Anyone else here bulkin’?I have a meat shop attached to an abattoir a short drive away and regularly go see why’s on special.Buying whole cuts and breaking them up yourself is a great way to save money and get steaks exactly the thickness you want them at. Pic related, just bought this one yesterday and broke it up for jerky, currently marinading in the fridge. Keep an eye out for my jerky thread in a week or so where I’ll walk through making a bunch of tasty meat snacks.
>>21920138*what’s on special fucking autocorrect
>>21920138your mom gets my bulk meatin her bhole.
>>21920142>function vagina available>goes right for the shit holelol homo
>>21920148tyrone is in the front hole though.
>>21920138$200 seems insane to me... For jerky op? What the fuck?
>>21920149not nice to talk about your dad like that
>>21920152look all i'm saying is your mom has more cocks in her than a chicken farm
>>21920138I’ve only done this with pork loin but it’s pretty comfy, seal a bunch of cuts up with the vac sealer and then bust them out as needed
>>21920151Meat is sold by weight in some countries
>>21920151That doesn’t seem too bad, works out to $6.36 usd per pound and that’s about what ground beef is now where I’m at
>>21920151Some of it I’ve saved to make a Thai beef salad for dinner, but yeah. Jerky costs a shitload here and tends to be poor quality (mostly sugar and preservatives and cut paper thin). By bulkin’ and prepping I can make it for, at worst, half the price of commercial jerky. Plus I get to cut it the way I like (goujons) and dry it to the level I prefer.
>>21920161Yup that’s USD $138.50 for 21lb11oz in freedom units. I lost about 2/3 lb. in myoglobin and trimmings. I like topside (what Americans call ‘top round’) for jerky because it’s basically four easily separable muscle groups. All the fat and sinew is external to the muscle groups and easily trimmed. Also the muscle fibres are long and easily observed, making cutting for tenderness really easy. Pic related, the whole piece broken down into groups.
>>21920154Oh yeah I got a vac sealer with my sous vide setup and it’s unironically a hundred times more useful than the sous vide. Anyone who’s bulkin’ needs a vac sealer. I also cut myself a lot of sirloin/porterhouse (‘NY strip’ to our American brothers) and saving it from freezer burn is immensely useful.
>>21920167Pic related, local jerky prices.
Beef salad made with offcuts.Beef marinade: ginger, garlic, shallots, palm sugar, sesame oil, tamari, sweet soy, lime juice, fish sauce.Salad: mesclun, heirloom yellow oxheart tomato, black perino cherry tomatoes, avocado, crisp fried eschallots, red onion, continental cucumber.Dressing: chilli crisp, rice wine vinegar, balsamic glaze, peanut oil.Outcome: v. tasty.
Yes let us see your meat snacks
>>21920205What, no Mr Beast Jack Link's jerky?
>>21920449I’m assuming you’re the fucking retard who shits up the board by spamming every thread with infantile dick jokes, but on the off chance you’re not a worthless piece of shit, here you go.
>>21920487Jack Links is garbage, absolute trash jerky.
>>21920490That explains the Mr Beast connection then.
What’s up with chuck roll prices? I can get vacuum sealed roasts here at Walmart and Aldi for the same price/lb as a whole chuck roll at restaurant depot. Used to be chuck roll would track the retail ground beef price/lb more or less.
We have 21ish kg/47ish lbs of turkeys in the freezer right now. Does that count?
I was really disappointed by the vacuum bag bulk meats at a Sam's Club, is Costco any better? Or is it store specific enough that I just have to scout them all.
>>21920883Yeah that’s bulkin’.
>>21920205None of that shit should be considered jerky. It's mechanically tenderized sugar pumped garbage. Real jerky is dried. Rule of thumb: if you can bite straight through it, it ain't jerky. If it calls for refrigeration after you open it, it ain't real jerky. Real jerky will typically run you $25-$30/lb.
>>21920429Looks fucking great. Good thread. I miss being a meat cutter.>>21920489Nice. Post again once you've dried it. And give me your fucking address so I can come buy some.
>>21920987It's pretty store specific. My Costco has had choice strip loin for great prices lately.
I eat beef nearly every day and I'm going to get a chest freezer and a half a cow next year. Next month is the local butcher sale where I get 3-4 sub-primals sliced up into steaks and freeze for 6 months until the next sale. Spent about $340 last time and I'm still working on it. Still have 20 lbs or so of tri-tip, NY, and rib-eyes.People think it's too expensive to eat that much beef but it's far cheaper than eating the way you see people eat here, with all the doordashing and frozen pizzas and shit. Everyone I know spends more of their money on food than we do.
>>21921150Neat. I'm picking up two corned beef briskets tomorrow. Not sure the weights but they'd probably qualify too, then.>>21921207Besides those turkeys I mentioned and a bit of lamb, our chest freezer is mostly seafood. I only got the turkeys because they were under 25¢/lb. Can't really beat that. But most of the meat we eat is in the form of water critters.
