Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Yeah the $/lb goes down as you do bigger, but I don't know what I'd do with a whole cow. Even half is bananas. I don't mind ground, and it's nice knowing it's from one cow instead of a mash of whatever hit the floor (this is part of why I DIY sometimes with a food processor). But 50lb (from a 1/4 cow) is a lot. I don't do burgers that much, I make stroganoff sometimes. Not a big meatball guy. Meatloaf sparingly.

Was it this thread I posted the link about china/US trade for chicken and pork coming back in stronger? A lot of chicken in the past 5 years has gotten iffy at best, really woody stuff. Whole birds seem to be pretty good still, but breast is WOOF.

I would love a bunch of stew chunk instead of ground if that was an option. I'd use that a lot more reliably than ground.

 

1/4 cow is 100-125 pounds. Usually 8-12 pounds of stew chunks. Keep all the rounds as steaks or roasts or some will do cube (perf) steak. Plus other cuts, whole as possible and the ground is not that much.

 

This is obviously just a ballpark, but the farm up the road from me gives their predictions for a 1/4:

Stew Beef (9 Pieces) 9 LBS
Ground Beef (50 Pieces) 50 LBS
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I'm sure if I asked I could get pretty specific and trim that down to less ground, but I haven't talked to them about it yet. First have to see if I can find a spot for a chest freezer in the house

 

Yeah that has to be ground all the "round" stuff and other roasts as well I bet. Man we didn't even get 50 with the rounds all ground! My hate is obviously for round steak. I think my mom made us eat that chewy badly cooked shit 3-4 times a week. I can't shake it. I can cook it tender enough now, but it's the memory.

See if they do cube with round - that was amazingly tender

I was talking with a customer some years ago about this very thing. He buys a whole cow, so I asked him how he has it cut. Not kidding: He has it ALL ground. Every steak, every bit. His family must eat it nearly every day. I think I changed the subject at that point. WOW!!!!!!!!

 

The only time the better cuts of my beef get turned into ground is when its the scraps after I've trimmed it.

We do tacos, meatballs, spaghetti, other pasta dishes and things with ground but we still don't go through a ton. I was going to do a split on a cow a few years back but the jack hole who was setting it up tried to take everything good for himself and was basically leaving nothing but ground for the rest of us. The other 3 of us told him to pound sand and walked away.

 

I have run across this, plus lousy (but mostly honest) butchers (like every type of roast just labelled "roast" and hacked with a dull chain saw), and dishonest butchers (like steaks "missing"). We are relatively lucky to get good beef for under $6/pound all said and done, but you have to know the grower and butchers. And even then you can get a cow with the best tasting beef ever or completely tasteless.