Who is eating beef cube steak at $6.00 a pound?

I have threatened to sit at the grocery and spy on the cube-steak buyers, I’m that curious/serious.

Never buy the stuff but we do pay $8.00 lb. for organic, grass fed, no hormones/antibiotic ground beef here to make out favorite chili and spaghetti sauce. Light on the meat, just enough to add some flavor and body, otherwise, we eat little red meat in general.
Min. wage is now a whopping $9.00 in CA. imagine that! lol

I will pay more for relatively cruelty-free meat, mainly because I don’t eat much meat. If I ate a lot of meat every day, I wouldn’t be able to do that, but since it’s a rare treat, I’ll pay more.

However, I’ve never encountered the phrase “cube steak” before your question, and on looking it up, it doesn’t look like the kind of cut that anyone would pay more for. I’m not sure it’s even sold here. Mysterious.

We just go to Costco for our beef.

Definition of cube steak steak and picture. When I was a kid it was often tough unless slow cooked.

Wiki says cube steak may be ‘minute steak’ in Canada, @dappled_leaves. See the link. Stew meat, another once ‘worthless’ meat is similarly priced here in the Midwest, at around $6 per pound. Chunks of unground hamburger.

According to Costco you’re paying around $9.30 per pound for hamburger, @RocketGuy. Hamburger here is about ⅔ the cost of cube steak, so that would put your Costco cube steak at around $14 per pound.

Wow! i haven’t seen boneless skinless chicken breast below $4.99 a lb. in years! I’m talking Foster Farms, local factory chicken.

And $9.30/lb for hamburger? I pay $4.99/lb for high quality grass fed Neiman ranch beef patties.

@ibstubro where do you shop? What state? Your prices seem out of whack with what I see.

@ibstubro Yes, I looked at the Wikipedia page when I looked it up – and was duly disappointed that they had no photos! But I’d never heard of “minute steak”, either. Canada is pretty big; maybe it’s common elsewhere in the country.

I don’t know what a pound is but I pay 11$ a kilo for hamburger mince and 18$ for two scotch steaks (about 700 grams). This is halal meat and grass fed.

Ground chuck is around 4 bucks a pound at the local Costco here. I have seen cube steak in grocery stores for ages but my parents never had it in their house and I have never bought it for my family. I did have chicken fried steak at a diner once in the rural Mountains near Roanoke Virginia that was very good. I have a local grocer here who has New York strip steaks on sale for $4.99 per pound, ground chuck for $3.29 per pound and boneless skinless chicken breast for $1.78 per pound. I could pay much more for groceries in my area but I would rather not. http://geresbecks.com/circular.html

Chicken breast is around $8/pound here in Boston area.

If I am going to pay $6 a pound for meat, I would get a better cut.

My mom does… she makes a beef stew with them.

The Japanese probably pay four times that for a cheap cut of beef. Beef prices are sky-high in the Caribbean as well. North Americans are very lucky in this respect, and quite unique compared to the rest of the world.

I’ve had one piece of beef since Thanksgiving, 2012; a thin, chewy New York strip (emphasis on the strip), something that would be slung at you for breakfast at Denny’s in the States. It cost me a whopping $45 USD on Dominica. I must have been going through withdrawals. Limited pasture land and resultant conservative land use precludes raising beef cattle on small islands, so people get their meat from goats, sheep, chickens. You might find and maybe a couple of milk cows per village, and they are esating when they get too old to produce. Poor Elsie. But with the amazing spices, marinades, smoking techniques and sauces that are down here, the home cooks do some delightful things with these meats. Especially goat.

Another upside is that all you have to do is get some snorkle gear (or not) and pick conch, lobster, snails, welk, and scallop, right off the bottom. The best are found in shallow coves down-current from the mouths of small freshwater streams and saltwater rias down where the water starts to clear, but the nutrients are still high. Or watch for a nice shoreline current. You can see them from the deck in only three or four feet of water. A sandy beach will be sure to be hiding coquina, clams. A rocky shore will provide mussel, urchin and a kind of small abalone. You might need a “cat’s paw” crow bar to get these. They do amazing things with seaweed. It is used in salads and soups and is very good if cleaned and cooked properly. There is an abundance of seagrape and ocean berries. You just have to talk too a local cook to learn to prepare this foreign bounty. Peas are the main vegetable, but tomatoes and just about every other garden vegetable is available. Cassava and rice are the staple starches. You’ll pay a pretty penny for an Idaho potato, or anything else that’s not local to the island.

