Why Grocery Store Beef Is Watery (And Who's Profiting From It)

Why Is Grocery Store Beef Watery? A Customer Noticed.

If you've ever noticed that grocery store beef is watery when it hits the pan, here's exactly why — and who's profiting from it.

Customer of the Week time yet again!

Check out what Gabby has to say about our ground beef….

"We grilled some burgers today with the ground beef from our box and they were so delicious. The first thing I noticed when taking the meat out of the defrosted package was that it wasn't watery like grocery store beef. The flavor of the beef though was amazing, you can really tell the difference. My family will definitely purchase from you guys for years to come, thank you!"

Thank you Gabrielle for giving me the opportunity to riff on this!

Because, of all the amazing beef related feedback we get, the fact that our meat is NOT watery is easily one of the 2 or 3 most common.

(Water is only half the story. I also wrote up what's actually in grocery store ground beef, and it doesn't get prettier.)

We Dry Age. The Big 4 Don't.

The reason for this difference is that we dry age our beef for 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, the Big 4 Meatpackers (who process 85% of beef in this country) are obsessed with speed and "efficiency" so they cut up the carcass within 24 hours and bag the beef to "wet age" and hold on to as much water as possible.

When you properly dry age beef, the carcass will lose roughly 4% of its weight in pure water.

The weight lost in the beef is actually higher (because bone and fat don't contain that much water to lose), but I'm going to be generous and roll with that 4% number.

The $100 Gallon of Water You Didn't Order

Our Half Beef Share weighs 200 pounds.

4% of 200 is 8.

The SAME amount of meat at the grocery store literally contains 8 EXTRA POUNDS OF WATER (aka 1 gallon).

Spread across all the cuts you'd be paying OVER $100 for an extra gallon of water that you didn't want.

Not a great deal, which is, of course, exactly why the big meatpackers do it 😉

(Curious about the all-in cost of a half share? We break it all down.)

Why Grocery Store Beef Steams Instead of Sears

But it's actually worse than just buying 200 pounds of beef and lighting an extra Ben Franklin on fire…..

Because that gallon of water is IN your beef.

Every single cut that you cook is literally wet.

This is why when you bring meat back from the grocery store it steams when you toss it in the pan.

You are literally steaming your beef until the water evaporates off. Which makes for tough, chewy beef and totally ruins the chance of getting a delicious sear.

You ever go to a restaurant, splurge on a nice bottle of wine, and decide to order the steamed ribeye?

No you have not. Because you are not a maniac.

So why would you want to do it at home? Every single time you cook beef....

Obviously you don't, but the Big 4 Meatpackers and their littler hyper-efficient friends are trying to force your hand. Since they all do it this way, they think you don't really have a choice....

(For another flavor of how Big Food gets to do whatever it wants without consequence, here's the Supreme Court's recent ruling that protects Bayer-Monsanto from state-level glyphosate cancer lawsuits.)

Dry Aging vs. Wet Aging: What Actually Happens

You Have a Choice

Unfortunately for them, you DO have a choice.

You can join the few. The select group of renegades who reject the Big 4 Meatpackers and their nefarious watery beef agenda. The rebels who demand beef that cooks and tastes like beef. The 1% of folks who source their beef STRAIGHT from the farm, because they want things done the right way.

Reserve a Half Beef Share and find out what beef is supposed to taste like.

— Josh

PS — A gallon of water at the same grocery store costs about $3, so the Meatpackers are making a tidy 3000% markup and ruining your beef at the same time. Good work if you can get it......