I do not like canned meats. It’s incredibly stupid, but my biggest objection is that when you open the can they all look and smell identical and are indistinguishable from cat food. But…when the apocalypse occurs it would be nice to have actual meat to eat that didnt come off the neighbor’s dog (or the neighbor).
I’ve blogged about the canned roast beef that CostCo used to carry and was quite pleased with it. Yeah, it looked and smelled horrible when you open the can but once you cook it up and get it on some rice it turns out to be pretty darned good.
Unfortunately, my local CostCo stopped carrying the Kirkland-brand roast beef several years ago, and although they recently started carrying a different brand it appears they are no longer carrying that one either. Supply chain issues, regional distribution agreements, sales numbers not supportive, whatever ther eason the end result is the dame – no canned beef.
Now, roast beef is one thing but corned beef is another. Personally I think corned beef or pastrami and swiss on rye is proof that the universe has room for luxuries. And canned corned beef, it seems, is never in short supply. Problem is, virtually all of it is imported. Most of the canned corned beef I’ve come across is from Brazil. Makes sense, Brazil is cattle country. But as far as I’m concerned it is also a Third World-ish environ that, honestly, I suspect might be a little fast-and-loose with it’s food safety.So..I avoid.
But, I was up at CostCo today and came across canned corned beef from Australia. Assuming they were sober at the cannery that day, I’d put more faith in Australian food safety observances than those of some South American venue. So, on a whim, I picked up these:
I’ll try it later in the week with some eggs. Probably should go for the full on guerrilla-gourmet experience and use the powdered eggs. Regardless, if it’s any good I’ll let you know. I need to try it soon because with CostCo’s history of dropping products unexpectedly they may be out of it by next week and I’ll never see more again.
Yes, beans and rice form a complete protein and lasts forever in storage. You konw what else forms a complete protein? Meat. I am not going through the apocalypse just to live in a future of textured vegetable protein and other fake meats. I mean, what would be the point?
50-50 if the Aussies were sober. I’ve been hungry enough to eat the butt of a dead monkey but canned meat and eggs would be not a too bad meal when the SHTF. The Costco shredded beef in a foil, mylar looking pack isn’t too bad either, probably was from Brazil.
Yep. Old Joe from Delawierd is doing a hell of a job. If the destruction if the U.S. is the goal.
The next round will be a page from the Biden playbook of stupid ass moves. Not only does he want to destroy us but it seems he is zeroing in on our neighbors to the north.
You can bet Petite Justan won’t be liking this. His Bromance with Obungle seems to have cooled. With the National Crash Test Dummy in the Monkey Barn things between the US and Canada have hit a big snag.. Not only is he and the South Bend Soddomite totally wrecking our supply chain. He’s getting ready to put a giant dent in theirs.
Hey. How about that jobs report. Old bastard just can’t seem to hit the mark.
Maybe he should try projecting a million and then he might just get 50K jobs ” created”.
No Costco in my area, only Sam’s club and BJ’s. The canned chicken at Sam’s is outstanding in every way. I just wish it came in a larger size as well.
Our Sam’s does have the canned chicken in 2 sizes .The larger size can is roughly 3 times the size of the smaller ones in the 6 pack.
The labels are very similar so it’s easy to mix them up.
Steelheart
Thank You!
Time for a Ruben sandwich, your canned meat, sauerkraut, and 1000 island
dressing, Yum !
Thx for the tip C. Z……
Hey, doesn’t show as a product at the online costco site. How much was the 6 pack? TY.
Well, here in Italy the choice for corned beef, both difficoult to find, are the Brazilian stuff and a brand from… China!
Suddenly Brazil gets bumped to first world country status…
Actually a couple months ago a popular prepper youtube channel reviewed that same Australian corned beef from Costco e found it worse than the Brazilian one. It was full of ligaments and aven bone pieces. I don’t know if it’s okay to post a link here.
Thanks,
Davide
Jack in the Box restaurants got fined once when kangaroo meat was found in their burgers
Kangaroo meat is one of the best for you, Not as good as Ostrich meat but still one of the best red meats for you.
Here in the UK it was big news that horse meet was being sold almost everywhere as beef.
