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Here's a breakdown of what you can expect to get from your side of beef. There are slight variations depending on what you want. For instance, if you want porterhouse and T-bone steaks, you won't get NY strip steaks because they are part of a porterhouse steak. And your tenderloin gets cut into those nice big beautiful steaks, too. So if you want to stretch your meat out into more meals you might opt for strip steaks and tenderloin steaks rather than the T-bone and Porterhouse steaks. On the other hand if you want the whole tenderloin for roasting, of course you wouldn't want tenderloin steaks, T-bones or Porterhouse steaks. Your package will be heavier if you want organ meats, (liver, heart, kidney and tongue). And heavier yet if you want soup bones or beef fat (suet). Meat found on the soup bones would end up as hamburger if you don't want the soup bones. Boning will of course make it lighter (but costs more to process) and you'll have more hamburger if you don't want stew meat, chuck steaks or chuck roasts. Figures presented here are based on an average of NO organ meats or soup bones or dog bones or beef fat. Just meaty packages of beef, and no additional boning. An average 600 pound carcass (that's a whole cow) will yield about 450 pounds of meat without any of these extras at our processors. You will need a minimum 15 cu ft of freezer space to put all that meat in and may find you have a little more for the freezer on top of your fridge, up to a grocery bag full. If you're buying a side you can cut these numbers in half. I can put most of a side of beef in a 7 cu ft chest freezer with about a grocery bag of meat left over for the freezer on top of the fridge. This does not include organ meats and soup bones which is another bag full, and beef fat which is yet another bag full. |