Cheap meats thread

So there's "good cuts" like steak tips and chicken breast, salmon, sirloin, etc. that start at $5.00/lb, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about offal either, I'm not impoverished I'm just thrifty. What I'm talking about is the $3.00/lb and under cuts, chicken thighs, beef shanks, frozen salt cod, etc. What do you make with these cuts? What are other meat sources in the price range that may not be commonly thought of? Post your dish ideas and thoughts and junk

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>chicken titties cost over $5/lb
What organic, fair trade, humanely raised, cage free, gluten free, conflict free, hormone free, antibiotic free, vegetarian-fed, grass-fed, non-GMO, sustainably harvested, local, grange, gilded chicken titties are you buying? They're half that price here boneless/skinless and only $1/lb bone-in. Or are you one of those dumb motherfuckers who doesn't shop sales but then complains about grocery costs?

And why the fuck would salt cod need to be frozen? Also, that's more expensive than salmon where I live. Salt cod is $9.99/lb in December and $11.99/lb the rest of the year. Salmon hovers around $5.99/lb for steaks and a buck more for fillets.

Cheap meats are great for those non recipe stirfryesque type dishes i make just to get a well balanced meal

that is going to depend more on the quality of the meat than the cut is most cases
you can get dollar store ribeye

Chuck eye steak
Pork steak
Beef shank low and slow

Chicken thighs are really tasty they just take a long time to clean, otherwise you're left with lots of fat and connective tissue.

If you buy boneless thighs I suggest using a pair of scissors to trim them rather than trying to fuck with a knife. Throw the trimmings in a pan, brown them, and use the rendered fat to make a sauce.

Delete this and shut your stupid lying blabber mouth

I usually just eat thigh meat off the bone. There's some large pieces of tendon at the joints to avoid, but I've never cleaned them.

Dude, never thought of using scissors, I love boneless thigh meat but it always requires so much cleanup. I'll be using the scissors next time, thanks

Not him but Chicken breast is $10 a kg in Australia.

I don't know where the fuck you guys are but chicken thighs cost nearly as much as breasts where I am in St. Louis.

anyone got any go-to recipes for pork shoulder or oxtail?
been meaning to do something out of those
scissors is a great way to go, not the one suggesting it, i'm just here to confirm his opinion.

Thighs are literally half the price of breast in Australia.

Local Woolies has breast $12 a kg and thighs $6 a kg.

good kitchen sheers are a pretty awesome tool. it's what I use to spatchcock a chicken before roasting. don't even bother dulling my knife when the sheers just cut right through. even cut and crush their way through the small backbones if you happen to run into them.

Get some chicken heart OP. Usually it's about 2.50 - 3.50 for about 20 hearts. Just fry them in some butter until the start to pop and crackle then add some garlic powder and seasoning. Tastes like steak.

There's nothing like a good ham hock/shank and some beans. The Tyler Florence black bean soup recipe is amazing. They're super cheap, I see packages of two shanks or 4 hocks regularly go for 3-4 bucks at the supermarket.

How cheap you wanna go? Chicken breast cheap, or like goat's head cheap?

Jowl bacon is also pretty awesome, though the only one I can ever find is pretty much a salt lick. Great for soups.

>Odd cuts and frozen salt cod
Portuguese food.

Chicago are here, and thighs are often equal or greater in price than breasts. No idea why, but my guess is the hormones and animal engineering have made the breasts absolutely huge, often more than a pound each. The thighs remain much smaller, and also require more butchering work to make boneless. Not to mention all the internet faggotry about how thighs save so much money, the supply and demand has negated this completely (in my area at least). I got skinless boneless breasts recently for just 99 cents a pound, and the thighs were selling for $2.59. Unbelievable how inexpensive meat is in this country. And that was for the deboned, skinless product, the labor cost alone must demand 99 cents a pound. Its cheaper for chicken than it is for vegetables. The government is subsidizing the wrong shit.

Boston here. Breast is $4.99 normally and $2.99 on sale, thigh is $2.99 normally and $1.29 on sale. Best prices I've gotten were bone in thigh for $.99 and boneless skinless thigh for $2.49. I always have a freezer full of portion sized ziplock bags of sliced up chicken thigh, I freeze them flat and they thaw quick in warm water.

I know that feel - pan cook whatever meat with whatever veggies I have hanging around, remove from pan and make a pan sauce with the fond with broth and butter or cream or wine or whatever I have hanging around. Season and thicken the sauce with corn starch, assemble meat and veggies over rice and pour the sauce on top. I eat variants of this 2-3 times a week, is good

I put them straight into the oven and eat them as-is. What sort of cleaning are you talking about? Maybe my thighs are pre-cleaned by the butcher?

