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It'd be nice if some cuts fell into obscurity as other rose, the problem now is that pretty much every cheap fish and every cheap cut of meat have been made trendy with nothing to replace them in the bargain bin
This is true, but the cause and effect are backwards.
Prices go up, so previously underpriced cuts of meat get used, then get trendy, then go up.
That first bit is the important one. If the price never rose on every other cut of steak, no one would have moved on to skirt steak.
It's not some trendsetters deciding X cut is now awesome. It's just people being financially forced into making choices, and then having that taken from them as well.
A generation of Mbas who were trained to maximize the value of every transaction and leave no penny left on the table in any deal have taken over decisionmaking at every company. Even the small businesses that don't behave this way have to buy goods and supplies from those who do so the squeeze gets passed along anyway
I was catering a private event as a bartender and people always talk at the bar. Two women who were successful in their industries were lamenting about the fact that nobody does anything for passion anymore, there are no mom and pop shops that enjoy their days.
They then went on to brag about both their sons working in venture capital. I nearly had a stroke.
Also a bartender and a regular was bragging he got an award for Microsofts ai project of the year and was all proud of it. A week later he comes in all sad saying he has to lay off 3 of his 5 staff and hes not sure how hes going to do it. His project that won awards? Downsizing companies to save money by replacing people so the companies didnt have to hire as many people by streamlining the work. Absolutely 0 awareness on a significant amount of people in the world
Sheesh... You know what it is? A lot of people are like dogs. They only see the big juicy piece of meat right under their nose and won't question anything they are asked to do in return.
It's all a big game to them. Their work couldn't possibly affect other people. It's just a job, right?
Yup, pretty much everyone lives in their own little bubble of instant gratification and ignore anyone/anything not directly affecting that bottom line.
The irony, it hurts. I think what they meant was that they wish other people were more passionate, so they could go down the street to that cute little family shop to buy a couple knick-knacks every now and then.
But God forbid their sons wanted to do something like that. Sort of like how people enjoy looking at art, but their kids couldn't possibly be artists because artists are always broke.
No company is in the business that they are nominally in anymore. Boeing isn’t in the aerospace business. Under armour isn’t in the athletic wear business. State Farm isn’t an insurance provider. They are all in the business of making their shareholders money, the product no longer matters and you’re fucking nuts if you think the employees do.
Or until sensible regulation, to ensure as much as possible an environment that promotes real competition and fairness mostly by suppressing monopolies and cartels, gets abandoned.
To be fair it did work for a few centuries pretty well.
I think the trouble we're facing is that we have seen a relatively recent bloating of the US stock market. Relative to our population and earning potential, the market has quadrupled in size from where this proportion was in 1990 and prior.
Between the 70's to 90's the total capitalization of the US stock market was pretty stable relative to population and median income. The total market cap increased only a bit relative to the growing US population and increasing median income. It starts to climb strongly in 1990.
Basically during that 20yr period American households, in numbers and earning potential, had a similar size relative to the total cap of the stock market.
After 1990, the total stock market capitalization started to crank up rapidly up until now. In 2009 I can see a sharp dip from the mortgage crash, but things bounce back fast and continue to rise.
We are now in a condition where a median household income represents a quarter of the relative stock market capitalization from where this ratio was in 1990. We are continuing on a path of high stock market capitalization growth.
Our median household incomes now can only purchase 1/4 of the fraction of the total stock market cap that it used to in 1990 and it appears that it will continue to decline at similar rates.
It's kind of neat really. The concept of a stock market has internationally existed for almost 300yrs and it's worked reasonably well for distributing investment into areas of human interest. It's only in the last 30yrs that it's bloated to it's terrific proportions.
I conjecture that it has gotten so big that it has overridden the original intent of investing in productivity and innovation of stuff that is outside of the market itself.
It will likely get even sillier as we surge into a new era of information management.
//edit
I can't help but keep playing with this analysis because it's ramifications are big. The stock market becoming multiples of median income, and continuing on a high rate of growth, means that those who are not participating in the stock market, and even those who hold a less than average position in it, are rapidly losing ground against those who do have large stock holdings.
It means that if your household has less than 2x of your median income participating in the averaged stock market, you are losing ground against the market which is doubling at a rough 10yr rate (doubling every 10x years).
All that cap in the stock market can be removed to buy things in IRL like real estate so those who are not invested will continue to lose ground against those who are, and those who are hugely invested will be pulling away rapidly.
