Are you looking to save money and find cheap meat near your home? These strategies could save you thousands of dollars this year.
In this article, we do mention prices, but with the current inflation cycle, you’ll need to establish your own pricing table for your area of the country or world.
Putting Meat on the Table History:
Years ago, it was the man’s “job” to hunt for the meat to provide for the family. All it cost was a few days’ trudging through the forest, and some bullets or arrows. Then there was time to clean and dress the meat, a man’s muscles to lug it all home and space to store it.
Today, in our more “sophisticated” society, both sexes are responsible for putting meat on the table. The chore isn’t quite as physically taxing. But to do it economically, you still need good tracking skills, a place to store your prize catches, and the ability to know when to “pull the trigger” and buy.
Establishing a Buy Price for Meat
No matter what type of meat we purchase, over the years we have established a dollar limit or “Buy Price” that we are willing to spend per pound for various cuts of meat. When we find items priced at or below our limit, we stock up and freeze them.
Buying meat this way can save you “oodles”. Your taste and budget for meat products will, obviously, be different from ours. Please take these suggestions and apply them to the cuts your family prefers and what your budget can afford.
Geography Affects Meat Prices
Depending on where you live in the USA, the price of meat could vary drastically. If you live in a country other than the USA, meat prices will vary for you as well. We are going to share some of the meat prices we have found and update this blog article as needed.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
How We Find the Cheapest Cuts of Meat
In the sections that follow, we’ll describe the different cuts of meat that we purchase, what our buy price is, and how we find deals.
How We Buy Beef
London broil
London Broil is great for making beef jerky. It’s also great for marinating and grilling on your BBQ as steak. We buy it when it is $1.99 per pound or less.
Recently after Passover, we came across a close-out sale for some frozen, Kosher, London broil priced at $.99 per pound. We bought most of what they had.
Chuck Steak
Chuck Steak makes a terrific, juicy, marinated and barbecued steak. We know some people may disagree, but hear us out. Yes, there are plenty of other leaner cuts of beef that grill-up great. But for our money and taste, a marinated, tenderized, fat-removed, chuck steak is delicious and costs about 75 percent less than other premium cuts of meat.
This could be considered cheap meat but it sure is tasty. A good price is $1.99 per pound or less. Trimming fat and bone makes the net price about 25 percent more.
Steak for Party Guests?
We once hosted a picnic for several families. This was a potluck where we provided the meat and the others provided the side dishes, drinks and dessert. So we purchased several pounds of chuck steaks inexpensively. We trimmed and tenderized the steaks, then marinated them in teriyaki sauce and wine for a day.
When we informed our guests that we were having steak, they were amazed. They could smell it cooking on the grill and waited in eager anticipation. When they tasted it they were enraptured. And when they asked how we could afford to feed a steak dinner to 20 people, we smiled and said it was our gift to them. We told the secret to a few of our closest friends.
Another use for chuck is pot roast with potatoes, carrots, onions, and gravy – it’s delicious. We also use it to make our own ground beef. We’ll do an article on this in upcoming months, but suffice it to say that this ground beef is leaner than the most expensive stuff you’ll find in the store. We use it for chili, hamburgers, meatloaf, Salisbury steaks, shepherd’s pie, sloppy Joes, and tacos.
Round steak
Round Steak is used for recipes like shish kabobs, stew and beef stroganoff. We buy boneless round steak when it sells for $1.99 per pound or less. Some folks might think of this as cheap meat, but we love to use this in certain recipes.
Roast beef
Roast Beef (tri-tip or top round) is a rarity at our house. It seldom goes on sale for less than $1.89 per pound, but when it does you can bet we’ll be serving it with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans.
Corned Beef
Corned Beef goes on sale for $1.79 per pound or less. We recently saw it for $1.29 per pound after St. Patrick’s Day. It makes great Reuben Sandwiches.
Beef Brisket
Beef brisket often goes on sale for about $1.79 near our home. The challenge is that you’ll have to buy a 10-15 pound slab to get that price. Steve cuts the slab into 3-4 pond servings to freeze for later use. We love to cook a brisket in the crockpot with a delicious mustard and onion sauce. It’s a family favorite.
RELATED ARTICLE: Buy Meat In Bulk Online
How We Buy Pork and Ham
We eat pork chops or country ribs only when we find them for less than $.99 per pound. When we see this kind of cheap meat sale near us, we stock up. We will often buy 20-30 ponds to stock our freezer. Then we will enjoy them only 2-4 times each month.
We cook the ribs partially in the oven first and then on the grill. Or we can cook the pork country ribs in our crockpot. Both of these are usually slathered with barbecue sauce. Pork chops are breaded or mixed with a seasoned rice blend and cooked in the oven. Of course, there are always vegetables served with every meal at our house.
We usually have ham meals twice each month. Our favorite is shank ham with the bone. Our stock-up price range is from $.69 to $.99 per pound. We have a “secret family recipe” for cooking shank ham and drawing the salt out. Boil the ham for one hour, in an eight-quart pot of water with one liter of ginger ale and two tablespoons of cloves.
After the meat is sliced, we save the bone to be boiled for split pea soup, And after this, we divide the bone at the joint and give it to our very large German Shepherd dogs – they love it. Just be very careful about giving your dog bones, small dogs can’t handle them well and certain bones should never be given at all. But we won’t go into that here.
How We Buy Chicken and Turkey
This can be a touchy subject for some boneless, skinless, chicken breast lovers. We rarely buy just chicken breasts, especially when all the kids lived at home. It just wasn’t the cheapest way to buy chicken. There are so many less expensive ways to purchase poultry.
Whole chickens can be found for $.49 per pound or legs and thighs from $.17 to $.39 per pound. Yes, we did actually come across a sale on chicken legs for 17 cents a pound. You can bet we bought 30 pounds to stick in the freezer.
Make sure you check out our awesome Chicken Main Dish Recipe page for some inexpensive and delicious ideas.
And then there are turkeys, last year at Thanksgiving time we bought several. Some men hunt game meat in the Fall, but The Econ’s hunt turkeys from the grocery store. We use turkey and chicken interchangeably for all poultry recipes.
Cooking the meat, saving the juices, and then cooking the carcass again for soup are some of the ways we get our birds to go the extra mile. If you are a website member, look for menu ideas in our subscriber downloads, Annette’s 92 Menu List.
If you want to see our recipe and watch our video on how to cook a turkey, click here.
RELATED ARTICLE: Save Money on Organic Foods
Cheap Meat Near Me Challenge
With a little practice, some careful scouting, and a steady trigger finger, you can bag some great deals within your limits. You can find cheap meat near me and feed your household delicious meals. Leave the elk to the outdoorsmen – we love to hunt in the supermarket.
Let us know about the deals you find on cheap meat in your area, and what you do with it!
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Enjoys your artie. It had info I already knew but had never implemented it. I have limited space but we have started to dehydrate meats and vegetables. But there is still a storage issue. Thank you.
Gloria, dehydrating things is a great way to preserve them and to lock in sale prices. You may want to consider creating some “secret” storage spaces – like under beds, on the back of doors, under stairs and other places. Checkout Pinterest for unique storage ideas – there are tons of them.