The Viral Costco Meat Breakdown

Mr. Devilish Dish is pretty handy in the kitchen.  His knife skills are way better than mine.  Whenever you see perfectly diced things in pictures, you can be sure he did most of the work.  In fact he does a majority of the cooking around here.  For years we have bought meat in bulk, portioning it and vacuum sealing it for the freezer.  It is not only cheaper, but it is so convenient to have frozen beef, chicken, or pork ready to thaw for whatever we want to prepare.  Especially in the summer when our garden is abundant, we just choose a protein to grill and serve whatever we have harvested that morning.  Now that we are empty nesters, it is even easier to decide what is for dinner.  He grills one big steak and we split it, and while he grills I throw together a salad or simple side dish.  He's been breaking down his own cuts of meat for years, and lately I've started to see more and more people doing the same thing.  It is not only economical, but you control the portion size and the cuts.  On our last Costco beef restock, I decided to document his preparation technique, AND do the math on how much this costs.  Well he did the math.  I went to art school for a reason lol.

This is the result of New York Strip Loin
Break down.

11 (16-20 ounce) steaks
2.25 pounds stew meat
fat that will become tallow

Mr. Devilish Dish does all of the 
cutting and trimming.
My job is to vacuum seal and 
date and label everything for the freezer.

He does large steaks.  We typically
grill one steak and split it between
the two of us, so a 16 ounce steak
is 2 perfect 8-ounce portions.

You need a very sharp knife for this.
He has a "breaking knife" specifically
for this job, but a good heavy-duty
Chef's knife will do.

He portions out the large pieces with
his big knife, and then goes back in 
with a filet knife and removes most
of the fat.

As you can see we paid $168.83 for this beef.

This is the weight and pricing.

Not counting the stew meat and tallow,
that comes out to roughly $15 per steak.

As I said before, he grills one bigger steak for the two of us.  So now we're talking around $8.00 per portion.  I know that is for the meat only, not counting the sides.  But typically we have a baked potato, or something from the garden like salad, fresh tomatoes or shishito peppers.  I looked at the pricing for area steakhouses and a steak dinner of the same size at a chain restaurant is $33.99 for steak, potato and salad.  For the nicer steak house in our town a 14 ounce steak is $55.00 with ala carte sides.  Even if we split that steak we're still talking almost $28 per portion for each of us.  Versus $7.50 per portion.

We also love to have the stew meat for his famous Green Chile Stew 

so those couple of pounds of trimmings are well used, especially when the weather starts to cool off.

He renders all of the fat down and makes his own tallow.  Not only does he use the tallow for a lot of his preparations, last Christmas I made my own tallow soap.  I grew my own loofah plants and my friends got all natural loofahs and soap for Christmas.  Feeling very Laura Ingalls after that.  Do you need to save the fat and go to the trouble of making tallow?  No, but it's something he likes to do, and really makes this process have almost no waste.

Does this technique work for everyone? No.  We are fortunate enough to have deep freeze, so we have the space to store the meat.  We also have a vacuum sealer that helps keep everything fresh.  I did not factor the cost of the freezer bags nor our time and effort into this.  

It does take some time and effort to do this.  We are empty nesters, and we both enjoy doing activities like this.  Mr. Devilish Dish breaks down all of his own chickens and makes his own stocks and broths.  There was a time when I bought a can of Swanson's Chicken Broth can called it a day, because we both worked full time and had Little Devil and the Devilish Nephew to care for.  Now it is only the two of us. 

There are tons of YouTube videos that delve more in depth on how to select your meat, how to cut and weigh everything out.  Mr. Devilish Dish has been doing this so long, I really don't have a tutorial, but if you're interested in doing this, the info is out there.

Let me know if you decide to do this and how it goes for you!