As promised last week, here’s a better look at the actual cuts we get for our quarter of beef.
First though, I cannot recommend enough that you use crates or some other organizing system when you have a full freezer. It is so nice to lift a crate and get to the bottom, rather than digging through three feet of frozen goods to find something. We can fit four crates in our freezer (two are shown, the other two stack on top). A quarter of beef fills three of them*. I use the fourth for chicken, turkey, or other frozen meat.
*Keep in mind that the actual weight and number of packages in a quarter of beef can vary greatly, depending on the size of the animal.
Please excuse the mess. I dumped the beef out of one crate to give you a better picture of the volume of a quarter.
Because our beef this time was a Christmas gift, it wasn’t cut quite like we usually do it, but hey… no one’s complaining! Here’s what our quarter looks like.
- 43 (about one pound each) packages of hamburger
- 3 packages of KC Strip (two in each pack)
- 3 packages of ribeye steaks (two in each pack)
- 2 packages of fillets (two in each pack)
- 2 packages of sirloin (two in each pack)
- 3 chuck roasts (about 5 pounds each)
- 1 pikes peak roast (about 5 pounds)
- 1 arm roast (about 5 pounds)
- 1 brisket (about 5 pounds)
- 11 packages of round steak (about 2 pounds each)
If you do the math you’ll find that my numbers don’t quite add up to the 164 pounds that we should have. No worries. I’m just guesstimating the size of each package. Plus, while we were careful to give everyone the same number of packages of each cut when we divided up the whole order (as best we could), we did not take the time to weigh each package. We could easily be “off” 10 pounds.
When ordering beef this way, there is a lot of flexibility in how it is packaged. Here’s a little of what we do and why we do it. If any of you order bulk beef, but have yours cut differently, I’d love to learn from you! Again, I order the cuts differently than my parents do, so some of my suggestions will contradict what I have in my freezer now.
- We always have our hamburger packaged in one-pound bags. It can be done in 2 or even 3 pound bags, but I don’t often need that much at once and when I do, I find it easier and faster to thaw a few small bags rather than a large one.
- I never have my hamburger made into patties for grilling. It costs extra, and I figure that’s something I can do on my own. Patties would be nice for feeding a crowd, though!
- I order 3-pound roasts. That is plenty for a roast and potatoes meal for our family, plus leftovers for one or two of my favorite roastbeef redos.
- I have all of my chuck ground into hamburger. I find it fatty and tough… but since I have 3 large chuck roasts in this quarter, my mom has assured me that they will be just fine if I use her baking method! She’s a pro and I’ve never once eaten anything less than excellent from her kitchen, so I’m going to learn a thing or two! I also had a few readers comment that they love chuck roast. Maybe I’ve just been doing it “wrong.”
- We are used to ordering T-bone steaks instead of KC strip. It’s my understanding that the KC strip is the big part of the T-bone, without the bone. We have dogs, and they like the bones.
- I believe I order all of my steaks cut 1 inch thick. We get them two to a package. We could eat more than that for a meal (My five year old daughter can eat more steak than me in one sitting, maybe because I craved steak throughout my pregnancy with her?!?) but that wouldn’t be the most frugal use of our meat.
- We have a lot (11 packages) of round steak in our Christmas order. I generally have 1/4 of my round steak ground into hamburger, and 1/2 of what’s left made into chicken fries. I think they add about 5 cents for each chicken fry, but OH MY they are fall-apart tender! This year we’ll use our round steak to cut and tenderize our own chicken fries. And I’ll get to experiment with some new round steak recipes!
- Stew meat is missing from our order this year. I like to use it for stew (ya don’t say!), beef and noodles, and stroganoff, but we’ll make do just fine by substituting round steak and chuck roast in those meals.
- We also made bbq beef ribs for the first time tonight. The meat was good, but the verdict is still out… I don’t know if they are worth the trouble.
- While I don’t have nightmares about my mom’s liver ‘n onions meals (anything was palatable with mom’s delicious gravy!), that is one cut of beef that I avoid. Every once in a while I’ll have them include the liver so we can use it when we go fishing. Other than that, the only time I’ve cooked liver was a total newlywed-rookie goof that deserves its own post. Maybe someday…
So, what do I do with all that beef? Give me a week and I’ll share some of what we do with the different cuts, how we like it prepared, and I might even scrounge up a recipe or two! Any way you slice it, or cut it… $2.36 per pound bulk beef is a great frugal purchase for our family.
