I usually have an aversion to canned meats. Intellectually I know that the meat is, in fact, what it says it is on the label… yet, every single time I open a can of chicken, beef, or tuna, it smells like cat food. Years ago, I tried the Costco canned roast beef and, once you got it into a pan and heated up, it was delicious. I mean, really good. So I grabbed a bunch and, naturally, Costco stopped selling it. It has been, no lie, probably five or six years since I’ve seen canned roast beef at Costco.
Now, one thing I have noticed about other canned beef products is that virtually none of them are made-in-USA. Invariably they are from Brazil or Argentina or some other south American country. And while I’m sure (eyeroll) that their quality control standards are first rate, I think I’d rather stuff my face with American beef rather than something some gaucho carved up and processed through a semi-Third World processing plant.
Anyway…..
Up at Costco today and beheld this:
Let’s do some math.
4-12 oz. cans at 9.69 means each can is $2.42. Each can is 12 oz. so that comes out to $3.20~ per pound. Now, I know what you’re going to say – “But Commander, part of that 12 oz. is water weight from the broth its packaged in.” You are correct, sir. However, this is $3.20 per pound of cooked beef, whereas the pricing youre comparing your meat counter purchase to is for raw beef. We all agree that a quarter-pound burger patty ain’t 4 oz. once we’re done cooking it, right? So, to my way of thinking, I’m guessing that the post-cooked weight of the canned beef with its broth is probably pretty close to what the pre-cooked weight of the actual raw beef would be. So, I’m reasonably comfortable with saying its $3.20/#. With that said, $3.20/# is actually a decent deal these days.
But, even at a dollar a pound it’s no bargain if it tastes horrible enough that you won’t eat it. So, let’s cook up some rice, throw the contents of the can into a pan, heat it up, add in some soy sauce or chili paste, serve it over some rice, and see if it’s worth going long on.
So, lets grab a can of the Kirkland stuff and compare a few things. These cans are pull-tops whereas the Kirklands were not. I prefer non-pull-top because if that pre-scored seam on the can takes a hit from something it can let go pretty easily. But, this can be mitigated with proper packing and storage.
Opening the can and…….merciful Crom, it always looks like dog food. There was some congealed fat floating in there, which is good, and the meat appeared to not be heavy in the gristle or undesirable-parts department.
WHY!? WHY DOES IT ALWAYS LOOK LIKE DOG FOOD!?!?
Ok, I’ll be honest…I held my breath until it was in the pan and on the flame. Once it got some heat under it I added some chopped onion and soy sauce. Shoulda skipped the soy sauce. More on that later.
I ran it over high heat to make sure it was heated all the way through and to reduce some of the broth. There was a very strong ‘well done beef’ smell from the pan. I cooked up half a cup of rice and added the contents of the pan.
How was it? Good. But salty. The meat was wonderfully tender and this would go really nicely in a soup, stew, or bourguignon. As it was, just the rice, onions, beef, and soy sauce worked out just fine. A meal that you could do pretty easily and quickly in a power outage or shelter-in-place situation.
Comparing the nutritional label data between this and the Kirkland roast beef showed something interesting. The Kirkland is listed as four servings per can, this stuff says six. What that means is that when you figure that out as RDA per can, you get this:
Kirkland = 32% of your RDA of sodium, per can
Butterfield = 72% of your RDA of sodium, per can
So, yeah….it wasn’t just the soy sauce that made it taste salty. But, if you really think that when the end of the world gets here you need to watch your salt intake…well…clearly you’re priorities need some review. After a long day of sweating through your cammies as you hang looters and man roadblocks, stress over the mutant zombie biker gangs, and generally lead a pretty physical and stressful life….you’ll welcome that little bit of extra salt. But if it really, really matters to you…just cut the sodium in half. How? Eat half as much. Problem solved.
Another odd thing. look at those nutritional labels. Both of them show a serving size as being the same – 2 oz./56gram. And both cans are 12 oz. But the Kirkland says there are 4 servings per can, whereas the Butterfield says six. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that the Kirkland numbers are net of any liquid. Or maybe it’s bad math. But if it really is true that both are the same 2 oz. per serving, once of them is packing 50% more sodium per serving than the other. You go figure it out.
