Eating High on the Hog Without the Price Tag

O.K. So we have all heard it by now.  We are in a....come, you can say it...re...recess...recession!  The guv'ment is finally admitting that it actually began last year, but we all know it and feel it in various ways.  I guess one of the only redeeming qualities is that the price of oil has fallen, making that expense, at least, a little lighter to carry.

So even though you know and want to buy ethical, sustainable, local, healthy foods all the time for your family, you may be wondering how you can afford it for every meal.  This post is dedicated to giving you some helpful hints on how to eat the best meat while not breaking the bank.

Step One: Expect to eat less meat overall.  By this I mean don't expect to eat prime rib and pork tenderloin 2-3 times a day.  How about including meat in your diet once a day?  Or maybe every other day?

Step Two: For the smaller quantities of meat you still eat, expect to pay more per pound for it.  I know this seems contrary to the purpose of this post, but stay with me here and see how all these steps fit together.

Step Three: Buy meat in bulk.  Clean out your freezer of all nonessentials and plan to fill it with meat.  Consider purchasing a larger, chest freezer to shove in your garage.  First try Craiglist to look for a decent, recently-made used version, or buy a new one with a good warranty and energy efficiency.  Using Local Harvest or some other mechanism, find your local producers of beef, pork, lamb, goat, whatever your meat persuasion is.  See if they sell by the 1/4, 1/2 or for the best value, by the whole animal.  The price per pound should be considerably better than if you purchase individual cuts at the market.  Plus you can arrange to have the animal butchered and processed how you want it.  Ask the butcher for all the meat back, even the trim, fat, and bone.  See Step Six to find out why.

Step Four: Learn how to cook the entire animal, and learn how to cook it right.  If you buy meat in bulk, you will end up with several roasts, ground meat, bones, and potentially organ meats that you should learn to cook.  Not only will you be making better use, and hence value, of the animal, you will experience some extraordinary flavors, textures, and recipes that you have never tried before.  For example, the picture above shows our first batch experiment making guanciale, or cured pig jowls.  We sold a bunch of half and whole pigs to several customers, but nobody wanted the heads.   Considering  we offered them for only $25 each, folks missed out on a lot of meat and bone on the head that is usable and quite delicious.  I am sure when they try this guanciale (if they get the rare chance), they will kick themselves for not buying the heads.  Anyways, buy a good meat cookbook (such as River Cottage Meat Cookbook) and experiment with utilizing the entire animal.  Be patient, follow the directions, and buy a meat thermometer to cook things right.

Step Five: This step is really in conjunction with step four, but you need to get over your steak addiction.  Animals are not just made of filet mignon, pork tenderloin, or breast meat (in the case of poultry).  The prime cuts will always be the most expensive because they are the most rare.  There are very few muscles on an animals body that don't get exercise and remain tender.  I know these cuts are easy and quick to cook, but if you put a little more forethought into what you will be eating for dinner, you will be richly rewarded both in taste and in dollars.  Also, if you do buy steaks, chops, and other prime cuts, buy it with the bone still attached.  You may wonder why you are paying for the bone, but the bone will add more flavor and moisture to the meat, and it can make for a second meal, or third, or fourth.  This leads to my next step.

Step Six:  Save those scraps (meat, fat, and bone) from every meal you make, including restaurant meals.  Those doggy bags from the restaurant really should go to your doggy or kitty to gnaw on.  Those scraps from your home-cooked meals should be plopped that same evening into a slow-cooker, dutch oven, or stovepot, and slowly simmered all night long with water.  You can choose to add some veggie scraps too for added nutrients and flavor.  The seasoning already on the meat should be enough, but you can add fresh herbs as well.  Eight to ten hours of a low simmer will produce a lovely meat stock that can be refrigerated for 1-2 weeks (make sure you strain everything out) or frozen into ice cube trays for future use.  Then whenever you want to make soup, rice, risotto, other grains, or braise a tougher piece of meat, you have the home-made stock on hand to prepare it with.  I admit I use those little powdered cubes for stock when in a pinch, but I am working to always have a jar of fresh stock in my fridge and some more in the freezer at all times.

Step Seven: Learn how to hunt.  I know this may sound time-consuming, potentially dangerous, and perhaps expensive, but when you have a freezer of venison that you only had to pay for a license, bullets, gas, and some snacks and beer for, you will be very happy indeed.  The beer is for drinking while processing the animal, not while hunting of course....

