Wal Mart meats

Greg Freeman

I have to admit, I liked the fact that when I moved out west here, there was a super walmart about a mile away from my apartment, and a walmart grocery the same distance in the opposite direction. However, I recently bought some steaks, frozen salmon filets, and scallops there that made me seriously reconsider the benefit of location.

I made the steaks one night, and the night I cooked them they didn't have a regular, steak-like texture I'm used to. In fact, they also had a slightly bad flavor that was enough to turn me off after I reheated a couple that I had cooked for lunch. I ended up throwing the rest out.

Not to mention, the night that I made the steaks fresh I made a special batch of steak cooked alongside some previously frozen scallops I also purchased there. By themselves, they both tasted bad. Together, the horrible components were overwhelming. That was by far, the worst meal I have ever cooked for myself and it wasn't because my cooking skill was lacking.


Today I ran over to Whole Foods, found some really thin sirloin tip steaks and a good beer (Brother Thelonious, I highly recommend), and after searing them for about a minute a side I got some very tasty steak that only required lemon, vinegar, and salt and pepper of unknown proportion before cooking. About 1000 times better than the walmart steaks.


Have you ever gotten good meat from walmart? I love the selection at Whole Foods, but I don't want to go to the poor house from eating delicious food.

Moonbear

Please tell me you have an option somewhere between WalMart and Whole Foods! I would not buy meat from a WalMart. I don't know, I just wouldn't trust it...and your post just verified my fears. To sell it cheap, it would have to be really cheap cuts, and I just don't think a store that big would pay a lot of attention as meat comes into the loading dock to make sure it is properly refrigerated at all times. I'm not even comfortable buying non-perishable foods from a WalMart. I would just wonder if they were old or stale or cut corners on ingredients.

But, yeah, I wouldn't want to pay Whole Foods prices either. Those stores are insane! I prefer just plain old regular grocery stores for foods.

Cyrus

Always buy quality food, no matter the price. Its going into your body.

I hope all wall marts go out of business and small grocery shops return.

Greg Freeman

There are other grocery stores (like Trader Joe's and Von's) but Trader joe's selection is pretty limited and Vons doesn't have a good selection of beer, cheese, or vegetables/fruit. I like to grab random strange veggies and fruit that I haven't tried before and I just can't do that at a regular grocery store. Maybe I'll just accept the fact that I'm eating expensive food.

I need a good selection of cheese though. A good fat source, and lactose intolerance counts out anything but high quality goat cheese. The guy at the deli today got me to try some wine salami with goat cheese and sundried tomatoes, wow. I was already buying the salami but that goat cheese was amazing. I know what I'll be doing for lunch tomorrow.

Greg Freeman

See, I like buying cheap supplies like gallon sized bags and all the mundane things at walmart. I'd never buy furniture there or beef probably ever again unless something miraculous happens.

I thought their fruit/vegetable selection was good until I got sick off an avocado there that looked okay, but really wasn't. And plums that had started to ferment

edward

Be sure to take a close look at the expiration date on any red meat products. Last year many meat packers, including Walmart, started putting carbon monoxide inside of the sealed packages.

The CO keeps the meat looking red and fresh even when it is far past the "sell by" date.

A lot of the salmon currently sold is grown in fish farms. It doesn't turn pink naturally so they color it with a dye.

Walmart in order to prevent their own meat packers from unionizing, has started outsourcing their meat packing.

Greg Freeman

The date on the meat was good, but the texture and taste suggested otherwise.

And the salmon tasted horrible, ugh.

Moonbear

You're not going to find that selection at WalMart either. I've never heard of Von's. I thought Trader Joe's was a snobby store like Whole Foods...are they not? (We don't have any of them around here.) I'd hate my choices to be limited to snobby stores or WalMart. I'm kind of wondering what sort of demographic lives in your area that those would be your choices. The last time I lived in a place with a WalMart and Whole Foods store so close together was in MI, and it was a strange town practically divided in the middle between those monstrous houses on golf courses owned by wealthy people and really small houses scattered in subdivisions along with inexpensive apartments for the poor people (including me as a post doc). But, we also still had a regular grocery store...not a great selection there, but it sufficed.

You could always buy the staples at the grocery store and treat yourself to Whole Foods for the better quality meats and cheeses.

Cyrus

The one place I like is target. They have stuff cheap thats good, like deodorant, shaving supplies, and sodas etc cheap. If I want meat, I'll buy it from a middle eastern halal market because its the highest quality you can find usually. Or go to a kosher store.

Never be cheap on meat. Ever.

Greg Freeman

Las Vegas, demographic guaranteed to be weird. The difference between the poor and rich part of town is about a 1 mile, and I live on the boundary.

