Holiday hits and misses at Costco

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Costco now sells Niman Ranch hams.

The vast majority of meat being sold at Costco Wholesale is raised conventionally -- huge hunks of pork, thick steaks and whole chickens with labels that tell you nothing about how the animals lived.


Today, I dropped into the warehouse store in Hackensack to take a closer look at Costco's Kirkland Signature holiday ham and was pleasantly surprised to see a second ham -- this one from the Niman Ranch, a highly respected source of naturally raised meat.


Both half hams are bone-in, spiral sliced and fully cooked, but the Niman Ranch markets meat from hogs that are raised on vegetarian feed, and never receive antibiotics and growth hormones.


The Niman Ranch ham was $3.99 a pound, compared to $6.99 and $7.99 a pound -- depending on size -- for Niman Ranch hams at Whole Foods Market in Paramus. 


I believe the ones at Whole Foods are uncured, while the Costco version is cured and contains sodium nitrite as a preservative. 


The Niman Ranch Web site (Niman Ranch FAQs) had this to say about preservatives:

"Nitrates occur naturally in many foods; in fact, you might be surprised to discover that nitrates occur naturally in all plants. The amount of nitrates and nitrites you ingest when eating cured products is negligible and does not pose any health risk. Some consumers prefer cured meats, while others prefer to avoid added sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite, so Niman Ranch offers both alternatives in our product line. The idea to cure meat began with a need to keep meat from spoiling." 

The only other naturally raised meat at Costco is grass-fed lamb from Australia, available in legs, racks and osso bucco, and organic ground beef from Oregon (3 pounds for $13.99).


Holiday seafood


The fresh fish case in Hackensack is filled with several new items for the holiday, including salted, wild-caught Pacific cod ($8.99 a pound) and previously frozen octopus from the Philippines ($3.99 a pound).


Large, wild-caught lobster tails from Colombia are $19.99 a pound, but they're treated with sodium bisulfite as a preservative. We once tried the fully cooked Dungeness Crab ($5.99 a pound), but didn't care for it.


Today, I picked up fresh, wild caught Pacific cod fillets for $7.99 a pound. Costco usually also carries wild-caught haddock and flounder fillets; everything else is farmed.


Kirkland Signature's preservative-free, smoked wild sockeye salmon from Alaska made a reappearance in Hackensack after an absence of about a week, still at the terrific price of $15.39 a pound.


All the other smoked salmon and steel-head trout in the case is artificially colored.


Salad days


When Earthbound Farms' Organic Spring Mix has a use-by date of less than a week, I usually pick up Grand Parisian Complete Salad.  


You get 16 ounces of both, but the latter isn't organic, and the weight listed on the bag includes toppings (feta cheese, dried cranberries and frosted almonds) and a white balsamic dressing.


There appears to be about 10 ounces or less of pre-washed romaine lettuce and other ingredients in the Grand Parisian bag for a total price of $3.79, compared with Earthbound Farms' price of $4.79 to $4.99. 


Sparkling cider


Costco also has Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider at four bottles for $7.99 or about $2 each, compared with $2.99 a bottle elsewhere.


Two 32-ounce containers of Kirkland Signature non-fat Greek-style yogurt are $7.99 or about $3.50 each, compared to $4.99 for a single, 35.3-ounce container of Fage Greek Yogurt.


This week, I saw a new item: Della-brand Organic Brown Rice. A 12-pound bag of the long grain rice was $12.99. The cooking instructions say nothing about soaking the rice before you prepare it on the stove top or in a rice cooker -- a real time saver. 


I've passed up Phillips Maryland-Style Crab Cakes, which have risen in price to $14.89 for six. They taste terrific, because the first ingredient listed is crab. On Dec. 3, an instant coupon knocked off $3.90. I should have bought two packages instead of one.

Grass-fed beef at Fairway Market

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Naturally raised beef finally has found its way into the sales flier from Fairway Market in Paramus. The store carries a full line of Murray's antibiotic-free chicken, but its selection of naturally raised beef and pork has been extremely limited.


Now, 100% grass-fed beef is available in boneless rib-eye steaks for $14.99 a pound and 100% grass-fed beef burgers are $5.99 a pound. Those prices compare with a sale price of $9.99 a pound on grass-fed New Jersey beef I saw at Whole Foods Market in Paramus, and organic ground beef at Costco for around $4.99 a pound.


The Fairway flier says grass-fed beef is low in fat and high in Omega-3, but contains no information on the origin or USDA grade, both of which suggests it's foreign. If so, it's far more expensive than the free-range, grass-fed Australian filet mignon sold at ShopRite (you have to buy the whole tenderloin).

The Fairway sale starts Friday. 

Organic ground beef re-appears at Costco

I usally peer into the long, refrigerated case at Costco in search of beef without antibiotics or growth hormones, but rarely find any. Last year, I bought three pounds or organic ground beef there, but when I went back a month or so later, it had been discontinued. Well, I found it again today for $12.99 or $4.33 a pound.

The label has more information about this beef than the local newspaper managed in thousands of words when heralding the hamburgers at Bobby Flay's new restaurant in Paramus (see earlier post, "Hear the sizzle, smell the hype").

The organic beef I bought at Costco has 15% fat content and comes from the U.S., Canada and Australia, where the cattle is pasture-raised; it was processed in the U.S. The label also says it has no antibiotics or growth hormones.