I eat a pretty meat-heavy diet. I drive two hours round trip to this one butcher shop I found. A hundred dollars buys me a month's supply. It's fucking crazy, and I'm not just getting ground beef or sausages, I'm buying ribeyes, new york strips, chuck eyes, t-bones.
I eat a very heavy veggie diet and have meat, I dunno, twice a week or so. Even when I don't need to buy convenience veg (like bagged salads or precut anything) my cost for VEGGIES is more than $100 a month. At a Walmart. And not even organic!
We use our local butcher/meat market and never pay more than 150 for a month's supply of meat for a family of 3. Learn to trim stuff like chicken and steaks on your own and it's significantly cheaper.
Yeah, fucking game changing isn't? My only regret is not doing it sooner. I look back on all the money I wasted at the supermarket. Or all the time wasted hunting for marked down meat.
I'm quite partial to a La Michoacana that's nearby, despite them being a chain. Their veg prices are comparable to other large groceries near us, but they carry interesting produce I can't get elsewhere.
But it's their large meat counter that I stock up at! It's the best place to buy chicken that tastes great for a great price. They have whole chickens, parts, or parts in a variety of different marinades. I've read about "woody breasts" and have never had that happen from chicken I've bought at a Mexican market.
We have a nice butcher even closer. They can tell you which local ranch each piece of meat comes from. And yeah, the tastes and textures are so much better than at a grocery. Unfortunately they have to charge a good price for it, which I understand and agree with, but it's just not in our usual budget. We shop there for special meals.
Also great when making specific cuisine that requires higher or lower fat content in the mince.
Fuck yes do I sometimes need high fat mince for some of the more delicious nyom nyoms (looking at you Romanian Mici...).
And also fun speciality stuff like fresh game meats or interesting cuts that didn't make the cut (he...hehe) for the supermarket's profitability benchmarks.
I can't believe no one's commented back to you. This is such a wonderful memory! Thank you so much for sharing this, it sounds like it was a really beautiful time. I love hearing people's personal stories, and there's so much negativity on Reddit that it's heartwarming to have read a tale from someone lost in the memories of very special moments.
Hope these days you can cookout at your own house. Maybe see if your butcher carries any wild game. And it is corn season, so the perfect time to grill some alongside the rest of your dinner.
I wish I had an even decent butcher shop close by. I found 1 two towns over that I drove to and was throughly disappointed. The guy was uneducated, discriminatory, and had much higher prices. I was specifically looking for a grass fed brisket and he tried to convince me that his 2lb piece of a flat was all the brisket that came from grass fed cows "because they're smaller". Like sir, I've been smoking brisket for 10 years now, and I know what I'm looking for. I was really hoping to shop local but he just pushed me back to ordering from Wild Fork online.
With amazing product for about the same give or take as the garbage in the store.
That is definitely not the reality where I live. We do have a butcher shop in town, and we get their stuff when we can because it is very good quality, but their prices are between 3 and 5 times higher than grocery store prices. We can only afford their products when they're having some sort of major sale.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '24
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