Back in December, I shared my thoughts about the King Corn documentary, and in the comments section (where lots of good information is shared but most people miss seeing it!), Miriam shared about a source for kosher grass-fed beef (Golden West Glatt – where it says ‘source’ in red letters in the sentence right before this is a link to their site). When I checked out the prices, they looked pretty good! Until that point, I had only been aware of one kosher source in the country and at almost $10 a pound for ground beef (the cheapest cut), it was simply out of our budget.
Years ago I spoke with an Amish farmer who agreed to sell me the whole cow, but it was such a complicated and expensive process to arrange for everything (couldn’t use his facilities, would have had to truck the cow somewhere, rent processing space from a kosher butcher and hire a private slaughterer!) so I gave up on the idea. When I heard about an affordable option that didn’t require me to do anything but pull out a credit card, I was excited that grass-fed beef might finally be on the horizon for us. 🙂
I contacted the company to find out about how the animals were raised, and here’s the response I got: ”They are grass-fed and then grain finished which means they are given corn and alfalfa. They are also very humanely raised, meaning that the animals are grass-fed and bedded down at night as well as shielded from inclement weather.” They aren’t organic, which to me is less important than being grass-fed. (A little peeve of mine are organic chickens that are marketed as exclusively grain fed.
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At that point they didn’t have ground beef in stock (I was looking for the least expensive cut I could get:)), but they soon added it and I placed an order for 40 pounds last week. The price for ground beef (family packs) is just $3.49 lb! That price is cheaper than even the the regular kosher ground beef at the supermarket – and after reading Wardeh’s poll on grass-fed beef prices, it seems it’s a pretty good deal for non-kosher buyers, too! And with shipping at just $9.95 for any size order, it’s an incredible deal – my order of 40 lb was just $150 including shipping – yes, it’s a big chunk of change at one time, but that’s a lot of meat! (Edited to add – it seems this shipping special just ended. 🙁 )
In case you’re wondering about the family packs, you get a large box of individually wrapped 1 lb packages. Very compact and easy to store. (Usually at the store I buy family packs, which are about 3 – 4 lb, and I have to separate it and repackage it into 1 lb chunks before freezing.) I like buying in bulk so this works well for me, though the minimum size is about twenty pounds, so that might be a bit much for smaller families. (I think you can buy in smaller amounts for about 3.79 lb.) The order came today in a large box packed on all sides with thick styrofoam, like a makeshift cooler. It was in transit for three days, but was still frozen solid when we got it.
I’m not a discerning connoisseur of meat – to me everything tastes fine, and I’m buying this because I care more about how it’s raised and having the right balance of Omega 3 fats – but several of you have told me you’re very happy with the flavor and I’m expecting it to be very good!
(This post is part of Fight Back Fridays.)
Avivah
Disclaimer- in case you’re wondering, I don’t make any money off of my recommendations on this blog; I’m just sharing an affordable source for meat that is often hard to find at a decent price.
$We’ve placed two orders and have been very happy! I suggest signing up for their e-mails about specials. We ordered flanken last week that was on sale for around $6.50lb, which was a good price, but the deal also included buy 2 boxes get the third free! We ordered two boxes each around 4lbs and were expecting a similar size or smaller free. However, when we were checking out online it stated that we would be receiving a 9.5lb box free. I really thought that was a computer error, but yesterday our shipment came in and we did indeed get 9.5 lbs of free meat!!! I’ve never been able to get free meat, let alone free grass-fed beef free, I’m psyched!
a note on grain-fed chickens; grains are part of a chickens natural diet, they have a gizzard which breaks down the nutrients in grains, unlike us humans we have no gizzard, obviously! true chickens are omnivorous, and enjoy bugs, but they are, from a biological perspective, designed to eat grains. we humans, not so much!
The 9.95 was a shipping sale that appears to be over — I hope they run it again, because it was a great deal!
Enjoy the meat!
Dina- that is AMAZING! I just did a quick calculation based on the numbers you shared, and that brings your total cost per pound waaaay down to just under $3. THAT is what I call a seriously good price. I’ll definitely sign up to be notified about their specials!
Emily – thanks for your comment about a chicken’s ability to break down grains. It makes me feel a lot better about spending the extra money for natural/organic chicken.
Miriam – that’s too bad – I checked a couple of days ago and it was still going on. 🙁 Makes me really happy I placed my order in time!
How lean is the beef? I hate to be so picky, but I only can stomach the “extra lean ground beef” as it’s labeled in the local supermarket and not the regular “lean” ground beef…I wasn’t brought up with such fatty meat, and it physically makes me queasy to smell anything that isn’t that lean…
Grass-fed beef is usually so lean that it tends to be dry.
We *love* grassfed beef. It tastes completely different from regular. In Portland the kollel had a few cows locally schechted and it was the best beef I ever had. After that, regular beef seems very bleah. Thanks for the tip! I’d looked at them before, but their prices seem lower than I remember. I ordered ground beef, osso bucco, and brisket, and the shipping was still just $20 for about 50 pounds of meat. It still came out less than our co-op prices. Yay!! 🙂
I got some ground meat (and cheek meat for Shabbos stews and a small brisket for Pesach) and just used some of the ground meat and it was DELISH!! Much better than the store stuff — I made hamburgers with just onions and a drop of WW bread to fill the two pounds of beef (for 5 people — 8 Hamburgers). I found the meat very lean. Usually when I make burgers, there is quite a bit of fat runoff, I had none with this beef, but they were juicy…
We live in Denver and I know a lot of people who use this meat and really like it a lot!
I couldn’t find the name of the company for the beef in your post. Could you email me the name of the company
Me again. I just found the site in your post for the beef. Thanks for such a great post!
Where did you all purchase this beef from?
Hi, Sara, welcome! I guess my link to the site that sells it wasn’t obvious enough! The company is called Golden West Glatt, and I added a note about it in the post after seeing your question to make it more obvious.
For future reference, whenever you see something come up in red letters, that’s a direct link that will take you to whatever is being referenced when you click on it.