Snobby? I don't know if I'd call Whole Foods snobby except for a select few of the people that shop there and think they poop greener than everyone else. I've never had a deli guy recommend something to me before, and I like that kind of consideration (yeah, of course he was trying to sell some cheese, but he went through the time to talk to me and find out I had lactose problems, etc. so that he could help me find something I would like. Gotta love good old capitalism). Trader Joe's was plain weird, lots of hawaiian style foods and all that. The prices weren't as bad as Whole Foods but their selection was limited to some kind of strange market sample.

Greg Freeman

I'll have to seek out a good market, because I've been wanting to fool around with meats aside from the standard beef/chicken/pork. I enjoy a good piece of lamb here and there but have never cooked it myself. Also maybe venison or something more exotic would be good for a change.

Moonbear

How many stickers were on the meat? I sometimes am highly suspicious of the "sale" sticker that manages to cover the previous sell by date.

When I was a kid, there was a local grocery store that eventually went out of business...we found out from a neighbor whose teenage son had gotten a job in their meat department that they were taking meats past the sell-by date from the case, dipping them into something (a dye or some such...I hardly remember I was so young when I heard it) to disguise that it was old meat, and repackaging with a new sell-by date and putting it on sale. We NEVER bought meat from there (nor much of anything else).

The other thing that might make meat taste "off" without it really being spoiled is if they're buying the meat that is bruised or otherwise lower grades that other places wouldn't sell. Instead of being proper beef cattle, it could be the culled dairy cattle being sold as meat...tougher, not as tasty, pretty much a grade above dog food. I would not put it past them. I limit my WalMart purchases to things I don't expect or need or want to last long or that they can't screw up (like you mentioned, things like plastic bags). I did get a couple of pairs of shoes there, but only intended to wear them when teaching gross anatomy and got lucky they are lasting fairly well (of course they're rather ugly...but incredibly comfortable for being on my feet all day).

Greg Freeman

I don't think the meat had multiple stickers. What was weird was that it wasn't tough. It had almost no texture at all. There was no noticeable grain, like the muscles of the animal had never been used, it was almost homogeneous "meat substance" in the shape of strip/rib meat.


...I also bought a few dress shirts from walmart, and then I realized everything was tailored for tall, fat people with short arms. I can hardly find cheap dress shirts for tall, skinny people with long arms. That I can suffer through though, not bad meat. I need the meat of an animal that has run around on its own, foraged here and there, maybe got a little animal breeding action, and finally got taken out for food. The whole cattle pen thing is pretty gross.

Cyrus

You have to get it custom made. I literally cant buy a shirt my size- anywhere. I got two made, fits perfectly. Never going to get one that isnt custom anymore. They just dont fit.

Moonbear

Why do you think that's better quality? It's just a different method of killing the animals, but doesn't mean they're any better quality. The only time I'd look for Kosher foods and consider it better would be for things like beef hot dogs or other beef sausages because I'd know they won't have other fillers in them.

I don't need the meat that Whole Foods sells...I don't really need my steak to come from cattle that have each been individually pampered and given a name and only grazed on pastures with organic grass or whatever nonsense they sell. On the other hand, I wouldn't go "cheap" like WalMart, because I do value my health and don't need E. coli as the secret ingredient. There's a lot that is decent quality but still inexpensive that I prefer.

(But, boy, I'm going to get spoiled on fresh eggs. We have something ridiculous like 300 chickens on the farm right now that nothing is being done to except monitoring their production by weighing the eggs daily and then the eggs would just get thrown out...so I've been getting dozens of free, fresh eggs. It's going to be tough when the experiment begins and we can't have their eggs anymore...but they have to have a control group, right? I have learned that you can't make hard boiled eggs from fresh eggs though. They have to be at least 2 weeks old before you can hard boil them and be able to get the shells off without them sticking to the whites...just tells you how old the eggs in the stores are that I've never run into this problem before. But, even with the shells removing a bunch of the white, I've never had such tasty hard boiled eggs before. )

Cyrus

Just walk into a good halal meat market. The meat looks completely different from a grocery store. Its bright red and FRESH. The stuff in the super markets are light red/white-ish.

The halal meat place will take a big slab of meat and cut what you want right infront of you.

scorpa

Reading this thread makes me glad I am from a farm and almost never have to actually buy meat from a grocery store. I get the good stuff and get to skip the store :) I would never by groceries from Walmart, actually I never buy anything from Walmart because I really am not a fan of the store and have had a few friends work there for awhile and know how badly they treat their employees. I have a beautiful save on foods grocery store near where I live so I am quite lucky, they always have nice produce.