Ground beef used to vary a bit. 1.1 lbs, .9, 1.2 etc. It wasn’t worth the butcher’s time to pull out tweezers and remove tiny amounts to be exactly 1 lb. They simply weighed and labeled whatever amount was there. The price was calculated against the weight. 1.2 lbs cost a bit more than .9 lb.
Last few years it’s become EXACTLY 1lb packages. I don’t know how. It takes up valuable time to measure precisely.
I looked through six packages yesterday. Hoping to find one that weighed over a pound. They don’t do that anymore.
Steak has changed too. They cut them thin how. I hate that. A thin steak cooks too fast and dries out. You need a 3/4" thick steak that will cook to a medium doneness. Just a streak of pink in the center.
I noticed that also. I was going through some packaged steaks at Target last week (I know, I know) they were advertising for $7.99. I had a 15% off coupon and figured I’d grab a couple.
Every package was exactly 1 pound. Or, more precisely, 1.00 pounds. Didn’t matter if it was the 2-steak pack or the 3-steak pack. Exactly 1 pound, to the hundredths. That must be some fancy machine to cut hunks of meat so precisely.
That probably why steaks today are so thin. The machine is adjusting to keep the packages consistent.
I searched and searched for some thick, boneless Ribeyes. Every place I checked had thin, sad looking steaks. I finally bought some boneless NY strips that were thick.
Sure, if you’re selling steak at a flat price per package, I expect it to be weighed exactly. But outside of that sort of commercial packaging, most meat at the groceries I go to is sold at a price per weight, and wrapped and labeled by the butcher there. There’s really no point in being precise to the thousandth in that case that I could see.
There are times a slightly bigger package improves a recipe. We always bought a bigger package for hamburger helper. That extra .2 lb meant more meat mixed into the pasta.
Hamburgers work out better at 1lb. That yields 4 quarter lb patties.
I guess Kroger uses machine packaging. All 1lb packages of ground beef.
That must be it. I can’t see grocery stores taking the time to make packages with exactly 1 lb. of meat in them. I don’t think customers want that either but if you’re packaging and shipping meat at high volume it would simplify your business.
You’re not going to get good steak at the big chain grocery stores. It ain’t just the thickness that’s the problem. I’m not sure what they feed their cows or how they raise them, but the end result is a crap product.
It’s way better to go to a local meat market if your wallet permits you to do so.
At my local store, the prepackaged packs of ground meat are often 375 grams. Looks at first glance like a 1 lb pack (454gm), but isn’t. Same with bacon…
If I shop at the store with the meat counter, then it’s the same old packed by hand and priced by weight as always.
I don’t buy chubs of beef, which are labeled and sold in whole pounds. The store-ground meats in the trays are seldom exact to the pound, and are labeled and priced by weight.
FWIW, I bought some bacon today. The label said 5 pounds. There happened to be a scale opposite, so I weighed the package. It was more than 5 pounds.
It’s machine-packaged. Every product from a machine should be exactly identical. It’s not hard to make a machine that can measure a homogenized product exactly right.
OTOH if every package of ribeyes is exactly a pound, I would be highly skeptical. Even though the machines are consistent, even though the animals are being bred for anatomical consistency, it’s hard for a machine to take a rib and make every slice exactly the same.
My problem with them is the steaks. I get New York’s or Ribeye’s when they go on sale. I can find reasonable sized steaks in a 3-pack, but the wife doesn’t want one. Or I can get a 2-pack for me and the kid, but they are nearly an inch thick and too much.
So, I risk wasting nice, expensive meat no matter which way I go.
I love my local butcher. Steaks an inch and a half thick, and barely cost more per pound than the grocery store a few blocks away. Also, ridiculously thick bacon.