The fishing is good and easy compared to the over-fished Florida waters. Redfish, Snapper, Mackerel, King Mackerel, Tuna, Grouper, and Cobia are everywhere and easy to catch in all sizes. Hordes of tasty Sheepshead are gnawing at barnacles at every submerged structure within the photic zone. Just drop a hook with bread or a bit of shellfish as bait on a hook at any pier piling and you’ll get dinner in a couple of minutes. Cast a net on a moonless night in the right bay and you come up with more shrimp than you can eat in a week. Amateur anglers who would starve back home thrive down here.

There are fruit and vegetable stands at nearly every crossroads on these islands, or orchards full of avocado, mango, papaya, banana, kumquat, citrus and star fruit everywhere beyond the towns. All you have to do is get permission and make a cash offer—or trade off some of your surplus fish. It’s work-intensive compared to just going down to the grocery store, but it’s much more interesting and not that difficult.

It really is the art of living—converting the activity of feeding oneself, which can be unbearably mundane in a society stocked with “convenience” and clogged arteries, into a day of kayaking, snorkeling, fishing, hiking into the orchard and then time at the cutting board and grill. You meet the locals, you see the beauty of a place, you feel good.

Even with all this, I still really miss red meat sometimes. I actually daydream about a thick, medium-rare grain-fed Nebraska porterhouse, broccoli with hollandaise and a twice-baked potato with sour cream, butter, chives, bacon bits. Lots of butter. And a hearty, Tuscan Sangiovese… nothing can compare to that. But I will certainly never pay $45 for shoe leather again as long as I’m down here. I don’t miss it that much. Seafood and Pinot Grigio. Anyway, when in Rome…

@zenvelo I’m in the rural Midwest. I bought boneless, skinless never-frozen chicken breasts last week for $1.97. 80/20 ground pork is $1.79 this week. Next week boneless pork loin will be $1.69.
At the same market, 80/20 in-house ground beef is $2.78 this week. (I didn’t need any.) If I’m going to be in town, about an hour away I can get 85% black Angus, farm raised, corn fed, in house ground beef at Lucky’s Market for $3.99.
Since @RocketGuy ignored the question in favor of a Costco plug, I looked up ground beef on Costco’s website and it was $9.33 per pound.

I posted a pic link. too, @dappled_leaves. After the fact.

Dunno @trailsillustrated.

Your prices are right on line with mine, @1TubeGuru. Too bad you didn’t know cube steak. My S/O loves cube steak, but I’m not paying more than $3 per pound for that crap.

WOW! @hominid. Just wow. If you think of it let me know what cube steak costs there? How much is burger??

Yeah, @marinelife. Ribeyes were value pack for $4.99 per pound.

With cube steak, @talljasperman? That’s not exactly thrifty! lol

Omaha Steaks, @Espiritus_Corvus.

There are cuts of meat that are less than that per pound here. The only ridiculous thing I’ve had to pay is when I was shopping with my roommates at Star Market (I don’t shop here on a regular basis) and we bought 93/7 beef for $6.69/lb!
Chicken was just $1.99/lb at another store, but I’ve never seen nor do I think I’ll ever see that price for neither pork nor ground beef.

Now What was the question

Oh, yeah, “Who (besides @talljasperman‘s mother) is paying the exorbitant beef prices for cuts like cube steak?

@trailsillustrated A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

@ibstubro One group is people who don’t look at price tags.

There are 2.2lbs to a kilogram @trailsillustrated.

I suspect the equivalent here might be blade steak. I just looked on the Coles website and it’s about AU$6.50 per pound or US$5.07 per pound (if my dodgy maths is right).

I bought some grass fed stew meat for 2.00 the other day. OK it probably wasn’t a pound but considering I consume roughly 3 to 4 ounces of meat a meal it lasted three meals

When strip loin and rib eye are $10/lb, suddenly $6/lb isn’t so bad.

@marinelife Unless someone is having a sale, no, you aren’t.

I almost never buy beef. It’s too expensive and there’s not a whole heck of a lot I can do with it myself. I make stew now and then and MAYBE a ribeye steak now and then. But I usually go with pork or chicken

If it was local and grass-fed, I would buy it. I’ve pretty much stopped buying “factory farmed” meat.

Wegmans bulk packs of factory-farmed, 6% broth-infused chicken breasts are $1.99/lb here. I don’t buy them, though.

