Ground beef prices
 

How much is a pound of ground beef in your area? It is around $4.00 a pound lately here. that is for the low grade 85 percent lean meat. I still have some from the last half cow we bought from a friend but when it is gone I won't be buying any at the store.

It used to be cheap meat.

it is no longer cheap meat here either, I can buy boneless skinless chicken breast cheaper than I can buy the cheapest ground beef now..

I pay $5.30/lb for pastured Galloway ground beef at my local farmer's market. We don't buy grocery store meat. If we can't afford local, pastured meat from someone we know & trust, we go without.

I don't buy ground beef, but noticed it for sale (85%) for 3.69 at our small town grocery. That was the "sale" price, which was in 6" letters, must have been a good price? I don't know, I haven't bought ground beef since it was well under a dollar a pound and was still ground from cattle. The meaty parts.

We don't buy hamburger. We get roasts from a friend who sells his pastured beef. $2.99/lb, 50 lbs at a time, and we grind it ourselves, as needed....James

We by chuck roasts on sale and they will grind them free

I also buy pork roasts and ribs and have them grind that for free, too. Got 10 pounds of ground pork for .99 a pound the other day.

We are not eating much hamburger any more. On sale, it's $2.99 a pound. I can find boneless chicken for $1.69 a pound and pinto beans for less than $1 a pound.

I buy lean cuts on sale and grind them with the Kitchen Aid. I like Chuck type roasts and steaks for burgers, and top round/london broil for pasta/chili.

There's a big Asian/ethnic supermarket here with a huge meat and fish shop that sells *good* quality ground beef (and pork) at $1.50 a pound. They don't have it every day but do often enough that there's no problem keeping it on hand at home. Seriously, sometimes it seems at least 95% lean. Great deal.

Gather and grind cheap cuts, add pork fat.

I've taken to getting five pounds or more together, putting it into hamburger sized disks, deep fat frying those, and then freezing them individually. Deep fat frying actually results in a LESS fatty burger. By freezing, they can be popped in a microwave or pan and "cooked" in half the normal time and without the spatter.

YMMV

There hasn't been many times I have read a post from you and thought---What? As a matter of fact I think this is the first ever. But-- I cannot imagine that your cooking method wouldn't turn out a dry hockey puck of ground beef. It has taken me years to perfect my hamburger making (only to be told by my doctor that I can't eat it anymore :censored:) and reheating a burger has been a fail every time even if only partially cooked and then frozen or refrigerated. I love burger juice. In my experience you only get burger juice from a loosely patted fresh burger cooked to rare or medium rare on an open flame.

Sorry for the hi-jack. It was uncontrollable!

Buy chuck on sale and pieces of other scrap beef with lots of beef flavor. Grind it yourself.

$5lb for grass fed local beef here.
But I've got 2 bull calves in the pasture that -god willing- will be filling the freezer in a couple of years. Can. Not. Wait! :)

I like the idea of grinding my own-but getting the ground beef is the cheapest cut they offer. That said, I'm about to bring home a 1/4 of a pig and so excited. It's literally a quarter of a pig. Not cut, not packaged. SO EXCITED! I think we will have a lot of ground pork soon-since I don't really like anything off a pig but bacon and sausage. ;)

1.50/lb at the food auction here for 2 lb 'chubs' of ground chuck.

Ground beef is pretty expensive around here, normally priced at about $4/lb for 73% and $4.40 for 80%. I normally look for sales at Smiths when they have 85% in sale for $2.99.

Two weeks ago a market had 73% for 95 cents so I got a few pounds. I like to use 85% for most everything, but at 95 cents the 73% is fine for spaghetti sauce.

We buy ground chuck at the butcher shop in 10 lb quantity for $2.29 lb. Last week a small grocery in Loretto had ground beef for $1.99 lb. The local Kroger has 80% for $3.49 lb. I'm not sure what Walmart pricing is for ground beef but they do price match here if you bring in the ad with pricing.

We prefer ground beef because of the recipes that can be made from it and because it can be extended to increase the number of servings per pound. DH likes beef over other meats and meat is his main food. It also freezes well and retains the taste better than other meats.

We generally pay 3.99 for hamburger at the local grocery store. The store is owned by a restaurant food service company. When we owned our restaurant we toured the slaughter plant, they buy everything locally.

Bob

Bought another whole beef from co-worker this year, cost per pound (including processing) was $2.40
Sam

I buy the loins when they are around a dollar a pound, and have them ground. Then I just can them. You can use them in chili, tacos, veggie soup, and just about anything you use hamburger to make. Once you put in the seasonings, they taste fine.

93% lean - $3.99/lb. We don't buy anything with more fat than that, so I don't know what it runs.

Bought ground chuck $2.49/lb(when you bought 10lbs) this week at our little local grocer.
....reminds me, need to get off my rear and separate it lol

You are correct that it makes a "hockey puck." You are correct that the flavor in meat is carried by the (liquid) fats. You are correct that doctors go nuts over how hamburgers are bad.

Burgers made from scrap meat that has been ground - where, as you suggest, I have been able to inspect the cuts first - makes nice juicy burgers. If I buy ground beef at a stupidmarket, I have no idea where it came from, how many cattle were involved and what condition they were in, and so on. I look upon that meat as unsafe when used at the temps and doneness needed to make a nice juicy burger.

Because I do not trust that meat, I view it as a cheap (often around $2/lb or less) protein source that must be completely cooked. Once the moisture and fat is largely removed, it is surprising how little protein makes up a burger, but I digress. So how do I make up for the deficit of flavor and juiciness? Homemade bread, a slice of cheese and maybe some mayo, but primarily some sort of sauce. I'm still working on those. (Beef bullion mixed in dry mushroom soup mix to make a thin paste, add mayo, that sort of stuff.)

The "your mileage may vary" at the bottom of the post was in recognition that this is not traditional thinking.

edited to add - I started trying this when I had some sausage that had been hanging around too long and I wanted to make sure it didn't go bad. I was surprised that the sausage patties, when used as hamburgers, were interesting, even though they were dry. Is this gourmet, heck no. But if I am in the middle of a project and need to refuel in less than five minutes and at a moment's notice, it works.

The cheapest beef around here PERIOD is "generic" ground beef, in the tubes. It's $1.97/lb when you get the 5lb tube at WalMart. Any other beef of any kind, including the "this has been marked way down because it's going to expire today" stuff, is $3.50+/lb.

I price shop meats very carefully in our area, and this is the best there is :shrug:

Sams' had 90% at $3.18/lb, up .20 in two weeks.