Final verdict? Worth it. It comes out cheaper than the Kirkland stuff Costco was selling ten years ago. Texture and taste seem fine and it cooks up quite nicely. I approve of it enough that I went back to Costco and bought a case of it. (Because I’m sure as heck not gonna buy a case of something without trying it out first.) If you really wanna go nuts…a can of this stuff, a bottle of soy sauce or other seasoning), and a vacuum sealed bag of minute rice would store literally indefinitely in just about any environ and give you a hot meal that you could fix over a sterno stove.
So…an addition to the food stockpile. But a yummy enough one that keeping it rotated shouldn’t be a problem.
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I couldn’t find it on line, I’ll have to swing by my local Costco this afternoon and look.
The Kirkland Roast Beef 4/12 Oz Cans Are Back In Stock ! I Got 4 Of The 4 Packs
You say “it looks like dog food” is a bad thing
Or maybe it’s not so much that canned meat looks like dog food, rather it’s that dog food looks like canned meat.
If it helps any, home canned meat looks like dog food too.
Maybe I missed it, but did the can say where the Butterfield is from, countrywise?
USA
We add BBQ sauce to the beef for BBQ sandwiches it’s good. I have been looking for it at our local Costco and it’s been over a year since they had any. I’m going today and if they have some I’m getting 2 cases of it.
Do you think the extra salt adds in shelf life?
No. There’s no difference in shelf life of unsalted, salted, or oversalted canned meats. I used to be a Food Safety Advisor with the WSU Extension office.
Thanks for the heads up. I’m still sitting on old stock of this, and go through a can regularly. For me, one can is two dinners, over rice, with some Worcestershire sauce or teriyaki.
But yeah, it’s been gone for 3-4 years hereabouts.
If it’s back next payday in my Costco, I’ll be laying in about 4 months of that, to go with the Costco Chicken, ham, Spam, etc., and round out a year’s worth of canned goods in one easy trip.
Great write up. Heade to Costco tomorrow.
What do they give for shelf life.
Two years, but we know better.
Don’t forget these are pop top. May not get the same longevity as traditionally canned. In fact I must admit to wondering if that’s part of the reason for the “added convenience” of pop tops. Hmmmm?
I like the Kirkland beef over wide egg noodles, but the family is reluctant… I’m sure a gravy packet would help, or some of the many envelopes of instant mashed potatoes.
I had some argentinian canned meat, in really heavy duty cans, and they popped a very short time after their marked expiration date. The pouch meat has held up much better, except when the rats found it. Turns out rats love cooked beef, and a plastic pouch doesn’t slow them down at all.
Since then I put everything that isn’t in cans into plastic tubs. It keeps the dust, moisture, rat droppings/urine, etc away from the product and limits the attraction to critters.
Since I shifted from ‘stacking’ to ‘using’ my stores, I’ve put the cans into FIFO can organizers for ready access. Even my wife and kids will hit up the organizer and they wouldn’t go looking on the shelves for stored cans before that. In fact having the cans handy has shifted the way I cook toward more canned products (and back toward a 1950s diet). If you’re cooking for family, you definitely want to introduce and familiarize the canned product while you have fresh to supplement it and alternate. We are very spoiled by the amount and variety of fresh and exotic produce available to use grid up.
n
That’s why I got a cat. With traps out all over the place, I was catching one or two a night. Once I got the cat, the problem has been COMPLETELY solved. He was a barn cat and after a good night of hunting, he wouldn’t eat his food. With no more rodents, he eats his food twice a day now.
There are a couple of outdoor “neighborhood” cats that roam thru my yard now that my little dog has passed. One p!sses on the garage door every day on his rounds. That has kept the population down, but I still put out poison and set traps in the attic. I messed around for over a year trying to control them without poison. They are smart, they learn, and if you don’t kill them immediately, they communicate the danger and you won’t get any more with that trap.
