I live near a wal-mart, and it’s priced many nearby competitors out of business, so I do most of our shopping there. One day my sister decided to take a trip to the army base and buy a bunch of meat - roasts, ground beef, etc, and got some for us. DAMN. The first night we had those burgers, we remembered why we used to like them! The wal-mart meat was horrible. It didn’t taste good, and it seemed like I found a little bit of gristle in nearly every bite. And I tried all different kinds of wal-mart beef - the 80% lean, the 92% lean, the clear packages, the long tubes, boxes of frozen meat - all the burger meat was lousy. Made us lose the will to eat. I tried a couple steaks on occasion, and they were no good either.
Now I try to plan out my shopping, and I buy enough meat for a more than a week, but NOT AT WAL-MART. It’s not as convenient to shop elsewhere, but it’s worth it.
The only meat I’ll get from wal-mart now is frozen chicken parts for the slow-cooker.
Walmarts are really variable, depending on where you are, and what the perceived clientele is.
For example, the Wal-Mart nearest my house is clearly aimed at the nearby Section 8 apartments and the Black and Hispanic people who live in them, and not at the predominantly white homeowners nearby, but another Wal-Mart a few miles away (near my workplace) has a totally different product mix and clientele. Neither sell guns, but the further one does sell ammunition.
Contrast that with the Greenville, Texas Wal-Mart which sells guns, ammunition and a whole raft of camouflage clothing, accessories and other hunting gear.
The Greenville location and my local one have a lot of really cheap food and other items, while the one near work is a tad more upscale; they don’t carry the really bargain items in every single category, unlike the other two.
Last I was there was probably about 2 or 3 years ago. I remember it being in a general state of disarray, but the worst was the unattended children running around, spilling shit into the aisles, parents nowhere to be found. Plus the cafeteria put ketchup on my “everything on it” hot dog, which is just unforgivable in the Chicago area. (Ketchup is always an extra request around here. It’s as foreign to my ears to request a hot dog everything on it, no ketchup, as it is to say, “hot dog, everything on it, no whipped cream.” There is also one place within spitting distance of the literal Loop that puts ketchup on an everything on it dog. That’s how rare they are that I remember the two places out of godknowshowmany I’ve been to.) Yes, I know. That’s what I get for buying a hot dog at a Walmart cafeteria.
Costco also has good lamb chops and pork chops, as I recall. We used to buy them at a Costco in Anchorage, but not here, as there are local butchers that do a good job.
Yeah, I have reasonable and inexpensive local sources for the lamb (a halal butcher) and pork (pretty much any Mexican place around here.) But for beef, unless I want to make a trip out to Whole Foods or similar market and really spend a lot, Costco is my qualty-for-price choice.
I’m from the Chicago area originally and I prefer hot dogs without ketchup, but I find the polemics against ketchup on hot dogs there to be sort of bizarre. I hate mayonnaise, but I couldn’t care less if other people want to eat that eggy spooge on their food.
Oh, I don’t care what you put on it. I find the no-ketchup thing kind of a fun little in-group ritual, or whatever you want to call it. Nobody really takes it seriously. But my issue with Walmart is not that–it’s just that in the Chicago area “everything on it” almost never includes ketchup. It’s a matter of having a common language and expectation for what “everything on it means.” Yes, I know I could say “everything on it, no ketchup,” but that feels weird to me, and the few times I’ve done it the hot dog guy looked at me like I was stating the obvious.
They rarely sell *hens *at supermarkets; the hens they keep for making more chickens. Most of the chicken parts and wholes are a combo of males and females, but they rarely sell mature or *old chickens of any gender (with the exception of capons around the winter holidays). Too expensive for supermarket pricing, since they have to feed them for longer. Gotta find yourself a real butcher for old cock. Try Gene’s Sausage Shop or Lincoln Quality Meat Market - if they don’t have it, they’ll get it for you.
*totally homo
Actually, “terminology” is not the right word. I just for some reason thought that young hens were what was being used for food, but, upon reflection, I could see why that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
So, question: are Cornish game hens always hens, or are they sometimes game cocks? I think I remember reading somewhere that “stewing hen” is sometimes rooster, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case.
IANAChickenExpert (hey, where’s **Pullet **when you need him/her?) but I’m given to understand that grocery store “Cornish Game Hens” are both genders, slaughtered around 4-5 weeks old, while regular chickens are most often the same cross breed (they are a cross between Plymouth Rock chickens and Cornish chickens) slaughtered around 8 weeks old. Supposedly, if they are left alive much longer under conventional chicken raising techniques, they die of heart failure or start getting broken legs from their own body weight straining weak bones. If you think about the size difference between a “Cornish Game Hen” and a “broiler/fryer”, you get some idea of how fast these suckers grow, and what a strain that is on their system.
A real Cornish Hen is of the Cornish breed, and a hen. But you aren’t likely to find them at Costco. They’re more likely to be found at small scale private hobby farms.
I hate Walmart, but go there occasionally, and feel like crap afterward. But from what I’ve read around the webernets, I would never buy meat from Walmart.
I just retrieved the packaging from the trash. They refer to the bird as a “hen,” not a “chicken.” For all intents and purposes, aren’t the two synonymous? Don’t they both mean an adult female?
Let me understand, you got the hen, the chicken, and the rooster. The rooster goes with the chicken. So, who’s having sex with the hen?
Also, the Walmart near me is perfectly fine, but they don’t sell meat or other groceries (other than few aisles of prepackaged, canned, frozen dinner, etc stuff). On the rare occasion I’ve been to another Walmart (most of which have also been perfectly fine) and bought meat, it’s been no different than meat bought anywhere else.