Step Eight: While this step might seem the most far off, it is really much closer than you think.  That is, raise some meat animals yourself.  The easiest to start with are broiler chickens, other small poultry, and rabbits.  A friend of ours (& occasional farmers' market employee) who lives in on a only a double-sized city lot has raised over 100 rabbits in his backyard this year.  He raises them in bottomless pens so they can eat grass and he moves the pens weekly to a fresh patch of grass.  Rabbits are easy to reproduce, easy to process, and the meat is wonderful.  He also gets most of their feed for free, picking up leftover produce after the farmers' market and from other retailers in town.

If you have any ideas for increasing the value of the meat you eat without compromising your food ethics, please pass them along...

Comments

[Walter Jeffries]

Good points. I just don't do #7 as I don't find hunting an efficient use of my time for the amount of meat I get. I find it far easier to just raise the meat as chickens (also gives eggs), ducks, geese, pigs and sheep. All very easy animals and they pretty much take care of themselves grazing for the most part of the year.

Personally I think meat is underpriced, as is oil and many other subsidized things. Food now occupies only about 8% of our budgets and that is even allowing for a lot more processing and eating out in many people's diets. It used to be that food represented about 30% of our family budgets. Food prices have been dropping for about half a century. Unfortunately, the quality dropped too. But, the good news is that in a free market system people have the choice to eat differently.

[Throwback at Trapper Creek]

Even raising our own meats we are frugal with it. I roast a broiler a week in a covered roaster with two quarts of water. This gives me two quarts of gelatinous broth, and we get at least two dinner meals from each chicken, plus enough breast meat for 5 lunches for my husband. After all that, I put the bones in a stockpot and get even more broth. By then the bones are soft enough for our dogs and cats. Not one piece of the bird is wasted!

I agree with Anna, all the beef cuts are flavorful and eating just steak would be boring.

This post was great and so was the heritage breed turkey post. We are always asked why we don't raise the heritage breeds, and until something drastic changes our answer will remain the same - "We can't afford to..."

[chris]

Out here I've actually found locally raised grassfed beef to be price competitive with store bought fare.

92%lean ground beef (I want to avoid the fat in feedlot beef) runs about $4.99/lbs.

I can get a half side of beef for (locally raised, grass fed) for around $3.00/lbs hanging weight. This makes the final price come out to around $5lb...or as the farmer said "expensive hamburgers and cheap steaks".

[Sean Kelly]

Let's say you eat a meat only diet (the Plains Indians and Inuit did well on such fare), and pastured chicken is $4.50/lb and beef or pork, let's say $10/lb, that still works out pretty cheap. Most people will need only 1 or 2 pounds of meat a day.

[valereee]

Another great way to decrease the absolute amount of meat you're eating is to serve smaller portions. For instance, when I make meatloaf, I quadruple the recipe and then divide the batch into five loaves instead of four. If a pot of soup calls for 3 diced breasts of chicken, I use two and add a cup of sauteed celery.

[Anna]

How timely. In minutes, I leave to pick up a half bison, cut to my order, wrapped, and frozen; I made my purchase in a co-op buy from a Montana pasture-based rancher who delivers (if there is enough interest to my area in So Cal when they are visiting family connections. This fall they were able to sell more than 6 whole animals, so the buyers got a great per pound price. I did this last May, too, and was really pleased with the transaction. A half bison will fill the 9.8 cu ft freezer in a 25.2 cu ft side-by-side fridge, for example. I have a separate 14 cu ft freezer though (size of a smallish family fridge), and a half bison fills about half of it (it packs more efficiently than the smaller freezer).

This time I had less freezer space available, but several people I knew wanted to try the bison, so we are splitting it 5 ways. I couldn't let this opportunity go by.

I also really like your River Cottage Meat book recommendation, but I also use Shannon Hayes' two books quite a bit, The Grassfed Gourmet and The Farmer and the Grill, www.grassfedcooking.com. Bruce Aidell's books are great, too, as well as Fergus Henderson's Nose-to-Tail Eating (titled The Whole Beast in the US). As you say, break the steak addiction. A roast is no harder or time consuming, the time is just spent differently. We all have 24 hours, it's just what we do with it that differs. And steaks can seem downright boring after eating the whole beast!