I'm aware and don't have a membership... but I also don't want to pay for a membership nor do I enjoy going to Costco haha

Have you guys never been to Victoria street for fruits and vegetables, esp Chinese vegetables? Or portions of Fraser?

Supplement the above with whatever Save-On or Safeway or Superstore has on sale that week ... that forms my menu.

Anyone notice the precipitous drop-off in meat quality at places like Save-On?

I don't usually get my beef at Save-On anymore (did moreso back in the day), I recently had to quickly grab some meat (sirloin) from them twice in the last 2 months, both times all their beef was extremely brown and oxidized, didn't smell that great either.

It seems I see meat that looks in that state more and more at Save-On, I'm starting to wonder what Grade B beef they're getting nowadays.

Is this just another example of our rush to the bottom?

Used to get 3 x PRIME rib eye at Costco hovering around $40

Now you get 3 x AAA touching $80

I don’t even buy steaks anymore unless it’s a special occasion

Same here -- beef prices have really gone through the roof over the last few years, so I haven't really been eating beef all that much anymore.

Pork is the one that actually got cheaper than before the pandemic, so that is my go-to protein nowadays.

(That and the Costco $7.99 rotisserie chicken lol~)

90% of the time i go like 45m before they close. just enough time to do all your shopping and you always get a decent parking spot as well. no playing bumper carts with others or getting your ankles broke either. i pretty much refuse to go any other time unless i don't have much of a choice.

Saw this circulating around, seemed topical lol

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMjgQYVUh/

Holy fuck that is so true, 3x PRIME for $40 was always my go to.

That wasn't too long ago either, I'd say around 2017/2018?

Meanwhile our government tries to pretend that inflation hovers around 3% year after year :lol

Ya, OK.

Yall should still buy that big strip loin AAA for 150-180. You can easily carve 10 steaks of the same thickness with that bulk purchase.

Yeah it ain’t prime but honestly prime isn’t thatttt much better than AAA unless you get it in a ribeye cut. Sirloin / strip loin generally isn’t fatty enough of a cut to enjoy super marbled prime.

Bought the Costco prime once. IMO not worth the money, didn't feel the extra flavour (or really lack thereof) justified the extra cost (maybe if I had them in a side by side comparison I might notice some slight difference) and as I've said before, I dislike the texture of the mechanical tenderization. Why is that necessary for prime meat?
I feel like cooking technique makes a far greater difference on the end result than the grade of the cut itself.

They are a little hot and miss but in general I’ve had very good ones

Last weekend while hunting we made a beef Wellington with a $150 Costco tenderloin lol, came out amazing. About at Boujie as hunting gets lol

https://i.imgur.com/PNf3tAM.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/jnQSJTf.jpg

every time i see beef wellington i think of hells kitchen and gordan ramsey screaming at people for doing it wrong.

pretty cool seeing someone doing it

Nice work, a wellington is still on my list of culinary things I need to try cooking one day.

That's what I used to always do, I haven't bought one in a while but the last time I did they were like $80-90.

They sell strip loins at Costco? Is that the same cut as a rib eye?

Isn’t it like part of the rib eye and part of the back strap?

Westopher probably knows

Nope. Completely different primal.

That's what I thought :lol

I dunno why strip loin is being compared to ribeye..

Strip and rib are on par in terms of awesome IMO, but the strip is a little more fickle for the quality of butchery. Big Alberta cows are much better for ribeyes, and the strips tend to be too big to cut into the right shape of steak. Also near the end of the strip there is a ton of sinew and it makes for a shitty steak. I'd say like 1/4 of the strip makes for pretty mediocre steaks. Smaller cows (better feeding habits, no huge fattening before slaughter) I'd prefer a strip. You can cut them so nice and thick compared to the big cows, the marbling is much more even than a ribeye and the proper fat cap just melts. Striploins are on the other side of the T-bone of the tenderloin.

You don’t see too many marbled strip loins, but definitely a solid steal on cost/lb. Saying that, I haven’t had too many shitty strip loins whereas I’ve had a lot of bad rib eyes! A good Rib Eye is still my favorite.

Proper marbling really comes from cows that are allowed to graze and roam. Think of it like this. Feedlot cows are slaughtered fairly young, fed huge amounts at a time and also bred for size. That means that large pockets of fat accumulate in short times and gets too thick which makes it tough. Not necessarily that it wont taste good, but flavour is in the fat and with cows that graze, the fat accumulates in smaller quantities over a much larger period of time which allows fat and muscle growth in its lifetime to be continuous until slaughter. Better flavour spread out. Also notice the colour difference below. I'd bet the steak above was slaughtered between 1.5-2 years where the one below was probably at 8 months. The meat colour is like halfway between beef and veal.
Amazing striploin
https://www.chophousesteaks.ca/wp-co...in-600x600.jpg
Feedlot striploin
https://i5.walmartimages.ca/images/L...0201873543.jpg
If anyone says this is off topic, beef is Canadian politics so get with it.

So this begs the question - where does one buy amazing strip loin?

^ maybe any decent butcher shop, non-franchise grocery store. Windsor, Pete's, Beefway, Two Rivers, etc..

Most of the really good stuff is bought up by restaurants and not even on the open retail market.

Wtf I thought this was a politics thread, why am I learning so much about steak?!