Sorry, @dxs. I typed a response yesterday, but it’s not here….
You’re absolutely right. Many of the people buying $6 cube steak appear to be those that have a list and a cart. They fill the cart from the list, pay with a card, and drive home. Oblivious to the fact that they could have had rib-eye steak cheaper.

Thanks, @Earthbound_Misfit. Blade may be chuck in the states. lol Cut names are not even consistent in regions of the US.

Must have been a damned small piece of stew meat, @Unbroken!

Look for the sales, @jerv. Better yet, screw beef. Chicken and pork are still reasonable for now. Can’t you get some fresh seafood bargains?

For decades my last choice has been beef, @keobooks. All the flavor has been bred out of it. Chicken is nearing that stage.

Local, grass fed is probably nearer $10 per pound, @Cupcake. We get Amana beef [Iowa] here and it’s outrageous.
Of course, I still have the option of going to a local butcher shop and buying beef that was still on the hoof days ago. I was raised on beef that was ½ of one of my uncle’s cows. I still know people that have ‘slaughter parties’ where they kill a fat hog, cut it up, package the parts and divide it up.

@ibstubro Ground or steaks? Ground here is $5–7/lb. I’m sure steaks start at $10 and go up from there. I shop at a local grocer who has their own butcher in-house. They source all meat locally and know the farmers and farm animals. I prefer to buy my meat from there. I always look for the older meat on sale and just cook it right away… so I can get good, local meat cheaper (sometimes).

I’d like to buy a portion of a cow. They go for ~$4/lb hanging weight locally. I don’t know what that ends up being per lb of meat.

Hmmm. @Cupcake. I checked the ad and it appears that Amana Beef may be gone from the local market. They now advertise 100% certified Angus, with no point of origin.
I posted a link to Lucky’s Market above (more variety than Trader Joe’s, cheaper than Whole Foods) that has meat they source at reasonable (specials) prices.
I don’t recall your location, but I would bet that if you took a drive in the country and stopped at some mom-and-pop shops you could find local beef reasonable. Or search the yellow pages of small towns near-by for butcher shops.

@ibstubro: “WOW! @hominid. Just wow. If you think of it let me know what cube steak costs there? How much is burger??”

Well, keep in mind that this is the cost of organic, free-range chicken. I don’t buy much meat, but when I do, it’s exclusively this kind. As for beef – the last time I bought ground beef was last summer, and I believe it was around $7/lb. I don’t buy steak.

Since I don’t eat meat, I buy what ever is cheapest, @hominid.
There is a link up there ^ somewhere for Lucky’s Market. I have one about an hour away, and I have bought the “good stuff”, meat wise, there on sale as cheaply as the local markets sell the mystery meat.

Living in a rural area I can get some foods farm fresh. I thought $2.25 was kind of high for a dozen eggs until I looked at Cage Free eggs at Walmart! Wow! My $2.25 eggs are a 4H project where a kid is hand feeding chickens and hand collecting the eggs. lol

Minimum wage is $9 in CA.

How does that in any way relate to the question, @cheebdragon?

@ibstubro: “How does that in any way relate to the question, @cheebdragon?”

You compared the US minimum wage to the price of cube steak…

@ibstubro: “With US minimum wage just over $7 an hour, literally who is eating cube steak at $6 a pound?”

While not significantly-more than the national minimum wage, CA (and MA) do have $9/hr min wage. So, the $7+/hr => $6/lb vs $9/hr => $6/lb is somewhat relevant, right?

“Who is eating beef cube steak at $6.00 a pound?”

Given that the post did not mention mention beef or the price thereof in California, there is no relevance to the question. @hominid

Even if the post said, “Minimum wage is $9 an hour in Cali and beef cube steak is $8 a pound, that still begs the question of, “Who is the target market for cube steak that costs nearly an hour’s wage per pound to buy?”

I played along, but initially I posted the question in General because I wanted answers to the question.

About 12 to 14 oz. Close enough to a pound.

14 oz. grass-fed for $2.00? @Unbroken. Wow.

It was on sale and meant for immediate use. (Not frozen) but if you keep your eye open and stop by the store regularly it isn’t too unusual a find.

Ah, yes, @Unbroken. When we still had Kroger’s here, you could find amazing meat bargains in the mornings, after markdowns. I have no fear of using meat that isn’t in a swelled package.
Even if a package says it’s fresh I won’t buy it if it appears swollen – too much like an indication that active bacteria is producing gas.
I have two stores where I only shop clearanced items.

