Australian Meat question

sunrise · Aug 4, 2015

I was at RD the other day buying some things for an event this weekend, while I was in the meat cooler, I wanted to check on the price of tri tip. The case price of Angus trimmed tri tip was 6.69 a pound, as I was looking, they had a special on a pallet of Australian tri tip @ 4.49 a pound, but you had to buy a case. Thats 2.29 a pound cheaper, but I have never heard of or used any Australian meat, I wouldnt mind trying some to see what its like, but not a whole case. Has anyone ever tried, or used any Australian meat? From what I could see, there wasnt too much marbling in it, but it was in cryovac, and hard to tell. Not sure why it was so much cheaper, considering they have to ship it all the way here. I sure didnt want to experiment at an event, so I ended up paying for the American Angus meat. Anyone tried it?

bizznessman · Aug 4, 2015

Trade agreements and volume. This from a post reply, when I asked the same question a while back on their site, that explains a lot.

mate i live in Australia and i can offer a little bit. Cattle in Australia are everywhere we dont really have areas or regions where we consider cattle country Australia is all cattle country, take Sydney for example there are farms just on the outskirts so to try to answer your question there is alot of beef to go around so we sell it cheap just to be able to sell it .Also most Aussies are into lean beef so we keep most of it and sell the rest to places like japan and the us etc along with that your dollar is worth about 15 cents more so that makes a difference. Let me just tell you it has nothing to do with cheap labour most farmers in oz are rich men seeing that they own cattle stations the size of some European countries. Australia also has trade agreements with certain countries and with the USA you pay less for our beef and we pay less for your wheat, corn, lamb etc. I hope this helps it is the best answer i can give

landarc · Aug 4, 2015

Of course, I would never experiment with a cook I was doing for someone else. But, generally, the Australian market actually prefers a leaner meat than here, with grass finished beef being more popular in their market than formula/grain finished meats. I have had Aussie beef a few times and found it to be very good. Naturally, there are different grades.

Since you were looking at a case only price, I would say that is still pretty good meat, just heavily discounted from the piece price.

Gary Tomato · Aug 4, 2015

I eat Australian meat every day and love it, but I'm in Melbourne Australia! I think our cattle is transported to other countries and butchered when it gets to its destination country. I've only ever got tri-tip at Costco (and a premium wagyu butcher) I expect it's Australian beef and it's always excellent. I recommend you give it a try and let us know what you think.

acguy · Aug 6, 2015

I've never bought it but I've done quite a bit of research. Australia has way more open land than the US and the beef tends to be grass fed. The heavy grass feeding leads to a lower fat content as compared to US beef generally speaking. So the beef might not be as juicy as we are a custom to. Australia has a different beef grading system as well. It uses some different metrics but basically it's a 1 to 4 scale. The best translation is MSA4 is prime, MSA3 is choice etc. But I've never seen any of the Australian beef in RD graded. For that reason, I've never purchased it.

Skip · Aug 6, 2015

Yeah its the interstitial fat that it lacks due to the diet. They don't force feed them hi calorie diets to bulk them up quickly and for slaughter. What I have always heard is that the pieces you prefer lean are very much similar and those where fat is key tend to be lacking. So a tenderloin is probably fine but the ribeye might not taste so good to someone familiar with american techniques.

Australian Meat question

sunrise

Knows what a fatty is.

bizznessman

is one Smokin' Farker

landarc

somebody shut me the fark up.

Gary Tomato

is one Smokin' Farker

acguy

Knows what a fatty is.

Skip

is Blowin Smoke!

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