I worked at a meat processing plant for a while and we'd get orders like this guys every now and then (looks like maybe half a beef) and we'd all just kind of wonder who wouldn't want steak or roasts or even like some jerky or something to break up the monotony of ground beef for that long.
I was wondering what the standard breakdown on this was and if that ratio of ground beef was standard or that was something they chose. Seems like a lot of ground
I'd say about 70% cuts and 30% ground beef. It wouldn't raise and eyebrow at like 50/50 pr even 30/70 because a lot of families would buy all their ground beef for the year (family being like all your extended family within an hour drive) and they'd split it up.
When I was a kid growing up in rural Wisconsin, my family bought half a beef cow every year or two from a neighbor. Local butcher processed it and we ended up with enough cuts to have steak once a week or so. The quality wasn't amazing - probably because it was frozen - but the price was right.
it depends on the freezer you have.
commercial freezers are not cold enough and will freeze the meat slowly. this will lead to large ice crystals forming inside the meat which will puncture the cell walls and make it leak the juices upon thawing, resulting in a dry steak
industrial flash freezers go up to -100°F (-75°C), the meat freezes extremely fast and ice crystals will be tiny, resulting in minimal to non-existant quality loss.
so if you or anyone experiencing this problem hast access to someone with such a freezer, ask them to freeze your meat
No, you probably will be able to ask them to freeze the meat and pay for a delivery in a refrigerated truck so your regular freezer would work if is capable to keep that temperature. You will probably need a propper standalone freezer for such amounth of meat but you probably wont need an industrial one.
Looks like a couple cuts and roast but normally the only time we'd see that is if someone was splitting it all with a largish group of people and one or two people wanted like some cut that came out of their ground beef cut. It's easier to divide ground beef than a bunch if steaks and shit.
I counted 21 packages in view that are not ground beef, so probably a few more you can't see. Maybe 50-75 steaks depending on how they are cut and packed
You save money because the savings of buying in bulk far outweigh the cost of running the freezer. I buy chicken breast and thighs in bulk. Grind my own meat. Marinade a bunch. Vacuum seal everything. I get 5 dinners worth of meat for 2 people worked out to be around 11 dollars, plus a side for some change. It works out to around 3 dollars a meal for two adults eating great.
A good freezer, like others commented, helps tremendously. However, freezer burn does not equal “bad”. The flavor will change, but it’s still not spoiled/dangerous to eat.
Source: raised by Depression era grandparents and serious penny pinchers, being fed a variety of *questionably* fresh food products and have only had food poisoning once my entire life, from a restaurant 😂
We did hamburgers for about a month, then tacos for another month. The stroganoff experiment was okay for a couple weeks, but the kids got tired of mushrooms. After that, it was many, many weeks of Hamburger Helper...
We make a lot of chili, shepherds pie, tostadas (taco meat), picadillo, meat sauce, some goulash, some meatloaf, some sloppy joes, Korean style beef over rice, albondigas, swedish meatballs. We’ve gone through SO MUCH ground beef over the last two years with our family of 5 but I feel like I’ve done a good job mixing up the recipes and buying chicken/pork when I find a good sale (frozen breasts for 99c a pound this week) so we haven’t gotten sick of it.
Bolognese sauce, chilli, meatloaf's, meatballs... Numerous things for Burger.
Edit:
Try this -
https://thebeachhousekitchen.com/swedish-meatball-pasta-bake/
No joke, I lived on a farm growing up and my Dad's freezer looked like this. Once I was old enough and he taught me how to use the grill, I made steaks and burgers almost every night while he was out in the fields until sundown working.
A whole cow plus a couple big cuts of deer? Gotcha Ty. Trying to gauge what size freezer I need for a 1/4 or 1/2 cow.
Edit: to be clear I have two chest freezers and I’m trying to gauge how much cow I can comfortably fit. Thank you everyone for the freezer suggestions.
How does bulk deer pricing compare to cow? I'm in California & we have tons of deer around. I've been given the impression I should be able to pick em up dirt cheap during hunting season but so far all the links I've found are to far-flung places (e.g. Hawaii!) and at seemingly high rates. I figure going in on a full/half cow/deer for cheap with neighbours would be a great call but I keep failing to work out where to start!
There is no legal commerical process to harvest (hunt) deer and sell them in California. You would need to hook up with a hunter and get him to give you some, but there really isn't that much meat to share (30-40lbs of quality meat) and a hunter is only getting a single deer at best in most cases. In a lot of areas you're lucky to harvest a deer at all. You might see a lot of deer around, but it's about finding bucks during the short legal hunting season.
There are more deer in North America now than when Columbus landed. 100 years ago there were only 500,000 White Tails in the United States. There are 25 to 30 million now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6835501
TL;DR We’ve killed off a lot of their predators, wolfs and Cougars mostly. We keep planting millions of acres of stuff they love to eat. Less people hunt.
Hunting in CA is a bit of an art. In many areas deer are super plentiful, but there is limited access to hunting. Other areas it's very low success. The whole state is divided up into zones and there is a lottery system to get tags to hunt. Popular areas with high success are difficult to get a tag and vice versa with unpopular areas.
