Where to get meat and what to get

[Anonymous]

So I live in a smaller town (<200k people) and I've only found one place in town that sells any form of Prime meat (and they typically only have Prime ribeyes). That particular place is where I've been buying my meat for a while now, as even though most of what they sell is Choice, it seems to be much better quality than what you get at the grocery store.

My question is where should I go to find good Prime subprimal cuts that I can use for dryaging? I guess I could ask this shop, but I'm scared it'll be very expensive (frame of reference, their Choice filets are $20/lb) Is there somewhere online or should I just stick with the local place?

[Anonymous]

IMHO, I wouldn’t use prime grade. Use choice or even select. Look into KC strip loins for (sometimes) a cheaper cut. Ask for a subprimal and ask if they can cut you a deal since they don’t have to cut it/prep it. If you have to order online your gonna get alot of $$$ invested.

What ever you do, do NOT order from Omaha steaks. IMHO, flavorless and way over priced. but….just my opinion.

[Anonymous]

So I went ahead and called the local place I was referring to and asked for a price on the top loin and he gave me a price on the short loin at $7.29/lb. After I hung up, I realized what just happened, so I called him back and explained I wanted the strip or top loin, not the entire short loin, and he quoted me at the same $7.29/lb. Is that reasonable? Way high? I’m new to this and just have no gauge.

[Ron Pratt]

I shop in an even smaller town of about 100K and in spite of having two good retail butcher shops plus a packing house operation finding any prime sub-primals just doesn’t happen – as they don’t even stock it. Two owners have told me the major slaughter houses reserve prime for the restaurants and to forget finding it readily available. OTOH on another board I frequent people say they can buy prime sub-primals from COSTCO – which we don’t have in 200 miles from here. Plus they claim it is not expensive!

What I do is go to the two butcher shops and sort through their offerings looking for signs of marbled ends. OTOH the last strip loin I aged came from SAMS and that day they were bracing for a run and I recall I had 12 packages to pick from. They were all marked as choice and I paid $6.99 a pound.

[Anonymous]

RRP wrote:

quote :

I shop in an even smaller town of about 100K and in spite of having two good retail butcher shops plus a packing house operation finding any prime sub-primals just doesn’t happen – as they don’t even stock it. Two owners have told me the major slaughter houses reserve prime for the restaurants and to forget finding it readily available. OTOH on another board I frequent people say they can buy prime sub-primals from COSTCO – which we don’t have in 200 miles from here. Plus they claim it is not expensive!

What I do is go to the two butcher shops and sort through their offerings looking for signs of marbled ends. OTOH the last strip loin I aged came from SAMS and that day they were bracing for a run and I recall I had 12 packages to pick from. They were all marked as choice and I paid $6.99 a pound.

I know what you mean…I’ve read the same stuff about Costco other places on the internet as well. Doesn’t help me any…

Based on the price you said you paid at Sam’s, my local little butcher shop/meat market sounds a lot cheaper than I had expected. I’ll just work with them…I like supporting small biz anyway. Now I’ve just got to find myself a fridge on craigslist since ‘she who must be obeyed’ decreed that there will be no dry aging of meat in our already crowded main fridge.

[Ron Pratt]

LOL – I understand! BTW not knowing what kind of refrig you are looking for you might want to read the few posts at the end of this thread where a small bar or dormitory refrig just didn’t hack it.
http://www.drybagsteak.com/forum/18-general-dry-aging-questions/197-oh-the-anticipation

Our local utility had a large upgrade promotion to encourage people to buy new efficient refrigerators so they would pay people $30 for their old one plus send a company out to haul it away. I always wondered how many working refrigerators got dumped that would have been perfect for dry aging thus keeping “momma happy” and the beer cold! :laugh:

[Anonymous]

Good to know. I was hoping to find something bigger as the we like to do brisket and she likes to do roasts. Those, plus a subprimal or two would eat up a bunch of space. I was thinking of one of those little things as a fall back in case nothing acceptable shows up on Craigslist quickly, but from the sounds of it I shouldn’t.

[Author]

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