Anyone else experiencing a shortage/ or unable to buy Neck Meat? We have resorted to Clods for ground chuck in addition to our normal fresh trim. The story we are getting is that the packing companies won't pack it in boxes due to the government not wanting to do E coli testing on it.
-- Edited by Jon88 on Sunday 2nd of May 2010 01:02:49 AM
I've never worked at a store that bought neck meat separately. We've had boneless and bone in chucks. We grind the neck meat from that. We carry neck bones (that we buy separately), but never neck meat. For super lean ground beef, we use chuck mock tenders.
We don't usually get in the bone in chucks, which right now, chucks are at more cost to us than shoulder clods- go figure, it's hard to say what the beef market will turn up these next couple months. For our lean ground round, we just use trim up some heel meat.
Meat packing co,want you to use once ground,and so they say controll and track down e coli.Which is a big farse.Our bench trim has to be mark bench and the tubes have to be mark tubes. We get no other trim in.they started this in Jan here in Canada.But short of meat no.
We grind only tubes for 93,85,chuck and 73 because the compnay makes us grind trimmings as 80 under a trimmings code. I carry neckbones and they come in ready to use.
We don't use tubes at all. We grind about 5 luggers per day all from shop trim. One exception. A lot of our super lean is from chuck "mock tenders". But still no tubes, ever.
I'll make use of clods for 95%, 90% and 85% chuck. I take the shoulder tender off, sell it as a 'shoulder tender petite steak or roast' at 6.99 american, the clod heart as stew and 95 at 4.99, remove the top blade, trim it out as 'flat iron' and sell it at 6.99. All other trim turns into 85 chuck. Clods are cheaper than underblade chucks right now, for whatever reason, at these prices I can clear no less than 37% margin. I buy them as 2 pc. chucks that include the underblade, as chuck roasts and chuck eyes are still fairly popular. The rest turns into grind. Wasting time seaming out underblade for stew is way to labor intense.
Go figure the price of clods being cheaper than chucks, I certainly would not have guessed I would have seen it. We try to keep our chuck at about 87-89% lean. Other than pulling stew and English from the clod, pretty much everything else goes for grinding. If we had a bigger case, I am sure my boss would love to put chicken fry steaks and flat irons out, but we just don't have the room.
That is true- neck meat no longer avaliable- I also use mock tenders- I save a lot of my fat and then thro some mock tenders in and makes good burger. I used neck meat for years
