Cheap Meat

So there’s a lot of huhu going on about how expensive meat is getting. There’s something to that, as well. Ground beef, which I used to get for $1.19 a pound, is now almost $5 a pound for the cheap stuff, and closer to $10 a pound if I want the really good stuff. Hint: we’re not getting the good stuff. I can sometimes find roasts at $3.99 a pound, which I consider reasonable. But the price of beef is going up, and it isn’t going to come down for a while.

Why is beef expensive? Well, we have a very small national herd at the moment (historically so), and drought has caused a catastrophic rise in the price of feed. On top of that, there’s just not enough water or good land to pasture the animals. Apparently, this is the smallest number of cattle we’ve had in 75 years. It may take as long as a couple of decades OR MORE to recover from this downturn. Add to that the political part: we usually get our beef for grinding from outside of the United States. With tariffs currently in place, that’s no longer feasible, which has as many cons as pros.

The bottom line? I’m stocking up on Aldi beef chubs right now. They’re the least expensive, even for the “relatively good” kind (80/20). I’m paying $4.99 per 1lb chub. I call that a win. I buy at least two every single week, because we use about one a week. When I started doing that a couple of weeks ago (after seeing the price of beef climbing again), I also noticed Aldi had ground turkey. I can use that in place of ground beef anytime… and it’s $2.49 for a 1lb chub. So I get a pound or two of that every week, too.

How do we reduce our meat costs, while still eating healthy meats? Well, that’s a multi-layered problem and response. Stocking up now, while prices are relatively low, is the first part. It’s important. It’s not going to last forever, though, because even Aldi is going to have to raise prices eventually. What are we supposed to do then?

I have a meat grinder, folks. I shop the sales. I have a small part of my budget that I try not to spend each week… and I let it grow. Then when turkey goes on for $0.39 a pound, I buy 8 of them. When I find beef roast at $2.99 a pound, or ham at $0.99 a pound, I buy as much as I’m permitted. I like roast “as is” but do you know what else you can do with roast? Grind it up. Oh look… ground beef. I can mix beef and turkey and get a ground meat that’s cheap, lean, and that I probably won’t notice is a mix.

Speaking of shopping the sales, I saw chicken legs and thighs on sale on Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t planned on buying chicken, because I have some breasts (I found on sale) in the freezer, and a whole chicken somewhere in the bottom. But at $1.29 a pound, there was no way I was leaving without those legs! But Ally, your family doesn’t like meat on the bone, and they hate skin, and they’re not fond of thighs! Well, folks, here’s where good household budgeting comes in: I don’t care. It’s cheap, and it’s what they’re getting. They get protein and they’ll be thankful for it.

Still, I’m not a complete ogre. Later this afternoon, those chicken legs with backs attached are going to be turned into SO MUCH STUFF. The meat is going to be butterflied off the bones, and frozen in 2lb packages (that’s one generous meal for my family, protein-wise). That takes care of the meat itself. The bones? Those go in a bag labeled, “raw poultry bones,” which will later become broth when I have enough to do a truly large batch. I have a 1950s Westinghouse roaster oven that holds about 4.5 gallons of liquid, and I wait until I have enough bones to make that much broth. Now I’m left with a cutting board full of fat and skin. That, my friends, is going into the fry pan. I will render it down so all the fat comes out, and then two more things happen. One is that the fat is strained and put into a jar just for schmaltz (which is great for cooking with). And two, I take what’s left of the skins and stuff ’em into the air fryer and turn them into crispy “chicken bacon bits” that can be tossed onto stuff. They keep in the fridge for a few weeks, easily.

Out of that pack of about 7.5 lbs of chicken and bones, I’m getting about 5 lbs of meat (so 2 to 3 meals), about 2 lbs or so of bones (call it a couple quarts of broth, if I made broth with that small a batch), about a half cup of fat (several meals worth of cooking fat), and toppings for funsies. Call it four complete meals for $10, for four people. That’s cheap.

Going cheap, that means thinking ahead. Sales are what make this stuff work. I watch Market Basket and Aldi for when they have seasonal sales (turkey at Thanksgiving, ham at Easter, etc), or when MB has “overstock sales” (when they got twice what they expected and need to sell it off quick before it goes bad). Sometimes the prices are so low that I can buy a ton of meat for almost nothing. I refuse to pay more than $0.49 a pound for turkey, and the day after Thanksgiving, I got it for $0.39 a pound. I stocked up. A turkey, even a small one, is DAYS of meals. I’ve got money set aside for after Easter, because both lamb and ham may come down in price for a day or two, and I will take advantage of that.

Why do I do this? I mean, we can probably afford for me not to do this. I don’t really need to do all that with the chicken, after all. But I do it because I need to be in the practice, the habit, of doing so. That way, if the prices go up, I’m prepared. I know what to do. If someone in the house loses their job, I know how to get by. Some of our meals might be a bit repetitive, but we’ll get good quality carbs, fats, and proteins at EVERY meal, in more than enough quantity to keep us going. I spent a couple of years being dirt poor, back when I was younger. I gave up eating a lot of stuff so my kid could eat. I went without on many occasions so she didn’t have to. I do this now, this saving technique, this “eating cheap” thing now, so that I won’t ever have to worry about being hungry again.

Your turn. What things do you do, to keep your food prices down? How do you combat rising beef costs?

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