Meat at Your Door

Published on Friday, March 14, 2008, by Lessley Anderson / Edit Post

Love it, cook it well, eat it responsibly.

Get to Know Bison
Your questions answered.

Meat at Your Door
Bypass the supermarket and buy it direct.

How to Buy, Freeze,
and Prepare Meat
Smart tips from a butcher.

Your Meat Is Green
Ten ways to be a responsible carnivore.

Innard Workings
Chris Cosentino wants you to eat the nasty bits.

Beyond the Porterhouse
Ten underappreciated cuts of meat.

Buying a Whole Animal

You may feel seduced by the old-timey-sounding prospect of buying an entire side of a steer (or pig, or lamb) and splitting it up with your friends. Check out the story of one CHOW writer who did it last year. Though this model is the most effort-intensive on the part of the consumer, it requires virtually nothing extra on the part of the rancher, so in that sense, it is the easiest to pull off. It’s also the most economical. Unlike joining a club or subscribing to a CSA, this may be a one-off deal.

Do you have enough friends to split up 30 steaks and 60 pounds of hamburger?

First, shop around, because you’re going to be eating a lot of the animal you buy. You can cull at least a partial list of local producers from Eatwild.com. Ranchers will usually be happy to give you a sample before you commit. Ask for one at the farmers’ market, if the farm has a stand there, or drive out so you can see the operation and feel good about how the animals are raised. You can compare prices, too. Most ranchers have set rates for bulk meat sales. However, the price per pound given to you may be for the “hanging weight,” meaning the weight of the animal before it’s been butchered. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to compare it directly to the price per pound you pay for supermarket meat.

Once you’ve settled on whom you want to buy from, decide how much meat you want. Though it varies according to the size of the animal, a side of beef will yield roughly 200 pounds of meat. Do you have enough friends to split up 30 steaks and 60 pounds of hamburger? Or too many, so that somebody’s going to end up with all hamburger and no steaks?

Know how you want the animal to be butchered. Though the producer will probably have a relationship with a butcher, and will send the animal there after you’ve paid for it and it’s been slaughtered, you should let the butcher (or the rancher, who will pass it on to the butcher) know which cuts you want. “There’s some stuff foodies are into, like short ribs or hanger steaks, that these old-fashioned American butchers don’t necessarily cut unless you tell them to,” says CHOW contributor Daniel Duane, who has bought several whole animals with friends. You can also specify whether you want things the butcher might toss, like soup bones, or offal, or fatback (see our sidebar on rendering lard). Once the meat is cut, packaged, and frozen, you may have to pick the animal up from the butcher or the ranch, but in many cases the ranch will deliver it to you.

Find somewhere to store it. Jo Robinson, grass-fed beef advocate and creator of Eatwild.com, says a cheap box freezer from Sears will do. “You don’t need a top-of-the-line KitchenAid,” she says. In some parts of the country where there are a lot of hunters, you can also find meat-locker space for rent.

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  • I literally just found out that Polyface Farm (made famous in Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma") has a buying club in my area. I can get Polyface chickens, sausage and eggs from my local market but it's hit or miss when they're in stock and they're expensive because, well, the market's got to make its money too. Over the past few months I've made a pretty concerted effort to buy...+READ

    I literally just found out that Polyface Farm (made famous in Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma") has a buying club in my area. I can get Polyface chickens, sausage and eggs from my local market but it's hit or miss when they're in stock and they're expensive because, well, the market's got to make its money too. Over the past few months I've made a pretty concerted effort to buy local and free range and this is going to help tremendously. I'm such a food nerd. ;)-COLLAPSE

  • I appreciate this thread as I am a meat producer and it does make a world of difference when folks get their meat directly from me because I feel like they are getting a fair bargain and are assured fresh quality meats and we are able to provide that meat because you buy directly from us which serves to sustain our farm without a middle man taking his unfair share.
    Thanks to all our customers! :)
    ...+READ

    I appreciate this thread as I am a meat producer and it does make a world of difference when folks get their meat directly from me because I feel like they are getting a fair bargain and are assured fresh quality meats and we are able to provide that meat because you buy directly from us which serves to sustain our farm without a middle man taking his unfair share.
    Thanks to all our customers! :)
    .... Buy local whenever and wherever you can folks!
    Cheers!-COLLAPSE