>>21921207You can see the savings really quickly. Bulk meat generally runs to half the cost of retail. If you don’t have a direct to public meat wholesaler but have a butcher and he’s the shitty kind who just buys primals, you can often get discounts on them for the asking. He still makes money ordering them in for you but doesn’t have to fuck around cleaning them up and cutting/packaging/displaying them. Not knowing how to break up a primal is learned helplessness. Back in the 50’s and 60’s when meat was cheap it made sense to go for convenience. Now it’s expensive so people who want to save money should be learning their cuts and processing their own as much as possible.
>>21921256>only got the turkeys because they were under 25¢/lbYeah the post-Christmas Turkey slump is a great time to stock up. I got a 4kg turkey buffet on Boxing Day for $15 and gave it to a friend to slow cook in his smoker, was super tasty.
>>21921269Those and hams. Around Christmas and Easter Costco and sometimes Aldi will have cheap bone-in pork loins, too. I like to cut them into chops and smaller roasts, sometimes cure and smoke them.
>>21921269Bro, a local supermarket is clearing frozen turkeys even now . They marked them down to $5 each and this week, they've got a 20% off all frozen food to make way for Easter hams so I got yet another turkey for just $4. I did the same just before Christmas. They did the same markdown to make way for Christmas hams. And the hams themselves are pretty cheap, too, 67¢/lb but fuck me, they're too salty.
>>21921303Turkey’s not so popular here (don’t know why, shit’s delicious) but it hasn’t gotten those markdowns. Meat wholesaler’s still got a few frozen at the equivalent of USD$4.50/lb, might pick a couple up if they show greater commitment to cutting the price.
>>21921303>fuck me, they're too salty.They’d go well in pea and ham soup then. Use unsalted chicken stock, pieces of that ham, chunks of chorizo or cotechino, onion and bay leaf, low simmer/slow cook/instant pot until meats have flavoured the stock. Add 500g dried green peas per litre of stock and simmer until tender.Basically if you think of the salty ham as a flavouring ingredient you can’t go wrong. You could also possibly ‘de-brine’ by soaking in fresh water in the fridge for a few days, changing the water daily, then putting it on a plate and letting it air-dry in the fridge a little. You could even cut a chunk off and run this as an experiment, get back to us if you do.
>>21921379>don’t know why [turkey's not popular], shit’s deliciousI was thinking about this after roasting one the other day: I think people who grew up with shit-cook parents don't like turkey because it's an absolutely unforgiving meat. One small fuck-up and it's as dry as a geriatric cunt. That's why there's so much mysticism and mythology around how to "make a good turkey" and all of it is just a waste of time. Roast it upside down and flip it over at the end to crisp the skin? Pointless. Brining? If you're buying frozen, it's already brined. Pointless. Sacrificing worms to Astoria the Turkey so she'll bless your Thanksgiving table with a moist roast? Pointless, but Astoria is kinda neat. If you don't know, she's a wild turkey who currently lives on Roosevelt Island in NYC.Just get it up to temperature and let carryover finish it. That's all you have to do to get a good, moist roast. And now that Bluetooth thermometers exist, there's literally no way to fuck It up. >>21921403Yeah, that's what we did with the last ham, less the chorizo. My recipe is a little different. I cook the peas plain then saute onion and ham in bacon grease, top of off with ham stock and the broken up peas and boil until done.We've no ham currently and won't be buying any for Easter, despite the low price. There's a cheap (IE free) deboned leg of lamb in the freezer we're gonna have instead. Lamb. Rosemary potatoes. Asparagus "souffle". Sauteed spinach. Stuffed mushroom caps. Easter peas (basically a custard made of bacon, onion, eggs and severely overcooked peas). Borscht with boiled eggs as a starter. Everything but the lamb and potatoes has eggs.
>>21921433They are big and take days to defrost in the refrigerator, so take a fair amount of planning.
>>21921433Agreed. When I roast turkey I do ‘low and slow’ on a rack over plenty of unsalted stock with frequent basting, then for the last ~30 minutes blast the heat super high to crisp the skin. There’s an old French technique for game birds that involves sliding mushroom cups stuffed with garlic butter between the breast meat and skin, that works a treat too. >lamb legLamb is super popular here, but I rate a bone-in shoulder higher than leg. Also, Anerican lamb tends to actually be hogget (weaned animal, one year old) and so the flavour is a bit more intense.I’ve used things like rose hip syrup, mint, hyssop and fermented garlic honey on lamb in the past. I find sweet/herbal notes work best. If you don’t have a larding needle I recommend you invest in one, larding lamb with a paste of lard, mint, garlic, basil and rosemary is amazing.
>>21921449Crash defrost at room temp, not in the fridge. You’ll get it down to cookable temperature faster which is actually less dangerous.