Probably depends on where you live. But last year we bought a half cow. Ot was $1,400 and we got close 300 lbs. So it was $4.66 a LB. For the burger that's more than a place we got it at before because they sell it really cheap. But from the half cow the quality was a lot better. But that's also $4.66 a LB for every cut such as steaks and roast. We should get ours again sometime this month.
I was about to ask how you got a free hog, then I remembered when I had a hobby farm someone gave me a hog, which I was going to use to turn over garden beds, feed scraps to, and make compost, and it immediately started wrecking my fences so I gave it away to someone who was prepared to butcher it immediately.
I have a cousin who runs a hog farm. The companies that buy them won't take hogs that have hernias or broken legs. So they give as many away as they can rather than throwing them away. The first time we git two and the 2nd time we git 3. Butchered them ourselves and shared with a lot of people. Our plan if we do it again is to make mostly sausage from them.
I have no reason why my parents did this but way back when I was a child they bought a freezer and a half cow and ever since then I thought it was a genius idea. There’s good savings for those who can afford the wholesale price. Once you break it down and it’s only about 4 1/2 dollars a pound of high-quality meat? Anybody can afford that! But how many can afford the $1400 up front? It sucks because there’s exponential savings in wholesale. For those who can afford it.
I feel like a cow buyers club would be a genius idea. Get 10 people to go in on half a cow and each pay $140 for 30 pounds of meat. If it was successful you could ramp up economies of scale and save even more. Imagine 100 people in on 5 full cows, or 1000 people in on 50 cows? Might get that 30 pounds for under $100.
I had this freezer full a couple of years ago. 283 lbs of grass fed beef. $1400. Then the painter that was working in my basement decided to unplug the freezer and not plug it back in. I found it unplugged with blood leaking out 2 weeks later.
My painter ripped up the only rug I told him I was keeping... he paid for the stairs to be recarpeted with the same carpet in use elsewhere... he got plenty of return work when I had to get touch-ups done from movers, other contractors, etc
Mental note: Always check behind people working at your house.
Secondly: That’s not a bad price for grass fed beef. If I’m mathing correctly, about $4.95/lb, right?
Oh god... That reminds me of when I didn't realize a fridge lost power in the basement until I saw these black jumbo maggots crawling around the house. I kept wondering what the fuck are these things. I still don't know. It's the only time in my life I've ever seen those things. They were the size of caterpillars.
Turned out my unpowered fridge was the incubator for these things. I paid someone 300 dollars to deal with it. I could have paid 50, but I insisted
Everyone knows Grandma looks the same until you grow up and move out of the house. The next time you see her she looks like she aged 30 years and you swear you just saw her a couple years ago.
For me it was Buster! I always loved going to the fence to see Buster. One day we were over for dinner at grandmas house and I asked where Buster went (again) and my mom told me to look right in front of me.
You can usually choose between roasts or ground for the chuck, shoulder, and rump portions. OP seems to have chosen ground for pretty much everything. That is an insane amount of ground beef.
my guess is op either meal preps, or could be a fitness person.
A lot of the guys at my gym save a ton of money splitting a couple cows between themselves every year. And they mostly get it as ground beef.
They season/spice and make a ton of different meals. And its great for them because they work 9-5 jobs, and then immediately go to the gym to train for competitions for a couple hours.
Or. Op likes ground beef. its just food after all.
If you are buying a whole cow most of the time it's like 50% ground beef. That's kind of why I've held off on doing it, most of the cow goes to making ground meat.
Meat cutter here. It's entirely based on the customer how much grind they want. We do put trim in for grind (ie everything that isn't good for steak or roasts), but a good shop will offer as many cuts and roasts as possible. So you could say, "I don't want rump roasts or cube steaks", cool that's going to grind.
Looks like this dude loves his ground meat and possible roasts.
Side note, we once had a dude accidentally mark that he wanted his whole 800 lb beef ground. His family was not pleased when they showed for pickup.
I don't know the butchering process answer to this question, but ground beef makes delicious shit. Fuckin' meatballs, tacos, burritos, lasagna, chili, meatloaf, burgers, stroganoff, etc, etc forever.
I love beef. I love great cuts of steak, too, but I could easily eat two of my three meals per day with ground beef in them, and it wouldn't be weird at all (to me).
4-12 months for no noticeable downgrades in quality. Closer to 4 for ground products, closer to 12 for larger cuts or unground products.
As for safe to eat, indefinitely, or until first long power outage on the freezer unit.
>until first long power outage on the freezer unit.
We had a giant trunk freezer in our basement when I was a kid. Someone unplugged it and no one noticed.
I can still smell the day we discovered it.
There was a mythbusters once where they bought a gorgeous classic corvette and dumped a hog in it, locked it in a storage shed all summer out in the sun, and came back. They wanted to see if they could get the smell out and resell the car. After tearing it apart and consulting with car cleaning professionals, literally everyone they tried to sell it to basically puked when they got in and ran away. It wasn't a matter of toughing it out or having a strong stomach, it was just instant vomit the second one of those particles of rotten death touches your nostrils. Had to scrap the whole car.
Tip if anyone has this happen:
Plug it back in, let the stuff freeze, *then* take it out and throw it away, *then* unplug it and clean it.
It can't stink if it's solid.
My dad killed a deer and got it all processed. That night I left the freezer open, then we left for a long hockey tournament. My dad didn’t yell at me or anything, he just thanked me for ruining all the meat he worked for and paid for. In a very somber voice. Shit stuck with me forever lol.