I had one in a trap in the attic after our historic cold snap, and something eats the poison blocks, so they are still around, but they aren’t eating my stores anymore.
n
If I might suggest, you should consider acquiring some of the Knoor dry gravy/sauce mixes to use on your canned beef. They are pretty good taste adjusters; especially if you add some different spices while you’re dissolving them in boiling water. And being powder the packets will keep a long time in a Ziploc baggie
Nothing wrong with using it as a cooking ingredient, but it’s always worth trying one can with a fork straight from the can, to find out whether it’s edible as is. Most of the stuff in my pantry can be eaten without use of a stove.
Start canning your own meat, it’s a lot cheaper, you know EXACTLY what’s in it, you can season to your own taste, and you can reuse the jars and lids many times over if you get the reusable Tattler lids.
Tractorguy
Soy Sauce does not necessarily store indefinitely. Keep in mind that it is a fermented product, and the fermentation may continue after bottling. I’ve had at least two soy sauce bottles go kablewy on me.
https://www.werlingandsons.com/
https://brinkmanfarms.com/
https://keystonemeats.com/
https://www.walnutcreekfoods.com/products/grocery-wet/meat-chunks-broths/meat-chunks-beef-wc-145-oz
The Kirkland tuna packed in water is the best we have found of all that we have tried
That does look pretty good! I must say I like that you’re eating it the way you would eat a lot of things in a crisis – over rice! In any kind of a real catastrophic situation, I think canned goods would get licked clean. Anything edible in that can is going to get eaten. Any bit of flavor or any bit of nutrition is going to be important.
Head up to Costco an get ye some.
Not available on-line and of course our local Costco doesn’t carry the new stuff just like they didn’t carry the now-discontinued Kirkland brand. Dammit.
I’m a diabetic who has dealt with kidney stones, so I have to be choosy about what I shove into my mouth. That Butterfield with 72% of your sodium RDA per can is something I wouldn’t touch. I’m not sure if you are aware, but when you hit middle age, your kidney function starts to drop a few percent every year.
Didn’t know that Mike…thanks for the tip.
My father suffered from kidney stones years ago. Said it was the worst pain he ever had. Old school doctor recommended a glass or two of orange juice every day. Never had problem after that. That was 30 years ago – not sure if the juice is the same now.
After reading your post and seeing the pics I was VERY excited to get some of this canned beef, the price is good, and its made in the USA.
But….here’s the thing. I called my local area Costco’s and they don’t have it on hand or in their data base. That’s the Central Valley of California. I talked to one of the staff at the Turlock, Ca. Costco and she checked THE WHOLE REGION….that’s a big chunk of California, none of the Costco’s here have it, its not even listed. Well, that sucks. So…I moved on. Order it on their web site….Nope, not available, NOT EVEN LISTED. Checked Walmart …out of stock. Time to call Costco’s Corporate Office. The lady I spoke with at their Corporate Office was very helpful. At this posting, she said , the only area of Costco stores that carry Butter Field Farms Roast Beef is the North Western United States. It figures. She’s going to put in a request with the company to sell it at their other stores. Decent of her to do that. In the mean time.
As best as I can figure, this is what may be going on ( maybe). They could be doing a test run. As you know, there are a LOT of preppers in the north west, and if sales go good, they may ship it to other stores. Or….it could just be a one off. Or….they got a good deal for a boat load of cans, and once its gone, its gone. If you check the images on line, they have redesigned the labeling. At least it appears so.
Either way, its a really good price for canned beef. I have a friend that hunts in Idaho from time to time, I’ll see if he’ll grab me some.
By the by….You should try “OX and PALM Corned Beef, chunky ” ( Red Can ) if you haven’t already. Its Australian beef. This stuff is crazy good. Fatty, not to salty, and full of flavor. I highly recommend it.
The congealed fat at the top is the seal of approval. Means there is energy in the can, and it’s been stored properly, and it’s gonna taste really good warmed up.
Will taste like tooth paste cold.
Oh, and Beanie Weenies. Big or small cans don’t matter, but with a little rice goes a long way. And you can make it yourself too, but I like the pull tab cans.
All i have ever seen of Beanie Weenies is the small lunch sized cans. Cannot find them bigger in my modest searches and i am not sure they exist.
We have been getting the “Keystone” brand canned meats from Walmart.
Chicken, beef, turkey have all tasted good, not much gristle or whatever in them.
Got most of ours year or so ago at about $6 a can. Up above $7 now