All About Frozen Meat

Frozen Meat

All of our meats are frozen. This takes some getting used to when planning your meals ahead of time. However, frozen is the only way to get the highest quality meats available. Most of the grass-fed beef you can buy in the store is finished on a feedlot and has all kinds of corners being cut. There, they are too often fed nasty things that are not grass at all (think: sunflower shells, saw dust, candy, soiled fruit waste, etc).

Our beef is always finished on green, growing pasture. This has a huge impact on the health and taste of the meat. Where do you think that fresh meat comes from in January? It sure isn’t green pasture!

In addition, frozen meats are safer than fresh. This is particularly true with pastured pork, where the freezing processes kills trichinosis causing micro- organisms.

Frozen Meat Tips:

We recommend placing meat on a plate in the refrigerator to thaw. This will prevent any mess.

I often don't plan a full day ahead when cooking, so I find myself thawing meat at the last minute. This works really well for most of our cuts: just place them in a bowl submerged in warm water. Leave the faucet running slowly with hot water to help move the water around and speed things up.

You can cook directly with frozen meats -- I always cook my crockpot items directly from frozen and even find I like the hamburger patties cooked on a hot cast iron pan best when they are frozen or partly thawed.

Smoked meats, brats and deli meats

All of our smoked meats will be cooked and ready to eat. They will say fully cooked on the label. The same is true for deli meats (roast beef, sliced ham, etc). This doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from a nice searing on the grill or a hot pan...

The same goes for all of our Sous Chef meals. These are pre-cooked and (almost) ready to eat. Find easy-to-follow instructions and videos for prepping them on the Sous Chef page.

Items like 'fresh brats' are obviously still fresh and need to be cooked like any raw product.