@ibstubro I don’t eat seafood, period. While Seattle has great deals on it (my wife just picked up 2 pounds of salmon for $7), I won’t waste my time or money buying/making food I cannot even within ten feet of it cooking. So yes, we tend to go through a lot of chicken breasts and a fair bit of pork. And my Eastern European heritage becomes obvious whenever kielbasa enters the picture.

We have a couple Kroger stores here’ a QFC next door and a Fred Meyers about ¾-mile up the hill. Their prices are high, their quality low, and any packaged meat on sale is often “bulgy”. If not for the fact that QFC is literally next door, I wouldn’t shop there at all.

Central Market has the good stuff with occasional big sales, and we have Winco and Costco with bargains that Walmart can’t beat. (The fact that Walmart costs more than Costco or Winco also disproves the “high wages lead to high prices” argument, but that’s a whole separate discussion.) And then there are local farmers markets.

The irony, @jerv, is that I asked a meat question, when I’m a vegetarian.
That eats seafood. The term escapes me?

I could probably ship you good quality fresh [frozen] beef in exchange for reciprocal seafood.

Well, dry ice is only 79 cents a pound here… a little of that on a “next day delivery” styrofoam cooler oughta get it to you safely.

Hell, Pike’s Place Fish Market delivers nationwide, but their online prices are considerably higher than what the guys unloading the fish right off the boat charge (yes, some sell right on the pier), or even what Pike’s charges “over the counter”. Still, I can get to the Seattle waterfront easier than you can.

A lot of people will pay $5 for coffee at Starbucks, but $6 for cube steak is shocking to you?

I had to spend $70 on a pair of jeans and a shirt for my 9 year old a few weeks ago, he will grow out of them in 3–6 months. Everything is expensive.

Thank @Earthbound_Misfit . That puts it into perspective. I have an idea food here isn’t more expensive.

So much for General Questions.

Usually, if the thread is long enough that you can hit Page Down twice without hitting the end of the thread, it’s long enough to forget the original topic.

But what good is making a distinction between social and general questions, @jerv, if 40+ answers only generate one on-topic response:
”@ibstubro One group is people who don’t look at price tags.”

I realize Fluther is a social site, but it would be nice if a general question could elicit an on-topic answer or two.

In what Twilight Zone does
“I had to spend $70 on a pair of jeans and a shirt for my 9 year old…”
relate to over-priced, low grade beef?
Unless, of course, the post comes from a Communist country with only one state-sponsored store?

Warning: off-topic response ahead.
@ibstubro Let me go out and ask the name of every person who buys cube steak for $6/lb.

@ibstubro Overpriced is overpriced whether you eat it, wear it, or (like most small children) both. If everything is expensive, and cube steak is included in the group “everything” then it stands to reason that cube steak will be expensive.

Digression alert!

Different minds draw different associations and therefore see different things as relevant; a fact that I am all too aware of as my own thought processes seem like utter non-sequitors to most people while to me they are merely logical conclusions with a linking step in between glossed over since I don’t need it, though I’m often forced to go back and add it back in when trying to explain my reasoning to others. Put another way, most people would look at 2+2+2=? and go 2+2=4 ; 4+2=6 while I would skip right to 2+2+2=6.

Honestly, I am surprised how many posts here are about the price people pay for meat where they are or where they get their meat; things that aren’t quite relevant, but associated closely enough that you can see at a glance why they are posted here.

So, how distant can an association be before it’s no longer considered “on topic”? Hell, you may want to ask that in Meta; you could probably phrase it better than I could at the moment. (I haven’t had my coffee yet.)

Yes, that was the first post to this question, and it was mine, @dxs. You were the only one that answered the question.

Pertinent.

The volume of unhelpful answers does not change the category the question was posted in. Or apparently, it didn’t, once upona.

Answer to question. No idea who is eating $6 a pound chuck steak.

How is that helpful, @Earthbound_Misfit, the litmus test for General questions?

You said you wanted people to answer the question. I answered the question as you posed it. You said “literally who eating cube steak at $6 a pound?”. Answer. I don’t know.

No, posting in General means that I wanted answers to the question, @Earthbound_Misfit.
Traditionally, Social is asking people to answer your question, General is asking for answers to your specific question.

Where did you see me ask people to answer my question?
I post the majority of my questions in Social because I want people to enjoy themselves – feel free to post whatever, and banter.

“Seriously.
This is not a joke question.”
“I have threatened to sit at the grocery and spy on the cube-steak buyers, I’m that curious/serious.”