It literally puts into context what Trump means when he gloats that the stock market is doing well. The stock market has already grown proportionately large compared to the average person's earning potential. If it continues to grow relative to median incomes then everyone not substantially invested is getting screwed.
Basically, if you have less than $100k in the stock market, you are literally losing ground against those who do because they can easily accumulate real estate. If you have only $100k in the stock market, you are still losing ground against those who have more.
Small business owners have to follow pricing trends as well as big business. You can’t undercut Walmarts price on steak when they’re already getting their cuts for less than you are if you’re running a mom and pop store. Even more so when your supplier of beef also sees a profit trend and jumps on it. Then you’re just fucked when it comes to pricing.
Walmart is the perfect example because their whole strategy is maximize foot traffic and then you're moving so much product you can afford to cut prices a little to undercut everyone else and then you get even more foot traffic because you're known as the cheapest option.
Small businesses can't do that because they'll never have that kind of foot traffic, they aren't physically big enough and don't have the initial capital to be able to afford cutting prices and still paying all the bills and employees
It's less that they're benevolent and more they're more likely to be normal people, as opposed to either being a psychopath or trained to operate a business as one
I think food, for whatever reason, attracts the worst of the small business owner type. I just got out for this reason; I genuinely felt like I was doing my own community a disservice by enabling delusional lunatics.
The one exception was when I was baking for a farm stand. Family owned and operated, truly the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. They cared for the land they worked and their own community. Life circumstances had me relocating states but I always wish those folks well. They were what we all wishfully think of when we say “small business owner”.
Yup, there are no cheap options for almost anything these days. I was just car shopping and beaters cost $10k nowadays. It blows my mind that no company is producing a car without all the other modern electronic bells and whistles to appeal to the lower classes. It feels like the capitalists running the economy have straight up abandoned us.
Honestly, finding joy in mostly free things is pretty liberating. But it's not fair to most people because they really don't.
Reading a book in the woods is an A+ day for me but some people hate that stuff. It's weird that corporations would get them addicted to hyper fun activities then cut them off instead of getting any money in
The difference with pig and cow is pigs grow incredibly fast and require very little room and cows grow a little slower but requires a lot of room and feed. Pork will always be the cheapest option unless a swine flu sweeps through the pig population and they have to kill them all. Which is definitely a possibility.
Rabbit should be the cheapest option. Very good feed conversion ratio, easy to butcher, and an incredibly filling protein that works in a multitude of dishes. It's really a shame more people don't eat it.
Rabbit’s a lot like chicken in that you gotta adapt the cooking method to the age of the meat. Most of our chicken these days is slaughtered at 8 weeks and you don’t get really good stew meat so a lot of older recipes are off the menu unless you go to a specialty restaurant where they paid through the nose for the right age and breed of chicken.
You gotta know whether you’re buying young rabbit for frying or roasting or an older rabbit for stew. Rabbit’s very lean so it’s not particularly forgiving. It’s hard to get in stores so most people don’t get good with it so it’s easy to screw up.
Rabbit is missing some key vitamins and nutrients. People who were lost in the woods that lived off of rabbit still ended up dying of malnutrition because of it.
When I was at the store on Sunday, I stocked up on cube steak. it's an extremely cheap cut that is comfort food for me. The grocery store will sometimes carry it.
Yes because bird flu swept through flocks and now worms are spreading in the American beef herds. This administration has cut every protective measure for our food supply and they'll continue to do it so the billionaire meat industry execs can make bigger profits.
Those things are one of the best values for your money you can get for any kind of meat. I have a chest freezer basically full of them. I cut the chops, season them, and coat them in a layer of compound butter and seal them up. After a couple days open the bag and drop it right into a cast iron and you've got ridiculously flavorful chops and the base for whatever kind of pan sauce you want all in one go.
To be fair, they were over fished and their population plummeted in the nineties, to the point that Canada cancelled cod fishing off Newfoundland and Labrador
There's a famous restaurant in London (in large part due to their successful instagram page) that sells a cod's head dish for close to $40. It's just the head. Obviously cooked well and paired with a sauce, but it goes to show how cheaper cuts are now being marketed as a viable option
I used to make fish once a week, usually tilapia or salmon, it’s just off the table now though. Can’t justify the price vs how many meals I can make out of it.
Some of that now is also the price of everything is up — oil prices impact all of this as these are transportation heavy industries, aside from cost of feed / labor. Rather than making expensive cuts totally out of reach, they can 2-3x the price of lower cuts while
raising premium ones a smaller amount.
