Buying beef in bulk

[TerryMiller]

In regards to power outages, one could check with their source of electricity to see if there is a program where the customers can get their freezers/refrigerators "recharged." When we lived in the Panhandle, we were on an electric coop. In that area, if there were outages due to storms, it was nothing for the power to be out for more than a week. Our power company would send out small trucks with portable generators in them to get close to the freezer/refrigerator and plug those units into the generators until they were cooled back down.

Since our freezer was in an outside building with no heat or insulation, our freezer would usually last a week in winter with no problem. Oddly, we now own a generator for our RV but we live in it and don't have a regular home and freezer that needs to be "charged" during an outage. We just plug our RV into that and go right along with life.

 

[tntrex]

I try to get my beef at Sams & Walmart whenever they have good steaks marked down for fast sale. I'm not to proud to buy marked down steaks to freeze.. because I hate to freeze a good steak that was just cut.

You probably wouldn't stock as much as we do sometimes....but for anyone with a well stocked freezer and who keeps very much meat dollar wise.. say over $500 worth... then I highly recommend you make sure you've got yourself a back-up generator of some size [even a small one] to keep the meat frozen in the event of a long term power failure... summer or winter... and it will also provide lights and run other items as well.

When the big ice storm hit a few years ago, I had our big freezer crammed full of steaks..... the 3 refrigerators freezers were full of pizza, sausage & bacon. Then 4" of ice hit knocking down over 130 of the city's main power lines... leavng a town of 30,000 without power for almost 7 days. I couldn't buy ice and didn't have a generator. Cheap little $1,500 gasoline fueled generators were suddenly selling for $3,000 due to high demand. I moved some of the food outside in the cold air and even tried putting some of the fallen ice on it.. I still lost almost $1,000 worth of food.

Any kind of generator will do in a emergency... but now I have a 20KW Generac natural gas fueled automatic electric generator. It is hooked directly to our homes natural gas and into the main fuse box via a automatic switch that isolates it from the utility electric power supply. It sits there on the patio ready to go 24 / 7 / 365. The instant the utility power goes of, the generator turns on.. runs about 12 seconds to circulate the oil & diagnose the power outage... then automatically runs the whole house / outside security lights and 3 storage buildings. When the utility power comes back on... it instantly switches over to the utility power so fast that my lights don't even flicker. It then runs 30 seconds more to make sure the power is stayng on, then shuts itself off. No gas to store or go bad, no lines to stand in to buy gas. One of the best investments we've ever made. It is dual fuel, so one flick of a switch and I can change over to Propane to fuel it if I ever need too. I don't want to ever go that long without electricity again... living in a house that has a total electric kitchen and a centra heat air blower that works off of electricity.

Thank God, we had a gas fireplace to hook a blue flame heater up to for heat and our hot water heater is gas. But we were using lanterns, oil lamps & candles to see by... and a small camp stove / BBQ grill to cook on. But 3 people can't eat $1,000 worth of food in a few days. And the ice was to bad to get out and try to give the food away to others. Now when the power goes out.. it is business as usual here at home.

Try garys Or if you are rich from holder? Guranteed born, raised, feed and slaughtered in Oklahoma.

had to edit nicely

 

[tntrex]

Sorry OP I got off course...

Advantage is you get one or few different head so eat as raw as "I" like and feel safe, usually get great variety of roast, grounds, tenderizes, steaks, etc, Supports local business(major plus in my book), supports local farmers. Giving local business your business

 

[EBC79]

Thanks for all the information guys.

Is my best bet just going to a butcher somerwhere here in Moore, and buying it from them? Any recommendations of other places to check out?

 

[scube]

I would recommend checking out the Oklahoma food Co-op website. More than a dozen different ranches to check out. You can see how they are raised. Narrow it down to a few then order a pound or two to see which flavor profile you prefer before you commit to a few hundred pounds. There is a taste difference in the breeds and how they are raised.