I'm not the person you're referring to, but:
Boneless, skinless thighs are normally trimmed before you buy them. How good that trimming was done will vary. And of course your personal preference regarding what you consider acceptable trimming to be also varies.

I buy them often. I do look them over before I cook them. Every once in a while I find a big piece of fat or a little bit of bone that the butcher missed, but generally speaking I don't find much of a need to trim them. My sister, however, is a megasperg. She will carefully look over each and every piece and will cut out even the slightest speck of fat. Personally I think that's a big waste of time--unless you have something obviously inedible (like bone), or an unusually massive chunk of fat just leave it alone, you won't notice after the dish is cooked anyway.

sneeded pork

Pork belly, chicken thighs, whole chickens, pork shoulder, and catfish are pretty much the only non-offal meats that I buy in the "under $3/lb" category. I also love chicken hearts and livers if you want to start getting into offal.

Oh, and I often buy things like pork neckbones, pig's feet, chicken feet, chicken backs, chicken necks, pork "riblets", bones, and other cheap bony cuts for making stock.

>Chuck eye steak
Underappreciated cut if you ask me. Great if you marinate it before grilling.

FINALLY somebody said pork belly. It's fucking dirt cheap and delicious, as well as easy to prep and easy to cook. Go to a local asian market and buy like 2 pounds of it and it'll cost you like 5 bucks. Then freeze half and cook the other half. It's also good in a broth.

The only real downside to pork belly is it has no bones so you can't make a stock with it.

I am a bacon nut, but am concerned about the nitrates. Pork bellies are the original form of bacon before the brine, so I was thinking of eating that instead. But I know it won't taste a thing like bacon. What you do to prep pork belly, and do you try to make it taste like bacon?

It was actually a bit of an afterthought for my post because normally it's well over $5/lb in my area. However an Asian market just opened that has it for a reasonable price.

Oh, and if you get it skin-on then you can make stock with it. The skin contains a lot of the same gelatin and collagen that you'd get from bones. It does, however, render out a lot of fat so I think you'd be better off using bony cuts just so there is less skimming involved. (unless you happen to need some lard for something else)

I do a few things with pork belly:
-roast it in the oven just like any other kind of roast
-poach it in stock, then deep-fry it (a common Chinese dish)
-Braise it with duck meat and red rice

Pork belly tastes like any other cut of pork. It doesn't taste like bacon unless it is cured. The distinctive flavor of bacon comes from the curing salt (nitrates) and the smoke.

>brine
Shit bacon detected. Dry-cured or nothing.

You can get a whole chicken for $3/pound, and thats at wegmans
Probably even cheaper at places like aldi

In my area the standard prices are $1.25/lb, and can often be found on sale for even less.

Those are for normal factory-farmed birds though. If you want ones that actually have flavor that's a bit more; about $3/lb from the Asian market.

Cheapest cuts of anything are at an all time high where I live right now. The lowest price per pound is currently for pork at $5.23. Fish is jsut fucking astronomical right now. I think cod was $8 something a pound. A few months ago the cheapest thing was chicken for like $2.50/pound. Shits crazy.

Still better than 5/lb you kangaroo fucker

>more expensive than salmon where I live.

woah, it's almost like food is different prices in different areas

blacks also go for more dark meat. more blacks = black food more expensive

pork roast is usually on sale somewhere for 2.00/lb (butt, loin etc) just make a roast or pulled pork
beef cross rib or chuck is sometimes on sale for 2.50-3.00 / lb same
any chicken, usually 2.00 or less somewhere
dang what a useless post in a mostly useless thread
sorry

>$10
tyeah, if you live in Alice Springs

Beef shanks are for stews and slow cooking. I know I have an ancient ass good housekeeping book around here somehwere if I look for it

Pork shoulder is pretty cheap. A slow cooker is useful for making something tasty out of ceap cuts of meat. I'm a student, and I buy offcuts that aren't generally preferred by your average consumer. Some good seasoning, bung them into a goulash or something in a slow cooker for 7/8 hours.

Sometimes I buy whole cuts of, say, beef, and put those in. Sear the outsides first. Great thing is, you can use the juices for a good gravy or keep it as a stock.

A meal I usually cook with chicken breast is a pesto dish. Slice the breasts thinly or into chunks (as you prefer) and season, put those in a pan with tomatoes and spring onions, then into a pesto sauce with pasta. Pretty cheap, quick, and filling.