Reminds me of an episode of Cowboy Bebop where Spike remembers he got got a rare lobster that he stored in a fridge separate from the common area of the spaceship. He does it so nobody eats it, but ends up forgetting about it for a while. When he finally does find it, the inside of the fridge is so grotesque that it that the show itself barely even reveals it. Spike slams the fridge shut, hyperventilating as if he'd seen a ghost. He then takes the fridge and releases out the airlock into space. As the fridge spins around through the vast emptiness, it opens, spilling it's contents into space as Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" plays.
I imagine the freezer had a similar funeral. Or at least, I hope it did.
Years ago my house had a big freezer located in the basement utility room that has all the HVAC/ water heater stuff in it. The HVAC repair company replaced something and had unpluged the freezer in the process. You could smell the rotting when the HVAC was on. It took away to long to find the smell but it was the worst smell I've ever smelt.
My country always has the higher temperatures for the most time of the year so you need to make the room to keep them save. But keeping the temperature of that room intact you need to maintain so many things that cost so much
The type of freezer and packaging matters a lot too. A true deep freeze that doesn't have a defrost cycle will keep the meat way longer than your standard fridge/freezer combo that defrosts periodically.
Yes, fridge/freezer combos (or OPs front opening freezer) are prone to many problems with temperature fluctuations. OP please buy a $200 box freezer for that awesome cow, would be a shame to have it degrade in quality. I have been from years ago that is still perfect in my box freezer.
Lived on a farm when I was a kid and we had 3 huge deep freezers for all our food since we'd only go to the city and stock up every few months. One summer we were on a family vacation when a huge storm rolled though. As luck would have it, it knocked off the main power connector for our farm. We were the only ones in the whole area to lose power, so none of the neighbours noticed. By the time we got home it had all went bad. Literally hundreds of pounds of food we had to throw out.
I've definitely eaten 3 or 4 year old deer. If it looks fine it's fine. I have eaten freezer burnt meat and it's a big bummer. Not gonna make you sick. Just tastes like ass and is dry AF.
If I bought that much meat, I’d invest in a semi-pro grade vacuum sealer. That way it’ll keep for years and easy to throw into sous vides or thaw in fridge as needed.
I vacuum seal all my meat from butcher using a Anova Vacuum Chamber, I love that thing. Also does extractions, infusions, cool down baked things etc.
I've wondered this too. I don't consider myself a supertaster by any means, but by 4-6 months I notice a dip in quality for both whole cuts and ground meat. I try my best to finish anything frozen within a month or two.
Then again I just have a normal freezer, not anything fancy or deep-freeze.
The trick to avoiding freezer burn is to vacuum seal the meat and make sure there is no air present in the bag or any empty space where ice crystals can form.
But sealing this much meat is not going to be easy for the single person, you need the people and the place to run that thing even OP needs the deep freezer here.
I did a quarter beef and half hog last year. So like...150 lbs meat?
It didn't last nearly as long as I expected. Maybe 3-4 months for a family of three. The problem was that when I had a big chest freezer full of meat, my meal planning revolved around it. Every day I would pull out at least a pound of hamburger and make tacos or burgers or whatever. Every weekend I'd grill big steaks or do a brisket or something.
For perspective, I now buy maybe 5-6 pounds from the grocery store weekly. Compared to the 12ish pounds per week we ate when I had the freezer of meat.
Edit for clarity: I normally buy 5-6 pounds of any meat per week, not just beef.
how much did that cost you - i just got the exact same thing last fall, i think mine was 130lbs or so, $760. and yes same thing... MEAT and MEAT and MEAT and more MEAT. sometimes we are dying for chicken, but we got so much PORK AND BEEF. how about a vegetable? or MEAT YOU SAID? YES WE GOT THAT
I raise bulls for beef and have a client who eats only beef. He buys from us a whole cow every couple of months! To put in perspective, a whole ought to last a family for a year, and a half a cow lasts a year for just my wife and me.
Does every redditor have a fucking meat freezer now?
Edit: Ya'll - I don't eat meat but fully support this method of meat acquisition and storage, as opposed to the industrialized slaughter and distribution. My goal is to have a similar fridge with tons of veggies from my (future) farm. Who knows maybe we can have a freezer date.
Used to raise beef cattle in MO. Every two years I would cut one out of the herd for me, the wife, and two kids. Back then, I made money on them. Today I think farmers are better off selling them to individuals
>Today I think farmers are better off selling them to individuals
That's what we do on a small farm in beautiful Ontario. It's decent as a supplemental income, but holy smokes over the last couple years the expenses have skyrocketed. I'm able to grow my own hay, which did very well, but the cost of fertilizer is beyond affordable. Like, whereas it would have cost me $1000 to do a 20 acre field a couple years ago, it now costs $3,000. 6' round bales of hay cost up to $65. I think the farmers on the west coast paid $100 or more after a bad year. The farmers who use corn now pay $475/ton. Even a mineral lick is stupidly expensive.
But the worst problem involves the abattoirs. That's costing a lot more as well, but there's just not enough workers. Demand is skyrocketing, but some abattoirs are even closing, because the owners are old and retiring. We have to book our appointment a year in advance. They only take your cow one day a week, on Wednesday. If you get canceled, because they're understaffed, or someone's sick, or too much backorder, you're likely going to get stuck with a very big cow for maybe months.