 

[Spec ops Grunt]

How long does frozen beef last?

 

[TerryMiller]

So long as one doesn't go overboard on how much they order, it should last until you've eaten it all. When we were butchering, it was the two of us and our two boys. When the freezer tended to begin to get low and the next steer went in for butchering, our butcher always stamped a date on the outside of the paper wrapping (that's meat paper used by butchers) so that we could always know which was the oldest meat. If I remember right, we used to get 1/2 of a beef and her mom and dad took the other half.

As mentioned earlier, try a few pounds of the meat first before buying. Then if possible, start out with a 1/4 of a beef and see how long it takes to use up the meat. Check with the butcher to see which cuts of meat come from which part of the cow critter. That will help you choose which "quarter" to ask for.

My father-in-law was a supreme believer that the best beef was Hereford, so all of his cattle were that breed. When we bought our own cattle, they were Black Angus so they were easier to tell apart from his. While the Herefords brought a little more money at auction, the Black Angus calves tended to put more meat on and weighed more than a Hereford born at about the same time. Money-wise, it was about equal with a heavier calf bringing as much as the more premium Hereford.

The first time the father-in-law had butchered a black-baldy, we changed to the type of steers we fed out for meat. The Angus meat was just so much better than the Hereford's.

Oh, a black-baldy is a white-faced Angus cow critter that is out of an Angus cow by a Hereford bull.

 

[inactive]

How long does frozen beef last?

In theory, a frost-free freezer (a stand alone unit, or the freezer side of your fridge) holds food for about 90 days. A manual defrost freezer holds for a year. The frost-free doesn't keep as long as it effectively thaws a bit in order to dry the frost out of the unit. I have a manual defrost chest freezer partly for this reason, and partly because they are cheaper than the frost-free models. In practice, the time can vary based on how well the product is packaged.

Last month I bought a half that hung 410 pounds that ended up around 325 trimmed and packaged. We had as many roasts and steaks cut as possible (including chicken fry from the eye of round, kept the short ribs on the bone, kept roasts from the rump/chuck/peak, kept the skirt and flank) and still ended up with 148 pounds of ground beef.

As Terry said, start with a quarter if you want to just see how much you go through. Usually the price per pound is the same on the 1/4, 1/2, or whole so you don't lose a bulk discount. Then if you like it you can just up your order next time. That is what we did, as we split our order three ways (so I have a "sixth" or a bit less that a quarter) with my parents and my wife's parents. We did this in order to try out our source without any one of us being our a grand or more for a half. I suspect this will last us through the summer and into the fall, so long as week keep up out chicken and pork intake. Next year we'll probably buy a whole an split it three ways, or if no one else chips then I'll just get a side for myself.

If anyone is curious, I'm dining on Limousin with a bit of "rogue" Angus that snuck in the bloodline at some point

 

[David2012]

I've got both frost free & manual defrost freezers. My frost free removes the moisture and deposits it in a drip pan that then allows the water to evaporate into the rooms air... much like a refrigerated air window unit will pull moisture out of the house and let it drip out the back onto the ground. So in a frost free freezer, you will want to not only have your meat wrapped well in Butcher's paper to prevent freezer burn... you might want to also over-wrap it with some plastic wrap to help keep the moisture inside the package... so the meat doesn't dry out. Small wrapped steaks I put in 1 gal freezer bags and reuse them-- I get them by the case at Sam's.. and for the bigger stuff I have a commercial roll of plastic wrap [12" X 2,000 ft] that I also bought at Sam's.

 

[inactive]

Also - if you are buying in bulk, I would try to find someone local from whom to purchase. They give a flat price per pound on the order, which honestly is a bit high on the ground but ends up cheaper on the steaks and roasts. I have purchased from pretty much all general grocery retailers in OKC and Tulsa, and they cannot compare to anything locally raised and slaughtered on a smaller scale.