Boston cant be counted as having representative pricing, since you left-wing faggots are probably giving your chickens a liberal university education with all organic, sustainable food in an affirmative action hiring environment with extra government benefits and even the men get 12 weeks maternity leave.
Of course your shit is going to cost six times market value. Faggots.

You forgot farm to table

The thigh to breast $/lb ratio has changed in a very short amount of time that does not correlate with any change in population.
What the fuck are you talking about.

Pork shoulder, have to slow cook it for like 5 hours though which makes it a weekend only thing.

chicken hearts and gizzards. cheap and the best snack to eat with beer. fried or plain boiled and salted. I would boil a few pounds and snack on them with good beer.

Kys

>5 hours
>a weekend

Please explain to me how you perceive time, and it's progression.

Where do you live? In in L.A right now and st Asian markets pork can go on sale around 1.20/lbs for pork butt and around 50c/lbs for chicken quarters.

My local Smart n Final sells beef briskets for $2.39-2.69/lb. I like to cut them into 2 lb slabs, sear the outside a bit, and leave them in the slow cooker with soy sauce, garlic, and peppercorns for 8 hours. Everyone I know who's tried it has loved it.

He said weekend only.

Imagine you work like i do from 8 to 4 in the afternoon. When you get home it,s 5, so you if you started cooking immediately you would eat at 10pm...thats a bit late and impractical for a work night dont you think?

I can get chicken breast for about $2 a pound. Shit is so cheap.

>wegmans
Where's the apostrophe?! This kinda shit bothers me a lot.

You guys must have missed the part where OP said that he's a fussy numale faggot.

Damn, those prices ITT.
I doubt you can produce anything worth eating for those prices.
Wouldn't touch any of that crap with a 10 feet pole.

t. Eurobsessed

>it takes you 5 hours to prepare a meal
Are you an epileptic retard?

Yo if you hit up Star Market you can get chicken breast for $1.69/lb when it's on sale, you have to do a fair amount of cleaning though.

Fucking love pork shoulder, especially when it's on sale

Mostly a meat and potatoes person here, also in Michigan near Detroit (not nigger) so finding a good butcher shop is hard. Otherwise Meijer is probably your best bet (nowhere near butcher quality) for cheap decent meats. Prices vary and sales of course

I buy alot of pork and chicken
>3 pack of chicken 7$ ish
>6 pack of medium cut chops 6$ ish
>Chicken thighs 4 pack 4$
>Chicken drumsticks 6 pack 4$
>Angus beef for stew cut into chunks 7$
>Strip steak (varies on sale to full) anywhere from 7-12$
>Ground meat (round/Chuck/sirloin) 4-8$

Sorry boys not a big fish fan

Wanted to add some of the simple shit I cook with said meats in posts. If I'm cooking for just me, I can make 60$ at the store feel like over 100 because I prepare my own food, otherwise for 2 people you may as well double it

>Chicken
Stir fry with green and red pepper, onion, some egg. (Sorry hate broccoli)
Saute garlic chicken
Regular fried up in the cast iron
Chicken sandwiches (I'll use sub buns with tomato and lettuce)

>Ground meat
Sloppy Joe's
Fried for speggetti
Burgers/sliders
Lasagna
Meat and gravy (like to serve over egg noodles)

>Pork
Fried regularly in cast iron
BBQ in cast iron
Baked in some cream of mushroom
Pork shoulder pan seared then baked, BBQ

>Steak
Strip steak I'll fry in the cast iron mostly (don't have a grill at)
Cut up for stir fry
Mushroom steak
Steak with fried onions

Eh just a short list for a very cheap and easy dinners, not to diverse at all but for someone on a budget that doesn't want garbage fast food everyday the variety isn't bad when you throw pasta in there also

turkey is cheaper than chicken sometime

Beef heart is usually really cheap, very protein rich and more importantly, extremely delicious when prepared the right way.

Cook it for 10 minutes, let it dry and use it in a well seasoned goulash.

Chicago here, too. 60660
Dark meat in general at the Aldi and Jewel is always cheaper, save for targeted sales on breast meat.

Where are you shopping?

Yeah, I gotta remember to eat some organ meats. So what is your cooking method for beef heart, captain?

Canned Tuna. Cheapest source of protein in my country (dollars/grams), and I found a decent brand which sells it for cheaper than equivalent Cat food.

Onglet is slightly more expensive than chuck/strip steaks but much better imo. Only drawback to more pricey steak cuts is that the meat oxidises really quickly, so if you don't cook it immediately after butchery it'll get a bit of a crust - still very tasty though

This, when done properly ox heart can be lovely. Yet to cook it myself though

Buy chicken whole. Debone it, make a broth. I like to use the meat to make a stew and use the very same broth to thicken it.

