lived and died. It had a great life about 10 miles from my house, and never went to a feed lot, ate corn, and never ingested any hormones or antibiotics, or anything else that would be bad for it.

 

If you want the eyes or heart for dissection or experimental purposes, you must be there so you can get it right away from the butcher. Otherwise, that heart will never beat again, no matter how great the experiment you have in mind for it is. The eyes should be fresh, too. I did not ask about the butchering process; I just took the butcher's word for it. I haven't gone back to get fresh parts, so we haven't done the dissections or the heart experiment.

[Luckymama]

Wow RoughCollie, that's a sweet price!

[whitestavern]

We just purchased a 1/4 grass fed cow. It was $3/lb. plus $12.50 killing fee, plus .65/lb. to package. It ends up coming out to be about $4.50/lb. for ready to eat product, which I think is really good because the only thing I can buy grass fed around here is ground beef, and that's $5/lb. So now I get a ton of ground beef, but also roasts, steaks, etc.