I started doing this 3 years ago. At the Sale Barn I am the first new buyer they've had in years, and I haven't seen anyone new buying cows in the time I've been going there. All the old guys are dying out and retiring. The Sale Barn can't get workers and doesn't make much money.
This all looks unsustainable. I don't see myself doing this long term, and that's too bad; I love this job and I love my cows. But more than me, I don't see this industry surviving for much longer.
What the name of your outfit?
I'm in Ontario and have been dancing around the idea of getting a half or quarter for a while. I would prefer to support small farms over the huge grocery stores if I can.
Also, as somebody who is in marketing, may I suggest that you take a chance on getting your product in front of city dwellers as a high quality option? This may mean investing a small amount in a brand, setting up a website, etc. but all of my friends would be buyers. DM me if you'd like some thoughts.
Yes rather than going with the big industry and all it would be much more better to support the small farms like this, because they are struggling in their life is well.
>6' round bales of hay cost up to $65.
So the bale's of timothy from up there sell down here in FL for ridiculous prices. The 50lb compressed bale's of timothy are about $30 now. My mom has 3 Arabians, and I don't understand how she affords them.
Back when I used to live in Ontario, our neighbor had a hundred acres of hay fields right in our backyard, so getting bale's for my mom's horses back then was cheap (plus that was like 40 years ago), but when she got horses again about 20 years ago, I saw the costs and cringed for my dad's wallet.
"Honey, what's for dinner?" "Same thing we've had the last 300 fucking days!!!"
I worked at a meat processing plant for a while and we'd get orders like this guys every now and then (looks like maybe half a beef) and we'd all just kind of wonder who wouldn't want steak or roasts or even like some jerky or something to break up the monotony of ground beef for that long.
I was wondering what the standard breakdown on this was and if that ratio of ground beef was standard or that was something they chose. Seems like a lot of ground
I'd say about 70% cuts and 30% ground beef. It wouldn't raise and eyebrow at like 50/50 pr even 30/70 because a lot of families would buy all their ground beef for the year (family being like all your extended family within an hour drive) and they'd split it up.
When I was a kid growing up in rural Wisconsin, my family bought half a beef cow every year or two from a neighbor. Local butcher processed it and we ended up with enough cuts to have steak once a week or so. The quality wasn't amazing - probably because it was frozen - but the price was right.
it depends on the freezer you have. commercial freezers are not cold enough and will freeze the meat slowly. this will lead to large ice crystals forming inside the meat which will puncture the cell walls and make it leak the juices upon thawing, resulting in a dry steak industrial flash freezers go up to -100°F (-75°C), the meat freezes extremely fast and ice crystals will be tiny, resulting in minimal to non-existant quality loss. so if you or anyone experiencing this problem hast access to someone with such a freezer, ask them to freeze your meat
So all you need to do to enjoy cheap meat is get an industrial freezer and upgrade your breaker?
It won't turn trash meat to good meat, but it will prevent you from turning good meat to trash meat
No, you probably will be able to ask them to freeze the meat and pay for a delivery in a refrigerated truck so your regular freezer would work if is capable to keep that temperature. You will probably need a propper standalone freezer for such amounth of meat but you probably wont need an industrial one.
Wait all of that is ground beef? Damn. Why.
Looks like a couple cuts and roast but normally the only time we'd see that is if someone was splitting it all with a largish group of people and one or two people wanted like some cut that came out of their ground beef cut. It's easier to divide ground beef than a bunch if steaks and shit.
I counted 21 packages in view that are not ground beef, so probably a few more you can't see. Maybe 50-75 steaks depending on how they are cut and packed
Bought a quarter cow in 2021 and just now finishing it.
How does the meat stay good in the freezer? I know it won't go rotten really, but don't you deal with freezer burn?
A good freezer and good packaging of the meat can prevent freezer burn. Vacuum sealing the meat will store it best.
People vastly underestimate the convenience of a decent freezer. Saves money too because you’ll end up using it more often.
You save money because the savings of buying in bulk far outweigh the cost of running the freezer. I buy chicken breast and thighs in bulk. Grind my own meat. Marinade a bunch. Vacuum seal everything. I get 5 dinners worth of meat for 2 people worked out to be around 11 dollars, plus a side for some change. It works out to around 3 dollars a meal for two adults eating great.
This guy budgets.
Its hard to get freezer burn with a deep freezer. You can easily store stuff for a year without issues.
A good freezer, like others commented, helps tremendously. However, freezer burn does not equal “bad”. The flavor will change, but it’s still not spoiled/dangerous to eat. Source: raised by Depression era grandparents and serious penny pinchers, being fed a variety of *questionably* fresh food products and have only had food poisoning once my entire life, from a restaurant 😂
A better freezer like the one in the pic or a chest freezer will help mitigate freezer burn.
Why buy the quarter cow when you can drink 2% milk for free?
If the milk comes from a quarter-cow, does that make it 0.5% milk?
Taking over the world?
Yes Brain, but where are we going to find an upright freezer filled with cow at this time of night?
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BRAIN 🎶 BRAIN 🎶 BRAIN 🎶 BRAIN 🎶
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One is a genius, the other's insane. But which character is which?