Please let me know if you have any questions. If I don’t know the answers, I’ll ask my “expert” family members!
Visit Biblical Womanhood for more Frugal Friday.
My husband and his family raise cattle, and his parents also control what and how our beef is done up. As a recovering vegetarian, I just think of it as the “meat fairy” coming and let it go at that! :>)
I was reading on another site that they will thaw their hamburger, make patties, and refreeze them. I had been avoiding thawing and refreezing because I thought it would affect the texture (or whatever), but that site noted that when you buy hamburger at the store, it has likely already been frozen and thawed when you get it., so it’d be the same difference.
I’ve not yet been brave enough to try it – plus we’ve been waiting for the meat fairy to come for a while now. :>) Any thoughts on that?
Thanks for the info. I guess I am at the gathering info stage because this just totally overwhelms me to think of having that much meat. It is not the amount but having cuts that I normally don’t buy and are not used to cooking- I wonder if they would sit in the freezer or if I could make them work. So, I will be really excited to see some ways to really use them. I am one of those grocery store girls, never been around animals or gardens. I am learning!
Thank you thank you for doing this post.. . we have been thinking of getting bulk beef but I just havent known how to get it and this little seris is sure helping me….
What is a chicken fry? I am a 53 year old gal from Wisconsin that has never heard of that (from beef)?
I also buy beef from a coworker (beef farmer on the side). I am ready to pick up another 1/2 from the meat processing place this weekend. I share this with 2 siblings. All of the meat is awesome. I usually do just what you do – hamburger, steaks, roast, stewing beef and some patties. I should just do the patties myself:)
Thanks for your ideas! I’ve recently discovered your website and have passed it on to my stay-at-home nieces and daughter. Great stuff!
Chicken fries are basically tenderized cuts of round steak. There are lots of recipes for chicken fried steak, but I dip mine in a seasoned flour mixture, egg, then repeat and fry in a bit of oil. Served with mashed potatoes and gravy… the ultimate comfort food! I’ve got it on my menu next week. I’ll take pictures and share the cooking process.
Thanks for the great comments and questions. I’ll address them all in next week’s “What to do with all that beef!” post.
Growing up on the farm we always had meat in the freezer. Pretty much the same way you do yours. We still get meat from a friend, when we can, and the cuts are the same. But I don’t get KC steaks and I do use the round steaks for stew meat. Cabin stew is really yummy. It is baked in the oven for 6 hrs.
As far as the liver is concerned we do save them for the pets. Heart & tongue is an aquired taste. More pet food at times.
OH this post is making me have more desire into looking at the possibilities of getting 1/4 of beef too!
This could be a win-win situation for us…I have meat in the freezer and hubby can enjoy the beef like what he grew up eating. 
I can’t wait to hear about the “chicken fries”!
Thanks for stopping by and you can do “linky love”!
Wow, you’re in beef heaven, aren’t you, LOL!? BTW, crates don’t fit in my small freezer. But what I use, and works nicely, is plastic boxes with snap-on lids and handles. They are like shoeboxes, only a little bigger. I have pork tenderloins in one and chicken tenders in another–so all I have to do is lift them out.
Do you ever make beef stroganoff?
In my area what you describe as chicken steaks is called cubed steak.
THANK YOU FOR THIS! I’ve been pondering the thought but never have actually seen anyone do it. I was looking over an order sheet and got overwhelmed and put it away.. maybe I’ll dig it out after your next post!
Thanks for another great post. I don’t think I’ll drive down to get beef from you (unless your uncle will have more over Christmas when I have a friend driving that way). But you’ve motivated me to look for a local source of beef. There’s a store here that sells freshly processed beef at a pretty steep price. But if I can find a farmer and order it direct, it very well may be a good price like this.
Thanks!
Okay, so here’s my question…I LOVE this idea but what do you do if you lose power (especially if you don’t happen to be home at the time)? I would cry if all that meat went bad. My grandmother loves to tell me that nothing goes bad as quickly as beef (that could be an old wives tale-lol).
Hi!
Here is a diagram with beef cuts on different countries (USA, Britain and Argentina). I hope you find it helpful
http://www.speakingimage.org/images/beef-cuts
My husband and I are really considering doing this for the first time and I had the same concern about power loss. We plan to buy a generator to provide emergency power in the event of a major storm or something, but I dont know what you would do if that happened while out of town.
I’m 36 and can never remember buying beef any other way, but we’ve been VERY fortunate and never had a problem with the freezer not working. I know it’s a gamble!