I spent £70 on a joint of beef...

Pal

..managed to get 25 meal "servings" out of it, and about three litres of beef stock. All sirloin and fillet steak.

Tasted fantastic, but probably not a great moneysaving tip...

I'll get me coat.

Lillibet_2

Thats £3 per serving plus the stock for free. Compared with restaurent steak that is pretty good value but not great for regular home meals, unless you froze it & saved for special occasions?

It's better than I once paid, £40 for organic Aberdeen Angus & got 7 servings out of it for a dinner party. But it was so nice everyone was asking for seconds (some hope at that price!)

moggins

It still works out better than the £8 I paid for two Welsh Black steaks I bought on holiday, still even on a caravan grill they were so tender you could cut it with a fork.

calleyw

Surely that is not just a joint but half a cow/calf you had

I saw somewhere the other day it was half a pig for about £30ish and half a lamb for about £40ish.

I do think that if you can cut up a meat that buying half a cow/pig etc is probably very worth while. As long as you have the freezer space.

I don't eat a lot of meat so counts me out.

Only eat red meat when out like sunday lunch at my mums or steak if we ever go out.

Yours

Calley

Debt_Free_Chick

calleyw wrote:

Surely that is not just a joint but half a cow/calf you had

I saw somewhere the other day it was half a pig for about £30ish and half a lamb for about £40ish.

I do think that if you can cut up a meat that buying half a cow/pig etc is probably very worth while. As long as you have the freezer space.

I don't eat a lot of meat so counts me out.

Only eat red meat when out like sunday lunch at my mums or steak if we ever go out.

Yours

Calley

Anywhere that advertises "half a pig, lamb" etc will normally joint the beast for you, included in the price. But, yes, you do need room in the freezer. I always think that half a lamb works out best value, unless you can get hold of really good pork that's been properly raised. A lot of pork is tasteless and too white to be of any real enjoyment.

£70 is nowhere near half a cow though. Sounds like the whole rib to me, which would give sirloin & fillet (the whole sirloin provides wing rib roast, roast sirloin joint, sirloin, fillet & T bone steaks).

flea72

where can you get half a pig for £30? - the cheapest i can find around here is £65 for half a pig, and £60 for a whole lamb

can you buy cow in the same way?

Debt_Free_Chick

Pal wrote:

..managed to get 25 meal "servings" out of it, and about three litres of beef stock. All sirloin and fillet steak.

Tasted fantastic, but probably not a great moneysaving tip...

I'll get me coat.

Great stuff Pal

Were the servings all steaks? Could you have stretched it by using the meat in a different way? Just curious as we eat lots of meat, especially beef and although I've not costed our consumption scientifically, I think we spend much less than £3 per serving.

That said, we use cheaper cuts - brisket, skirt, silverside etc - as well as rib.

moggins

I'd like to know where you can get half a pig for £30 too, even back when I first started bulk buying 20 years ago it was between 25 and 30 for a whole lamb and about £40 for half a pig.

furrypig

I feel a bit better about the 2 small steaks I paid £15 in the farmers market!!

Was very tasty and the first steak I have ever bought (probably the last at that price!)

Pal

furrypig wrote:

I feel a bit better about the 2 small steaks I paid £15 in the farmers market!!

Was very tasty and the first steak I have ever bought (probably the last at that price!)

Well let me make you feel worse again then!

I bough a large half of a wing rib: Imagine a large steak, about 7-8 inches long and five inches wide, that is about 15 inches deep, and you get some idea of the piece of meat involved. Certainly not a couple of steaks.

It was from a purebred beef steer, and is about as good a piece of meat as you are going to get. Almost all the meat was sirloin steak with a large chunk of fillet in the middle of the roasting joint.

Sounds like you bought fillet steaks, which are very expensive but taste very good. £15 still sounds quiet expensive though.

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

Were the servings all steaks? Could you have stretched it by using the meat in a different way? Just curious as we eat lots of meat, especially beef and although I've not costed our consumption scientifically, I think we spend much less than £3 per serving.

That said, we use cheaper cuts - brisket, skirt, silverside etc - as well as rib.

The rib was from a proper free range, minimum antibiotic, natural diet purebred beef steer.

The rib was cut in half for me and one half deboned by the farm shop butcher. The meals I made were:

- Steak sandwiches (3 servings)
- Roasted half of the joint (4 servings) (very rare - beautiful!)
- Used the well done leftover meat from the outside of the roast to make meatballs (served on pasta in tomato sauce) (about 8 servings)
- Used the leftover rare meat at the centre of the roast for mini refried steaks (3 servings)
- The other half of the meat was split into steaks (4 servings) and handburger meat (4 v large burgers). The steaks are about an inch think so I could probably have pushed another 4 servings out of it if I had wanted to.

Thats actually 26 servings! Bargain.

The stock was made with all the ribs and the t-bones, leftover meat scraps and removed fat, a beef marrowbone thrown and a pigs trotter thrown in for luck (plus a few vegetables, obviously). Last night I reduced it down to about 1.5 litres of concentrated stock, and to say it has set like Jelly would be an understatement!

I am going to start buying cheaper cuts of meat (my theory is cheaper cuts from good quality animals) to make in stews etc but Mrs Pal is off stews at the moment.

Curry_Queen

Pal wrote:

Sounds like you bought fillet steaks, which are very expensive but taste very good.

That's not actually true as fillet steaks have much less flavour than rump or t-bone, but for some reason they are the most expensive