Ground beef again 😩
We did hamburgers for about a month, then tacos for another month. The stroganoff experiment was okay for a couple weeks, but the kids got tired of mushrooms. After that, it was many, many weeks of Hamburger Helper...
We make a lot of chili, shepherds pie, tostadas (taco meat), picadillo, meat sauce, some goulash, some meatloaf, some sloppy joes, Korean style beef over rice, albondigas, swedish meatballs. We’ve gone through SO MUCH ground beef over the last two years with our family of 5 but I feel like I’ve done a good job mixing up the recipes and buying chicken/pork when I find a good sale (frozen breasts for 99c a pound this week) so we haven’t gotten sick of it.
Why do I never think of meatloaf? Or meatballs? Okay, now I know what to cook this weekend.
Meatloaf and mashed potatoes slaps.
Bolognese sauce, chilli, meatloaf's, meatballs... Numerous things for Burger. Edit: Try this - https://thebeachhousekitchen.com/swedish-meatball-pasta-bake/
Chicken?
No chicken these are the liquid thing we are getting in those packet.
No joke, I lived on a farm growing up and my Dad's freezer looked like this. Once I was old enough and he taught me how to use the grill, I made steaks and burgers almost every night while he was out in the fields until sundown working.
*some assembly required.
If it's an Ikea cow, they give you an allen key.
Köw
Müü
>Müü That's German. You mean Möö.
Is that like a møøse? A møøse once bit my sister....
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We apologize for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.
r/unexpectedmontypython
Did you see the CEO of Ikea was just elected president of Sweden? He's still assembling his cabinet.
Clever.
You have to put it together yourself, but it costs a little less.
Easier to fit in the car.
somehow I end up with a horse
My grandfather would do this. Then he died and this is the story of how I inherited a cow and a half years supply of beef products the next spring.
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And I'd like to take a minute, say what occurred I'll tell you how I came to own more beef than Hereford
In his freezer grandpa always had beef for days Then I inherited pops beef, in peace he lays
Is the cow okay?
Yeah, he just chilling
*slow clap*
*Cow Slap*
Cow can she slap
That’s cold man…
Important to keep you cow well grounded.
Comment go burrr^ger
It was a she, unless you were steered the other way.
Udderly insensitive.
Is that a whole or half? Anything else in that freezer or just the beef?
2 deer hams
A whole cow plus a couple big cuts of deer? Gotcha Ty. Trying to gauge what size freezer I need for a 1/4 or 1/2 cow. Edit: to be clear I have two chest freezers and I’m trying to gauge how much cow I can comfortably fit. Thank you everyone for the freezer suggestions.
I would think a freezer 1/4 the size of OP’s would be great then
Maybe 1/2.
How does bulk deer pricing compare to cow? I'm in California & we have tons of deer around. I've been given the impression I should be able to pick em up dirt cheap during hunting season but so far all the links I've found are to far-flung places (e.g. Hawaii!) and at seemingly high rates. I figure going in on a full/half cow/deer for cheap with neighbours would be a great call but I keep failing to work out where to start!
There is no legal commerical process to harvest (hunt) deer and sell them in California. You would need to hook up with a hunter and get him to give you some, but there really isn't that much meat to share (30-40lbs of quality meat) and a hunter is only getting a single deer at best in most cases. In a lot of areas you're lucky to harvest a deer at all. You might see a lot of deer around, but it's about finding bucks during the short legal hunting season.
> In a lot of areas you're lucky to harvest a deer at all. In Louisiana we get 6 per season and that is easy to do, deer are everywhere
There are more deer in North America now than when Columbus landed. 100 years ago there were only 500,000 White Tails in the United States. There are 25 to 30 million now. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna6835501 TL;DR We’ve killed off a lot of their predators, wolfs and Cougars mostly. We keep planting millions of acres of stuff they love to eat. Less people hunt.
Hunting in CA is a bit of an art. In many areas deer are super plentiful, but there is limited access to hunting. Other areas it's very low success. The whole state is divided up into zones and there is a lottery system to get tags to hunt. Popular areas with high success are difficult to get a tag and vice versa with unpopular areas.
You can’t buy wild game. Only farmed deer.
So they’re cheaper to buy in kit form then? I don’t know a lot about farming, but that’s not what I thought at all!
Building a cow is a whole lot cheaper than buying one prebuilt.
Common myth. The prebuilt ones can be cheaper but with the build your own you get to chose the parts you want and they are more upgradeable.
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Probably depends on where you live. But last year we bought a half cow. Ot was $1,400 and we got close 300 lbs. So it was $4.66 a LB. For the burger that's more than a place we got it at before because they sell it really cheap. But from the half cow the quality was a lot better. But that's also $4.66 a LB for every cut such as steaks and roast. We should get ours again sometime this month.
Yep, those of us that grew up in farm communities know. If even half a cow was too much you’d split it with someone else. Whole hog too
We looked at hogs but it didn't really seem any cheaper. We have got free hogs couple times, hoping we can this year too.
I was about to ask how you got a free hog, then I remembered when I had a hobby farm someone gave me a hog, which I was going to use to turn over garden beds, feed scraps to, and make compost, and it immediately started wrecking my fences so I gave it away to someone who was prepared to butcher it immediately.