Pork shoulder. Dry rub, low and slow cooking, pull apart. Delicious in sandwitches with red cabbage coleslaw.

Liver. An absolutely god tier ingredient. Submerge in milk for 30-60 minutes, dry off, cover with flour. Fry with sateud onions, salt and pepper AFTERWARDS. Can't eat it too often, though, unless you want hypervitaminosis A.

Ground turkey for cheaper and leaner Chili....

I'm eating 3.5k calories a day on a tight burget and manage.

Bump for Oxtail

The average price I see for chicken breasts goes from 4 to 5$ a pound unless it's on sale or the god awful frozen Tyson shit

I think you are the retard. He said it takes about 5 hours to cook it, meaning it has to simmer in the pot for 5 hours.

This is correct.

Pork Shoulder: youtube.com/watch?v=3ImE5jhnOt8&t=
Oxtail: youtube.com/watch?v=3xgndb0BjbY

Get some pork shoulder and make some pulled pork or stew
Slow cooker stuff is a great way to get like 6-10 good meals from like $15 of ingredients

Whole chickens from Costco are $.99/lb, pork chops everywhere are $2-$4. Get bone in for best results, and learn how to make a cheap tasty glaze on them.

posole

>aldi meat
yucky

Turkey ossobuco
Sear those fuckers on high heat, then chuck on a pressure cooker with onions, garlic, carrots and whatever the fuck, cook for ~20 minutes and wa la, the pressure cooker makes the meat tender as fuck and squeezes out all of the delicious bone marrow into a think flavorful broth
Good shiet

THANK you for the oxtail suggestion. Looks amazing.

Go back to /pol/, dickwad.

If you want to know how to deal with cheap cuts, look up some latin american recipes. They usually involve shitty cuts like skirt steak and taste bretty gud.
As for chicken thighs, if somebody really needs help cooking them well then they just need to end it, it's like the easiest meat ever to make taste good.
For pork shoulder/picnic roast, just make pernil or spice like you would any other pork roast, then pop it in the oven at a low temp for like 6 hrs (if it's skin-on then blast it at 425 for 45 mins before covering)
>using boneless skinless thighs
What the FUCK is your problem?

Pork belly and pork neck are my favorite low-price cuts, they're both so fatty and tender

this
pork belly is pretty good

its sold bone-in in europe unless you specifically ask for it at your butcher, also there are some things to trim away.
any cut high in connective tissue has to be heated for a long time to become tender, soups,stews,braises...they all work for everything that falls into this category.
oxtail i use in pho and beefbarley soup for example, porkshoulder can be slowroasted in the oven under alufoil on a bed of veg, removing the foil to crisp the skin at the end. in germany the classic pairing would be a gravy made with dark beer and the stuff left in the roasting pan and thinly sliced white cabbage dressed in vinegar+oil

why not just throw it in a crockpot with a warm function after cooking
I have one and it cost me $20

Nah man
Start late leave it overnight
Or, start in the morning leave and come home to hot dinner

I'd be afraid of leaving something cooking. Probably a needless worry, but, I'd for sure not want to leave a gas stove on, crockpot maybe less of a concern but never messed with one of those.

Crockpots are the most idiot proof cooking devices available. They're literally designed to be turned on and then left alone for hours at a time.

>mfw my girlfriend nearly burned our house down trying to surprise me with her crackpot cooking

how?

I'm guessing there was a short in the electrical outlet.

She shorted the outlet when she dropped a frozen chuck roast into the crockpot full of water. She's also literally burned a salad (she wanted to "toast" the croutons) and she has trouble boiling water (she gets impatient and tries to pour it out of the pot into a microwave safe container to heat up faster). She loves doing dishes after I cook though; Veeky Forums can see why I love her. She's on the left.

those eyes are disturbingly vacant but the boobs are good

Just make sure you have extensive home insurance.

nice blog

>yfw chicken thighs and offal go the way of oxtail when the yuppies discover them
>yfw one day all meats will cost $10.99 due to inflated meme demand alone

urbanite purge when?

I second this. Gizzards are like high protein nuggies. Delicious

Pretty much this for chicken. Boneless Skinless is 1.89 regular price at Aldi's. Whole boneless pork loin is 1.99 regularly. Ground beef varies a lot though.

Yes.
Also Yes.
Thanks.

Keep posting those tits. Upload some lewds to imgur.

Is this a good deal, Veeky Forums?

No, I only share food, not titties.