I don’t understand why anyone would go to the trouble of opening a General Question in order to post, “I don’t know”, or why that post would remain.

Look down.
“This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.”
That admonition preceded every answer here. I didn’t make it up.

“So much for General Questions.” (ibstubro)

***************

“But what good is making a distinction between social and general questions, @jerv, if 40+ answers only generate one on-topic response…it would be nice if a general question could elicit an on-topic answer or two.
In what Twilight Zone does
“I had to spend $70 on a pair of jeans and a shirt for my 9 year old…”
relate to over-priced, low grade beef?
Unless, of course, the post comes from a Communist country with only one state-sponsored store?” (ibstubro)

*************************
Yes, that was the first post to this question, and it was mine, @dxs. You were the only one that answered the question. (ibstubro)

*************************

Your responses above say to me you want people to answer the question you posed. Now you’re complaining because I answered your question. Personally, I don’t see any problem with the answers that preceded your complaint. People were discussing the cost of food, including meat and other things. However, if you want people to answer your questions quite specifically, I’m sure we can do that. The thread may be somewhat boring as a result.

@ibstubro – What exactly are you expecting as an answer here. Be specific. You asked, “who is eating beef cube steak at $6.00 a pound”?

Are you looking for a particular socioeconomic class or actual names (Fred Smith of Oak Rd)? Or were you looking for something like, “Someone who likes cube steak”?

Give us an example. I’m not sure I get what you are asking here. Note: There is also the problem that you are listing a price which is cheap for many parts of the country, and it’s assumed that you are using that $6 to mean “expensive”.

@Earthbound_Misfit: ”...if you want people to answer your questions quite specifically, I’m sure we can do that. The thread may be somewhat boring as a result.”
Exactly. I would have asked it in Social if I was looking looking for banter.

This question is in the General Section, @hominid, responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Actually, I considered your response about hamburger interesting/relevant because I can easily equate the cost of hamburger here (around $4 per pound) with our cost of cube steak. @trailsillustrated, @Cupcake and others made similar similar contributions. Obviously, I didn’t flag those responses, or reply to them in a negative way.
You’ll notice that I didn’t make a peep until someone decided that repeating @Coloma‘s earlier mention of the minimum wage in California was relevant.
And now your position is that you made 4–5 responses to a General question that you didn’t understand? 50+ answers in, you ask, “What exactly are you expecting as an answer here.” That would have been a great question before posting an answer.

@ibstubro: “That would have been a great question before posting an answer.”

I’m trying to help. You seem very agitated. If you didn’t get the type of answers you were looking for, it is probably ok that we’re almost 60 answers in – it’s time to explain what you are looking for. Remember, repeating that the question is in General and the “responses must be helpful and on-topic” is not going to help us answer.

I’m not being sarcastic when I say that the responses in this thread appear to be (mostly) completely relevant considering that the question itself is vague.

So, let us help! Answer the question: What exactly are expecting as an answer here? I bet you’ll get responses that will be closer to what you were looking for.

Okay, @hominid. Here is my question:

When I was a kid, we ate like we had no money. Cheap beef, like hamburger and cube/swiss steak were cheap weekday standards.

Recently, I’ve seen that basic beef cuts are nearly as costly per pound as the the federal minimum wage of $7+ an hour.

Who is buying cube steak?

I tried.

People who make more than minimum wage.

Solved!

More realistically, I can’t find anything that says cube steak is any cheaper or more expensive than any other beef. It’s just beef.

2010 – cube steak is $3.77/lb, 80/20 hamburger is $2.37, shoulder roast is $2.47, etc. There’s nothing cheap about cube steak. Pork and chicken are cheaper.

1971 – Cube steak is $1.19, Sirloin is $1.09 and ground beef is $0.89.

It doesn’t appear cube steak was ever what you’ve laid it out as, so your question doesn’t get the kind of responses you expected.

So who’s buying beef?

Education level turned out to be one of the biggest determinants of beef consumption. “As education level goes up, demand drops off,” Ward said. “It may be because higher educated people tend to experiment more with different kinds of food. It might be that you read a lot more about food preparation or that you’re more concerned with your health.”

Age and the employment status of the adult female in the household also affected beef consumption. As people age, they tend to buy less beef, the researchers found. Women who worked more than 30 hours a week also were less likely to purchase beef.

So young people with cash.

Go google!

@hominid Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

Thanks, @funkdaddy.
GA