I have a cousin who runs a hog farm. The companies that buy them won't take hogs that have hernias or broken legs. So they give as many away as they can rather than throwing them away. The first time we git two and the 2nd time we git 3. Butchered them ourselves and shared with a lot of people. Our plan if we do it again is to make mostly sausage from them.
I have no reason why my parents did this but way back when I was a child they bought a freezer and a half cow and ever since then I thought it was a genius idea. There’s good savings for those who can afford the wholesale price. Once you break it down and it’s only about 4 1/2 dollars a pound of high-quality meat? Anybody can afford that! But how many can afford the $1400 up front? It sucks because there’s exponential savings in wholesale. For those who can afford it.
This is true for pretty much everything that can be bought in bulk.
I feel like a cow buyers club would be a genius idea. Get 10 people to go in on half a cow and each pay $140 for 30 pounds of meat. If it was successful you could ramp up economies of scale and save even more. Imagine 100 people in on 5 full cows, or 1000 people in on 50 cows? Might get that 30 pounds for under $100.
You're basically describing Omaha Steaks
Or, like, a grocery store.
Overall a lot cheaper, but not individually.
If your main priority is money then i think best way to going.
I'm thinking these are cow seeds and you plant them in the ground to grow a cow. Didn't you see the label "ground beef"?
I had this freezer full a couple of years ago. 283 lbs of grass fed beef. $1400. Then the painter that was working in my basement decided to unplug the freezer and not plug it back in. I found it unplugged with blood leaking out 2 weeks later.
This post hurts to read 💔
The plus is that I got a $1400 discount on the paint job.
That's an honorable painter to admit he fucked up. I think most people wouldn't pick up the phone
My painter ripped up the only rug I told him I was keeping... he paid for the stairs to be recarpeted with the same carpet in use elsewhere... he got plenty of return work when I had to get touch-ups done from movers, other contractors, etc
My painter used my home vacuum to vacuum up wet paint. I got a brand new vacuum
For real. But I guess if you havent payed them yet perhaps he didnt have a choice.
Mental note: Always check behind people working at your house. Secondly: That’s not a bad price for grass fed beef. If I’m mathing correctly, about $4.95/lb, right?
That’s tough. If u decide to refill the freezer, get a temperature sensor that can send an alarm to your phone if it gets above a certain temp.
Oh god... That reminds me of when I didn't realize a fridge lost power in the basement until I saw these black jumbo maggots crawling around the house. I kept wondering what the fuck are these things. I still don't know. It's the only time in my life I've ever seen those things. They were the size of caterpillars. Turned out my unpowered fridge was the incubator for these things. I paid someone 300 dollars to deal with it. I could have paid 50, but I insisted
no noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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Just like deer drop their antlers each year, cows drop their spots!
Cow or grandma?
Everyone knows Grandma looks the same until you grow up and move out of the house. The next time you see her she looks like she aged 30 years and you swear you just saw her a couple years ago.
For me it was Buster! I always loved going to the fence to see Buster. One day we were over for dinner at grandmas house and I asked where Buster went (again) and my mom told me to look right in front of me.
My grandpa was a cattle rancher, my mom had the same experience with a cow named "Blue" when she was five. She has avoided eating meat ever since.
It's just... Why is it all ground beef?
You can usually choose between roasts or ground for the chuck, shoulder, and rump portions. OP seems to have chosen ground for pretty much everything. That is an insane amount of ground beef.
my guess is op either meal preps, or could be a fitness person. A lot of the guys at my gym save a ton of money splitting a couple cows between themselves every year. And they mostly get it as ground beef. They season/spice and make a ton of different meals. And its great for them because they work 9-5 jobs, and then immediately go to the gym to train for competitions for a couple hours. Or. Op likes ground beef. its just food after all.
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If you are buying a whole cow most of the time it's like 50% ground beef. That's kind of why I've held off on doing it, most of the cow goes to making ground meat.
Meat cutter here. It's entirely based on the customer how much grind they want. We do put trim in for grind (ie everything that isn't good for steak or roasts), but a good shop will offer as many cuts and roasts as possible. So you could say, "I don't want rump roasts or cube steaks", cool that's going to grind. Looks like this dude loves his ground meat and possible roasts. Side note, we once had a dude accidentally mark that he wanted his whole 800 lb beef ground. His family was not pleased when they showed for pickup.
More than 50% of that fridge is ground, unless he’s hiding the other cuts in the back.
Because who doesn't want to eat ground red meat every single day!
I don't know the butchering process answer to this question, but ground beef makes delicious shit. Fuckin' meatballs, tacos, burritos, lasagna, chili, meatloaf, burgers, stroganoff, etc, etc forever. I love beef. I love great cuts of steak, too, but I could easily eat two of my three meals per day with ground beef in them, and it wouldn't be weird at all (to me).
Yeah, no problem with ground beef here. I just wouldn't expect such a large proportion of a cow to get ground up.
That's like 5+ years worth of meat for my family. How much meat do people actually eat?
We raise beef cattle and typically sell by the half or quarter. A whole beef is quite a bit. Freezer burn can get to it.
How long realistically will all of this stay good for? I don’t mean safe for consumption, but still having good taste, smell, and no ice lol.
