Bulk beef: how do you like it cut up? What do you struggle to cook with?

After and a lot of trial and error over the years, I think I’ve settled on how I like to get half a beef cut up. I’ve attached a screenshot of my meat sheet to this post.

The first few times we got bulk beef, I found that I ran out of mince/ground beef really quickly, and had heaps of other things left that I didn’t enjoy cooking with as much as I enjoy mince. Now I always get heaps of mince, and we usually get through that at the same rate as we get through everything else, and the freezer usually has a variety of cuts in it when we’re running low, rather than just the unpopular stuff.

How do you get your beef cut up? Do you have any favourite dishes that you always make whenever you get a half, whole, or quarter beef? Do you have any unloved cuts that always end up at the bottom of the freezer?

My first half a cow, I was excited for a bunch of roasts and neglected to think about how much ground I would receive. Living with just one other person, it is difficult to find a time to use up a nice big roast!

My next go around, I will be trying to get a better amount of ground out of it. I do like my stew beef as well so it is a balancing act.

Depending on the cut of meat or what part of the cow the roast came from, most roasts can be cut into steaks.

An example would be a chuck roast can be cut into a chuck eye or Denver steak, aka the "poor man's ribeye".

Another example would be the top sirloin roast.

This also is a frugal way to get steaks by buying a roast when cut the steaks come out cheaper.

Timothy Norton wrote:My first half a cow, I was excited for a bunch of roasts and neglected to think about how much ground I would receive. Living with just one other person, it is difficult to find a time to use up a nice big roast!

My next go around, I will be trying to get a better amount of ground out of it. I do like my stew beef as well so it is a balancing act.

Sometimes I cook large roasts for the leftovers as much as the hot roast meal.

Some of the cold leftover beef can be thinly sliced for sandwiches, I like to serve it with grainy mustard and sauerkraut. Other leftover roast can be made into cottage pie, curries, beef stews, or anywhere that you’d use beef. It’s already cooked, so it just needs reheating - saves time and fuel.

I’ve also cut leftover roast beef into tiny pieces, put it in jars, added bone broth, and then pressure canned it, for shelf-stable pie meat. You could also do this in any pressure canning stew or soup recipe instead of using raw beef.

I really like getting heaps of ground. If we run out of roasts, we can have a meatloaf instead of a roast. If we run out of stir fry steaks, then I can use ground in a stir fry. For a lot of meals I have a vague idea that we’re having meat of some sort, so having lots of ground, and lots of recipes to use it in makes it easy to just grab a packet out of the freezer at night and figure it out the next day.

I've not done beef, but I have processed my own venison. We reached very much the same realisations - I saved too many largish pieces for roasting joints and quickly ran out of mince. We also decided we don't really want chunks for venison stew very often - it takes a long long cooking time to soften down and that just isn't compatible with our daily lives.

These days I save the best pieces for steaks that I can quickly pan fry for an easy evening meal, and mince pretty much everything else.

It has been years since I have bought a side of beef.  I find that I don’t really get the cuts I use. …and the two of us don’t use it fast enough. In brief we use a brisket, ribeye, sirloin, and the rest goes to hamburger. I cut up the brisket myself.

Usually on the day we get beef, I’ll cook up some of the best steaks right away. I get the pan really hot, with a tiny bit of lard, then add the steaks, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and do not move them until juices are running off the steak and onto the pan. Flip over, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook that side until juices rise to the top, and that works out medium-rare and delicious.

Some of the things I do when we get half a beef:
I usually cut the blade roast into chunks, raw pack it into jars, and pressure can it right away. I have two jars of beef barbacoa done this way left from last time, so I might do plain diced beef with just a little salt this time around. I’m not sure what blade is called in other countries, it’s a good cut for slow cooking.

I cook with the short ribs early on. They take up a lot of freezer space, plus we really enjoy these and look forward to them every time. I slow cook them in broth or water, drain them (reserving the broth), and then bake/broil in a sweet sauce. I used to always use homemade BBQ sauce, but lately have been doing a mix of browned onions, ginger, coconut aminos, and honey.

I make bone broth and tallow on the first day too - saves more freezer space.