Australian beef takes center stage

Tenderloin in the beef cut chart.

Image via Wikipedia

There is good news for meat eaters in the ShopRite sales flier: Free-range, grass-fed filet mignon from Australia for only $4.99 a pound with the PriceClub Card. The sale starts Sunday.


You'll have to buy the whole beef tenderloin sold under the Nature's Reserve label, probably a minimum of four pounds. And when you get it home, you'll need to trim it well. The last time I bought this beef, I sliced all of it thin and put it in freezer bags with marinade for Korean barbecue at home. But you can also cut it into small steaks.


The same cut of conventionally raised American beef also is on sale at ShopRite for $6.99 a pound with the card.


ShopRite can sell foreign beef for $4.99 a pound, compared with $10 or more a pound for American, grass-fed beef, because costs are so much lower in Australia. The same goes for naturally raised Australian lamb. Why Australian beef isn't served more in American steak houses is a big question.


Free-range, grass-fed beef has less fat than beef from cattle confined to pens and fed only grain; it cooks faster and probably shouldn't be prepared past medium.

Clueless employees at Costco

Image by Melosh via Flickr

Yes, the man on the customer side of the meat case said yesterday, I work for Costco. I said I'd like to see more meats without antibiotics sold at the warehouse store in Hackensack. I explained that antibiotic-free pork was especially important, because hogs reportedly receive more drugs than any other animal raised for food.

I'm not sure if he understood me. "The big thing now is kosher," he said, referring to the cases of kosher food that have appeared in the past few months. I replied that even kosher poultry and meat often are raised with antibiotics, which prevent illness in close quarters and speed the growth of animals.

The problem with consuming animals raised with antibiotics is that humans are becoming more resistant to antibiotics prescribed by doctors.

I'm grateful that Costco carries organic ground beef, some organic chicken and free-range, drug-free Australian lamb, but they are far outweighed by the enormous, conventionally raised steaks, slabs of ribs and  large cuts of beef (photo). The source of its 3-pound rotisserie chickens, with many added flavors, is a mystery.

Last night, I enjoyed three of those grass-fed Australian lamb chops, cooked rare in about 12 minutes, with a couple of glasses of under-$4 shiraz from the liquor store next to Costco. Tonight, we're frying fresh, wild-caught Canadian flounder fillets I picked up yesterday at Costco for $8.49 a pound. I also picked up herbicide-free Sunset tomatoes, organic milk, organic salad greens and a new item, organic diced tomatoes, all at low prices.

My trip yesterday had been postponed from Monday, a holiday when lines were unusually long. Yesterday, the snow was still falling when I arrived at 4 in the afternoon. I could park anywhere and the store was relatively empty, with hardly any waiting at check-out. Hooray.