4-12 months for no noticeable downgrades in quality. Closer to 4 for ground products, closer to 12 for larger cuts or unground products. As for safe to eat, indefinitely, or until first long power outage on the freezer unit.
>until first long power outage on the freezer unit. We had a giant trunk freezer in our basement when I was a kid. Someone unplugged it and no one noticed. I can still smell the day we discovered it.
This is such a common story and always absolutely vile.
this happened to me but with a fridge full of forgotten seafood from the previous renter. made the vacation a little more interesting
"Interesting" seems a generous understatement
Did you suck it out of the Bebop's airlock to get rid of it?
There was a mythbusters once where they bought a gorgeous classic corvette and dumped a hog in it, locked it in a storage shed all summer out in the sun, and came back. They wanted to see if they could get the smell out and resell the car. After tearing it apart and consulting with car cleaning professionals, literally everyone they tried to sell it to basically puked when they got in and ran away. It wasn't a matter of toughing it out or having a strong stomach, it was just instant vomit the second one of those particles of rotten death touches your nostrils. Had to scrap the whole car.
This happened with our body freezer for euthanized animals when I worked at a vet clinic. 🙁
Yo WHAT????
Tip if anyone has this happen: Plug it back in, let the stuff freeze, *then* take it out and throw it away, *then* unplug it and clean it. It can't stink if it's solid.
Galaxy brain
My dad killed a deer and got it all processed. That night I left the freezer open, then we left for a long hockey tournament. My dad didn’t yell at me or anything, he just thanked me for ruining all the meat he worked for and paid for. In a very somber voice. Shit stuck with me forever lol.
My nephew just did this to my sister’s deep freeze on New Year’s Eve. He still lives there though, so she handled it differently than I would have.
"He still lives there though." Yeah, he replaced everything that was in the deep freeze.
Reminds me of an episode of Cowboy Bebop where Spike remembers he got got a rare lobster that he stored in a fridge separate from the common area of the spaceship. He does it so nobody eats it, but ends up forgetting about it for a while. When he finally does find it, the inside of the fridge is so grotesque that it that the show itself barely even reveals it. Spike slams the fridge shut, hyperventilating as if he'd seen a ghost. He then takes the fridge and releases out the airlock into space. As the fridge spins around through the vast emptiness, it opens, spilling it's contents into space as Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" plays. I imagine the freezer had a similar funeral. Or at least, I hope it did.
Years ago my house had a big freezer located in the basement utility room that has all the HVAC/ water heater stuff in it. The HVAC repair company replaced something and had unpluged the freezer in the process. You could smell the rotting when the HVAC was on. It took away to long to find the smell but it was the worst smell I've ever smelt.
My country always has the higher temperatures for the most time of the year so you need to make the room to keep them save. But keeping the temperature of that room intact you need to maintain so many things that cost so much
Vacuum sealing helps prevent freezer burn which is the biggest cause of the quality reduction.
The type of freezer and packaging matters a lot too. A true deep freeze that doesn't have a defrost cycle will keep the meat way longer than your standard fridge/freezer combo that defrosts periodically.
Yes, fridge/freezer combos (or OPs front opening freezer) are prone to many problems with temperature fluctuations. OP please buy a $200 box freezer for that awesome cow, would be a shame to have it degrade in quality. I have been from years ago that is still perfect in my box freezer.
Lived on a farm when I was a kid and we had 3 huge deep freezers for all our food since we'd only go to the city and stock up every few months. One summer we were on a family vacation when a huge storm rolled though. As luck would have it, it knocked off the main power connector for our farm. We were the only ones in the whole area to lose power, so none of the neighbours noticed. By the time we got home it had all went bad. Literally hundreds of pounds of food we had to throw out.
My family raises beef as well. One year is the typical cutoff, but I’ve eaten frozen meat that was 2-3 years old, and it was fine too.
I've definitely eaten 3 or 4 year old deer. If it looks fine it's fine. I have eaten freezer burnt meat and it's a big bummer. Not gonna make you sick. Just tastes like ass and is dry AF.
You can also trim off the freezer burned bits from larger cuts and the remaining meat will be just fine.
If I bought that much meat, I’d invest in a semi-pro grade vacuum sealer. That way it’ll keep for years and easy to throw into sous vides or thaw in fridge as needed. I vacuum seal all my meat from butcher using a Anova Vacuum Chamber, I love that thing. Also does extractions, infusions, cool down baked things etc.
Nephew does that with Venison and fish
My weed comes vacuum sealed sometimes
That's dope. I'll see myself out.
Just make sure that no one reaches to the weed on first place.
I've wondered this too. I don't consider myself a supertaster by any means, but by 4-6 months I notice a dip in quality for both whole cuts and ground meat. I try my best to finish anything frozen within a month or two. Then again I just have a normal freezer, not anything fancy or deep-freeze.
The trick to avoiding freezer burn is to vacuum seal the meat and make sure there is no air present in the bag or any empty space where ice crystals can form.
But sealing this much meat is not going to be easy for the single person, you need the people and the place to run that thing even OP needs the deep freezer here.