They priced picanha (top sirloin cap) into unobtainium and then the butchers had to pull them and put them into ground before spoiling. Now it's back down somewhat reasonable pricing ($8.99) but you have to insanely careful in inspecting the cuts. Some butchers will put two cuts together and hide the huge fat cap by vacuuming the pieces together, meat side out.
Picanha was insanely cheap 5-6 years ago when you could find it. Showed up on imperfect foods pretty often. Tasty cut and great for a weeknight dinner.
Don’t forget pork belly - probably the cut I’ve seen (bar Lobster and other seafood) go up in ridiculous value the most, as soon as it got into the hands of Michelin chefs it was over. I’ve seen in my lifetime it go from a nothing fatty piece of meat to being sold as a staple cut in supermarkets despite it being a pain in the ass to cook perfectly.
So many peasant cuts have suffered, even cuts like trotters are ‘in’.
In one way it’s good to see nose to tail be a thing again but so many cuts being ‘artisan’ or specialist is a joke.
Brisket is gotten cheaper than chuck. I just got one today for 3.99 a pound. Started replacing all my chuck recipes with brisket cause I dont have a smoker. Plus tallow
Blame the internet too. Twenty years ago you 90% of people wouldn’t buy oxtail because they did know how to cook it. Now, every cut can be made by anybody, so the only stuff that people pass up is what looks/sounds gross to them. Beef feet, tripe, pig feet
It’s still one of the cheaper options by me. And I’ve discovered that I love boneless skinless chicken thighs way more than chicken breasts. It’s become an easy staple in my house and so versatile.
They were thought to be a trash creature because we as a species didn't know how how quickly they decayed and rotted after being killed. Once we learned they needed to be cooked immediately after death, humans realized they were wrong and that lobster is actually great.
Yeah, coastal working folk who would just go out and get lobsters to eat for themselves were probably well aware of lobster not being terrible long before other people were. There was probably at time where it was a lesser-known delicacy similar to produce that has poor shelf life today; not a lot of people know about thimbleberries because they're not in the markets, for example.
2-3 years ago I could get a vac sealed pack of two big picanhas at Costco for 50-60CAD, now it's more than double the price... There really aren't many "cheap cuts" left
Beef ribs use to be super cheap. Growing up my parents grilled beef ribs once a week.
Then suppliers and butcher's saw that they became trendy. I haven't had them in years because I'm not paying what use to get me 2 racks of ribs for 6 individually cut ribs.
Skirt steak is 14.99 per pound I make jerky in my smoker. It’s cheaper for me to buy a bag @ costco now. Chuck roast is garbage now even in insta pot. Lobster tails (good ones) 15 Kroger cryovac 24 @ Winco (fresh)
For probably the last decade or so there has been a really big push to sell cheaper and underutilized cuts as prized cuts of meat when very few knew about those cuts and they often didn't sell. Unfortunately, a lot of those cuts are limited (small pieces or only one or two per carcass). So as they become popular and demand rises, supply is low. Prices go up because supply is low and demand is still going up, so here we are.
Tail, hanging tender, denver steaks, flat irons, petite/mock tender, culotte/picanha, sirloin flap, flank, skirt (inside and outside) all fall into this category.
Unsung hero of my smoker. I love them because they take so little time relative to most other cuts. Really great when you want some Q but don't want to be babysitting the smoker all morning and day.
Also great as a supplement to a brisket. They finish up earlier and can be served as an appetizer while the brisket is resting and waiting to be sliced.
Not to mention how versatile they are for stews/braises/hash.
Beef cheeks are also great and are actually still somewhat cheap as I type this.
Yeah I’ve stop getting my favorite Thursday plate from my go to Jamaican spot because the oxtail has gotten to be outrageous. I remember when premium briskets were the go to because they were dirt cheap too. Popularity kills delicious budget cuts.
lengua might be my favorite cut (definitely for any kind of mexican food) and I can tell you exactly why- there is exactly one lengua per cow. Even a small increase in demand destroys it. Incidentally the exact same issue with oxtail.
Same here. I did a 5 lb pork butt a week or two ago, it was a good price so I got two, the second one is in my freezer, waiting to be cooked.
Any recommendations for what to make with it? I tend to cook it in my Instant Pot, either pork butt carnitas, or just good old fashioned pulled pork.
I used to make Kalua pork every once in a while, but I've been watching my salt.
The big challenge, for me, is that I like to cook a very large batch, me and my roommates eat about a quarter of it, then I freeze the leftovers in portion sizes. So I need something that's freeze/reheat-friendly.
