Meat for cheap!

Are you often wanting a nice steak dinner but you don't want to pay a ton? Well, I have an easy trick. I am not going to lie, we eat very nice in our house. We eat a LOT of meat, including steaks, roasts, chicken...you name it! Most people think that my grocery bills are through the roof. They aren't. We get to eat really nice meat for close to nothing. Here is my tip:

Do not buy meat full price. The best time to buy the meat is when they are marked down to barely nothing. When does this happen? Let me tell you!

All fresh packaged meat has a "sale by" date on it. It will clearly state "sale or freeze by May 12" or whatever date. Well on May 12th, they HAVE to sale it or they have to throw it away. Rather than throwing it away, they will mark it down to hardly anything. The best time to find the meat that has been marked down, is right after the grocery store opens. I wait about an hour after open and then I go to the store and check the markdowns (that way I give the butcher plently of time to mark down all the meat). I live in Utah County and my favorite place to shop for meat is at our Super Target. Almost every morning I will find markdowns. Here is an example of something I see very often:

-1 pound of Flank Steak. It is normally $7.99/lb (I believe). That morning they will put it on sale for like $4.99/lb and stick a peelie coupon on it for an additional $3 off. That means I pay $2 and I get a pound of flank steak. Awesome right?

So the trick is to buy the meat on the mark downs and as soon as you get home, put them in your freezer. Then when you want to eat it, pull it out of the freezer that morning and let it defrost on your counter.

Right now in my freezer we have the following meat (all from markdowns): Sirlon Steak, Flank Steak, Eye of Round Steak, Chuck Roast, Chicken, T-bone Steak, Pork Loin, Ground beef...you get the point? You can have the nice meat, and not pay very much for it.

So call around to your grocery stores, and find out which stores do markdowns on "sale by dates"...most of them all will. And then go shopping about an hour after open and see what they have. You will be amazed at how much meat you will be able to stock up on.