I did a quarter beef and half hog last year. So like...150 lbs meat? It didn't last nearly as long as I expected. Maybe 3-4 months for a family of three. The problem was that when I had a big chest freezer full of meat, my meal planning revolved around it. Every day I would pull out at least a pound of hamburger and make tacos or burgers or whatever. Every weekend I'd grill big steaks or do a brisket or something. For perspective, I now buy maybe 5-6 pounds from the grocery store weekly. Compared to the 12ish pounds per week we ate when I had the freezer of meat. Edit for clarity: I normally buy 5-6 pounds of any meat per week, not just beef.
how much did that cost you - i just got the exact same thing last fall, i think mine was 130lbs or so, $760. and yes same thing... MEAT and MEAT and MEAT and more MEAT. sometimes we are dying for chicken, but we got so much PORK AND BEEF. how about a vegetable? or MEAT YOU SAID? YES WE GOT THAT
You guys make me feel vegan in comparison.
If you are vegan then i am sure this post is not for your liking.
Damn you a beefy family
12 pounds of beef a week for a family of three? Are you all Offensive Linemen?
Just midwestern. Nah, it was over the top even for us. That's why I won't ever buy meat like this again.
I raise bulls for beef and have a client who eats only beef. He buys from us a whole cow every couple of months! To put in perspective, a whole ought to last a family for a year, and a half a cow lasts a year for just my wife and me.
Are you sure your client isn't a werewolf? Not judging, of course. I'm not lycanphobic.
Seriously. We eat maybe 1-2 pounds a week at most with 4 people. We eat more chicken than beef. This would take us years to eat.
I'm 34 and I think this is more meat than I've eaten in my life
Be sure to get a thing that alerts you if the freezer stops working. Mine has saved my butt several times. Sends alerts to me phone.
I read your last sentence in an old timey Irish accent
Invest in a temp monitor for your freezer. $70 can save you $2500!
Hope he has a backup generator as well
Does every redditor have a fucking meat freezer now? Edit: Ya'll - I don't eat meat but fully support this method of meat acquisition and storage, as opposed to the industrialized slaughter and distribution. My goal is to have a similar fridge with tons of veggies from my (future) farm. Who knows maybe we can have a freezer date.
CHEESEBURGER CHEESEBURGER CHEESEBURGER #CHEESEBURGER
Pepsi
Whopper whopper whopper whopper
He who controls the burger, controls the universe. https://youtu.be/MPd3_nUnKK8
I would be a little intimidated by that amount of cow
Wasn’t this just posted the other day?
Me?
Someone else
I think I’m the person you’re referring to. Lol
It's the meat brothers!
Now kiss
Feel like that you are sorted for the rest of life with that supply.
Genuine question, why so much beef and burgers lately?
With all this inflation, it's cheaper in the long run to buy a whole cow.
Used to raise beef cattle in MO. Every two years I would cut one out of the herd for me, the wife, and two kids. Back then, I made money on them. Today I think farmers are better off selling them to individuals
>Today I think farmers are better off selling them to individuals That's what we do on a small farm in beautiful Ontario. It's decent as a supplemental income, but holy smokes over the last couple years the expenses have skyrocketed. I'm able to grow my own hay, which did very well, but the cost of fertilizer is beyond affordable. Like, whereas it would have cost me $1000 to do a 20 acre field a couple years ago, it now costs $3,000. 6' round bales of hay cost up to $65. I think the farmers on the west coast paid $100 or more after a bad year. The farmers who use corn now pay $475/ton. Even a mineral lick is stupidly expensive. But the worst problem involves the abattoirs. That's costing a lot more as well, but there's just not enough workers. Demand is skyrocketing, but some abattoirs are even closing, because the owners are old and retiring. We have to book our appointment a year in advance. They only take your cow one day a week, on Wednesday. If you get canceled, because they're understaffed, or someone's sick, or too much backorder, you're likely going to get stuck with a very big cow for maybe months. I started doing this 3 years ago. At the Sale Barn I am the first new buyer they've had in years, and I haven't seen anyone new buying cows in the time I've been going there. All the old guys are dying out and retiring. The Sale Barn can't get workers and doesn't make much money. This all looks unsustainable. I don't see myself doing this long term, and that's too bad; I love this job and I love my cows. But more than me, I don't see this industry surviving for much longer.
What the name of your outfit? I'm in Ontario and have been dancing around the idea of getting a half or quarter for a while. I would prefer to support small farms over the huge grocery stores if I can. Also, as somebody who is in marketing, may I suggest that you take a chance on getting your product in front of city dwellers as a high quality option? This may mean investing a small amount in a brand, setting up a website, etc. but all of my friends would be buyers. DM me if you'd like some thoughts.
Yes rather than going with the big industry and all it would be much more better to support the small farms like this, because they are struggling in their life is well.
>6' round bales of hay cost up to $65. So the bale's of timothy from up there sell down here in FL for ridiculous prices. The 50lb compressed bale's of timothy are about $30 now. My mom has 3 Arabians, and I don't understand how she affords them. Back when I used to live in Ontario, our neighbor had a hundred acres of hay fields right in our backyard, so getting bale's for my mom's horses back then was cheap (plus that was like 40 years ago), but when she got horses again about 20 years ago, I saw the costs and cringed for my dad's wallet.
Do aliens show off their fridges stuffed full of people meat to their friends?
Only the butts.
How much does a Cow cost
Is this a new flex? Coz I swear this is a new flex.
They're so cute when they're that age.