>>21921379a lot of people that are price conscious enough to look at what they're buying don't have full sized ovens anymore
>>21921504This lamb is Aussie or Kiwi in origin. Not sure the age but the meat is quite pale so likely a proper lamb. Hogget tends to be a little pinker. I prefer lamb's breast and missus doesn't really care about the cut much one way or another since she'll spice the shit out of it, anyway. I make sure to buy a fatty cut (hence breast) and, like the turkey, just get it to temperature and call it a day.My spice paste is salt-pasted garlic mixed with olive oil, freshly grated lemon and freshly powdered dried rosemary, black peppercorn and red chili. Whip together and rub all over after butterflying then roll up and truss. Comes great.
>>21921551I only have a 60cm oven (90cm is full size) and I manage full size turkeys a couple of times a year, where there’s a will there’s a way.>>21921553It’ll almost certainly be Australian. IIRC were the #1 sheep and sheep meat exporter in the world. Your cooking technique sounds great by the way. Lamb is best cooked slow in my opinion so it retains moisture and stays tender. I like mine so you can ‘pull’ it with a fork and don’t have to carve it.
>>21921553>Whip together and rub all over after butterflying then roll up and truss. Comes greatBasically lamb porchetta.
>>21921553If it’s Australian it should have a red ‘tattoo’ indicating this. These range from pic related to an MSA (meat standards Australia) stamp that’s oval.
>>21921604>Your cooking technique sounds great by the way.Thanks! But it's just traditional shit for where I'm from. Nothing special. You roast it on a rack above a tray of parboiled yellow potatoes, lightly dusted with chickpea flour, and let the oil, spice paste and rendered lamb tallow drip into them and toss the potatoes about with a long shovel-like spatula every now and again and that's traditional Easter lunch.>I like mine so you can ‘pull’ it with a forkI understand the appeal but I've always preferred meat to have a bit more bite to it than that. Would probably be good in a roll or wrap, though. Another way I like to cook lamb is to cut it into cubes and season it with tenderising powder and dry spices then thread it on skewers and roast over open flame so that all sides are browned then allowed to finish by indirect heat. No veg on the skewers. I roast them separately, usually zucchine or eggplants, for scapece, a type of salad. >>21921697Pretty much and makes sense. I'm originally from Southern Italy and live in America now.>>21921722I'll have to check but I'm not sure if still has skin attached. The leg is in the freezer under a bunch of various kinds of seafood and three turkeys. So much seafood.
>>21921846Would you consider lamb to be a suitable substitute for goat in capra di aggrassato? I know it’s Sicilian rather than southern Italian but I’m wondering what your opinion might be.You probably know that after WW2 Australia had a large wave of Italian immigrants. A shared love of lamb was one of the things that brought the Italians (and the Greeks for that matter) and the Australians together. Roast lamb leg is basically Australia’s national dish and it’s been interesting seeing how (white) Australians have adopted other cultures’ approaches to lamb.
>>21920676How much is it at Restaurant Depot? In my area looks like they’re charging $7 a pound for chuck roll at Costco
>>21921722mmm red food coloring
>>21921929No, because non sarà più capra (it wouldn't be goat anymore). That said, aggrassato (the di is grammatically incorrect there, by the way) can be made with any mammal meat and while it may have originated in Sicily, pretty much all of southern Italy have their regional variants because we were all one country at one point, with many using other meats. While I've not heard of anyone in Italy stewing lamb that way, I'm sure somewhere, people do. My area tend to make it with goat, just as Sicilians do, likely owing to the fact that Sicily was never its own kingdom and was under our Crown during our feudal period (800s-1300s, though Sicily continued to be under our control until the unification in 1861) but veal, beef or pork versions aren't unheard of. We tend to add peas and my pork one, topped with fresh chilli oil, is actually one of my wife's favourite dishes.So make it with lamb if'n ya want. I'm getting in the shower.
>>21922267It's $6.99/lb for choice at restaurant depot here, and $6.99/lb for vacuum-sealed choice chuck roast at Walmart. $5.39/lb for a 5lb chub of 80/20 at Walmart which chuck roll ought to roughly track in price.Costco has strip loin, I assume choice, for $9.99/lb. For how much longer, who knows? I've noticed seasonal differences in strip prices but never really figured out when it's cheapest. But given the better yield off a strip loin, a chuck roll just doesn't make sense right now.
>>21922507Quality post, very informative. Sorry about the grammar thing, Italian is one of the languages I don’t speak. Next time lamb legs are on special I may try an aggrassato. I’ve done whole lamb-leg curry before with what I’d consider moderate success.
>>21922507>>21922507>While I've not heard of anyone in Italy stewing lamb that way, I'm sure somewhere, people do.Apparently so:https://sapurusi.it/en/ricetta/7_Lamb-Stew-Aggrassato
>>21920138For me, it's Chubbe Turk. Usually $2 at my grocery store. Convienent 1 lb packages make it easy to use for a single meal. Almost could be believed its red meat in some applications. Truly, the thinking man's meat in current year + 9.