  • can anyone tell me where in ireland i can buy half a cow and approx how much it would cost. thanks for any help

  • We bought half a beef from a place that raises them and have their own butcher on site. The meat has been incredible. I have friends that raise meat chickens so we get our chickens from them. We raise our own hens for eggs. A friend raised an extra pig for us last year and that meat has been incredible also.
    I would NEVER go back to store bought meat. I can't stand the thought of the factory...+READ

    We bought half a beef from a place that raises them and have their own butcher on site. The meat has been incredible. I have friends that raise meat chickens so we get our chickens from them. We raise our own hens for eggs. A friend raised an extra pig for us last year and that meat has been incredible also.
    I would NEVER go back to store bought meat. I can't stand the thought of the factory farms.-COLLAPSE

  • I started doing this a few years ago and it sounded really out-there to me. Now I know more and more people who either do buy farmer-direct, or who would like to. I buy poultry, pork and lamb from the farmer's market, and shares of pork and beef through co-ops with other families - couldn't be happier with it. I have had breeds of beef that I didn't like as much, and there was a learning curve...+READ

    I started doing this a few years ago and it sounded really out-there to me. Now I know more and more people who either do buy farmer-direct, or who would like to. I buy poultry, pork and lamb from the farmer's market, and shares of pork and beef through co-ops with other families - couldn't be happier with it. I have had breeds of beef that I didn't like as much, and there was a learning curve with cooking grass-finished beef, but it's been so worth it.-COLLAPSE

  • We're really fortunate in my part of Ireland that we have a local butcher who does his own beef slaughtering (and practically knows every cow by name). Nonetheless the pork slaughter is handled somewhere else, and getting leaf lard is very difficult. Annoying, since the Irish diet is changing enough that supermarkets rarely carry lard any more, just "cooking fat". (It's not that the diet's...+READ

    We're really fortunate in my part of Ireland that we have a local butcher who does his own beef slaughtering (and practically knows every cow by name). Nonetheless the pork slaughter is handled somewhere else, and getting leaf lard is very difficult. Annoying, since the Irish diet is changing enough that supermarkets rarely carry lard any more, just "cooking fat". (It's not that the diet's getting any healthier -- rather the opposite: people are depending on pre-cooked meals and fast food more than ever before, and no one wants lard now simply because most people aren't willing to do the kind of cooking that calls for it -- i.e., from scratch. A sad trend.)

    However, the huge influx of eastern European people to Ireland in recent years means that the little local Polish, Russian, Lithuanian and Czech groceries routinely carry jars of "smalec", which is lard in jars, either plain or flavored with fried onion. (And now I understand the tradition underlying "schmalz".) Yum!-COLLAPSE

  • Wineunleashed - Where do you get your beef from? We have a great lamb source already.

  • The reason to skip the local butcher is that they usually carry factory farmed meat - this is what many of us who buy direct from the farm are trying to avoid. I would rather pay the farmer directly as they make a better profit that way, and it's cheaper for me than buying from the very few places that carry pastured and/or more traditionally raised meats.

  • I buy half a cow at a time and just love it. I know ( I met the cow beforehand) that what I am serving my family is top notch. Also grass fed beef is FAR superior to that of corn fed. I also buy two lambs each year. You just have to get in the pattern of it. I usually take the meat out the freezer the night before and usually it is thawed by the next morning. If you do a lot of entertaining this...+READ

    I buy half a cow at a time and just love it. I know ( I met the cow beforehand) that what I am serving my family is top notch. Also grass fed beef is FAR superior to that of corn fed. I also buy two lambs each year. You just have to get in the pattern of it. I usually take the meat out the freezer the night before and usually it is thawed by the next morning. If you do a lot of entertaining this is a very economical way to feed a crowd.

    I do buy additional meats from a local butcher. So I do support both.

    I am still looking for a pig resource. If anyone has any in the San Francisco- bay area, let me know.-COLLAPSE

  • Or how about going to your local butcher and supporting them?

    My local butcher hand cuts prime beef for me, as well as supplys me with any cut of pork, or lamb I want. I can also get rabbit, duck, and fresh turkeys.

  • There are a goodly number of online operations in the UK which sell butchered meat in family quantities. I buy, online, organic meat direct from a farm in my own region of northwest England. Probably order a couple of times a year.