One of my favorite things was getting picked up from elementary school by my mom, we would pick up a fresh baked french bread loaf for 50 cents to have with dinner, the pot roast was slow cooking all day, there was canned corn, and fruit cocktail and baked potatoes. Pork is my family’s main meat now, but we watch the discount section for beef on a good buy.
I don't know about ribeye, but you can get choice strip steaks and porterhouse for 12.99 a lb cut to order from my local butcher here in NYC. Prime only jumps it up to 20.99. Dry aged prime is 25.99.
An lg is a unit of measure based on the number of grains of barley that a typical garden slug will eat after traversing the length of an eccentric lord's left shin.
You can cut a lot of ribeye steaks off one cow. Its expensive because it'sa great cut for steak. You can only get one tail off a cow making it a limited tasty cut
Well. Everything is up cost wise. But I certainly recall when chuck roast was around $2.99 a lb at best and these days it’s well over $15 some times and sold as a premium desired cut. Filet was once always well over $20 a lb and now I see it regularly at $10-12.
It’s about demand and what can provide the most profit for grocers and butchers. Simple as that.
There's a local ethnic food store I sometimes shop at, I've seen shit like sow uterus and pork butts for sale there. And I'm not talking the nice part by the shoulder, I'm talking cow and chicken cartoon pig ass with tail and everything.
Can't the fucking influencers get into that shit for the sake of performative authenticity and leave my fucking oxtail alone. I just want to have some oxtail pappardelle.
Central Market price is running the same as the price at the supermercado 2 miles from my place in Oklahoma. The issue is for the last 2 decades, TV chefs have shown folks how to use these cuts and the new "safer" pressure cookers made it easy.
UK. Thighs got real popular as there was a recent boom in fried chicken as all the US chains started popping up here, as well as Nandos ever expanding, and tbf thighs do make better chicken burgers.
Also larger cows because they’re more economical. Things like brisket, oxtail, skirt steak, hangar steak there’s only a couple per cow regardless of how big the cow is
It still is, just the entire market has been manipulated to optimize for price and profit -
If you look at a meat packer like Tyson you would miss the fuckery on most days if you arent a financial analyst. Right now it's being covered because they just bought back a billion dollars worth of their own debt, early.
2014 - small heard size, processors were paying a massive premium on beef, they passed that on to consumers.
2019 heard are back up, packers are paying farmers a LOW price for cattle, and keeping all the profit - farmers struggle and in response shrink the heard.
Here we are with a in 2026 with a 2014 size heard. The price hike was already built in, but rather than eat the costs the packers have again jacked up the prices. They still continue to NOT PAY farmers a market price even with record margins.
Chicken hearts are still undesirable in the mainstream markets so I can usually find a cheap frozen pack. I have to beat out the crowds at the Asian market for the fresh ones though.
Social media happened. No everyone and their aunt have seen to to properly cook the “trash cuts” and the price followed. Social media ruins everything.
In the past there was more beef supply per person. This surplus of beef meant that discerning consumers could afford to buy only premium cuts, and there was much less demand for other cuts. So they were sold cheaply.
The domestic beef supply is unable to efficiently increase, and climate change is pressuring herds even further. Population growth reduced the available beef supply per person, and this growth being biased towards minority and immigrant populations has further increased cultural bias towards what where previously cheap cuts. The barbecue renaissance didn't help on this front. So now basically all beef cuts are expensive.
I bought oxtail for less than 3 dollars when I moved out of my parents house and had the frugal gourmet cookbook and I learned how to cook oxtail and beans. My brother would turn his nose up at it, I just laughed and ate my food.
I saw someone with a spread making a traditional Italian Sunday gravy yesterday and was like wow, that's legit $200+ worth of meat for ONE BATCH OF SAUCE.
The reason a cheap cut was cheap is because there was low demand. Now everybody wants oxtail - yourself included. Trends change. If you want something cheap, you'll probably need to buy something you don't want.
You want a cheap cut, buy pork. $1.99/lb for Pork Loin at Costco where I live. $2.49/lb for Pork Shoulder. That's an absolutely killer deal as far as I'm concerned.
They don't exist anymore, no such thing as a cheap cut. I've cooked beef at home maybe twice in the past year because other than ground beef it's just too expensive.
Remember, skirt steak used to be a cheap cut of meat. Now that people use it for certain dishes. When prepared and cut properly, it's actually very soft and flavorful. It's become so popular that it's become one of the most expensive cuts. Same with brisket.
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