I forgot to add that was meat done in the UK/EU the stuff from Brazilian and Argentine was found to be fine.
IIRC AlaskaPrepper did a review on this and it is not near as good as their previous stuff.
I can a LOT of my own meat and yes, it always has an odd smell when first opened and if you just open it and eat it cold that smell is also a taste. If you toss it in the pot and heat it up that all goes away. Hell, the other day I made some awesome soup by tossing some home canned ground beef, stock, beans, tomatoes, and frozen vegies together and simmering for a while (maybe some other spices as well).
After h is review I haven’t gotten those, I’m kind of in a bind as my current place is FULL and my new place has some furnace issues and I can’t move things over until that is resolved…. logistics destruction… blah. Ya, can’t turn furnace on, w/o furnace it’s -30, not putting canned goods in -30.
Yes I was referring to Alaska Prepper’s video in my post above. He did a previous video where he compared three different brands (Hereford, Great Value and Libby IIRC), all produced in Brazil, and found all of them practically identical and of good quality.
OTH, the Australian brand tested in the newer video was full of non edible parts like bone fragments and cartilage.
We’ll see if CZ will confirm this in his own taste test.
The only brand available in Italy is called Exeter and is exported primarily in the UK. I found it, at least visually, identical to the other Brazilian brands reviewed by AK. I suspect they come all from the same factory and are rebranded according to country of export and different supermarket chains.
we just had a great meal of butterfield canned roast beef over potatoes. took two cans to get a meal, but was delicious. bought one can from wallyworld to test, then ran across it on sam’s website. funny thing is, they were both good but one was pinkish with light broth and the other was well done in dark brown almost gravy broth. at 3 plus bucks a can, its not very cost effective but spread over rice or pasta it would make a great post shtf meal.
“But as far as I’m concerned it is also a Third World-ish environment that, honestly, I suspect might be a little fast-and-loose with its food safety. So…I avoid.”
When you consider that approximately 80% of the global canned corned beef supply comes from Brazil, you are severely limiting your sources for this product. Like pride going before a fall, bias goes before an empty belly.
But because it provides 80% of the worlds supply doesnt necessarily mean that their food safety standards are acceptable. Its no different than 90% of the worlds manufactured goods coming from China, so they must have some awesome labor and safety laws. The one may not have anything to do with the other.
one must consider one’s immediate needs versus one’s long term health, which will be severely limited in shtf anyway. i’m beginning to wonder, why bother to survive at all?
“doesn’t necessarily mean that their food safety standards are acceptable.”
Isn’t basing your bias on safety standards kind of like people who are biased against carrying firearms because there are laws to protect them?
The same institutions you rely on to administer food safety standards, also inspect all imported food. So if you don’t trust Brazilian imported food you may want to think twice about food grown/raised in the USA.*
Like pride going before a fall, bias goes before an empty belly.
https://www.fda.gov/food/recalls-outbreaks-emergencies/alerts-advisories-safety-information
I share your lament on the lack of Kirkland canned beef.
Have been using the Brazilian varieties in substitute without problems.
As well as rice, it combines with beans nicely, and turns into burrito meat without any problem, or with potatoes and a dash of worcestershire sauce. I go with teriyaki when I go the rice route.
As (along with the canned chicken) it comprises nearly half (okay, 3/7ths) of our 1 year’s stash of ready dinner calories, beggars can’t be choosers, and it has never disappointed us.
{For anyone wondering, alternating chicken/beef 6 nights/week, and ham and the occasional turkey saved for Sunday dinners. Seafood for lunches – mostly tuna – and SPAM, bacon, or sausage as breakfast protein, alongside eggs. FWIW, the average can of beef/chicken either serves two people, or provides dinners on two nights from one can. And it isn’t hard to find recipes for enough variety for beef and chicken to keep things from getting boring, but the key word is “condiments and sauces”. Surviving needn’t mean monotony.}
We home can our own. We get the beef, pork or chicken on sale. The good thing about home canning now is plentiful cheaper energy to cook/can products. When the power goes out, we can heat up our meats/meals quickly over a wood fire or propane burner. Heating up does not use the fuel as cooking from raw. We home can when the freezer is full and we make a mark down/special haul. Oldest stuff canned and new into the freezer.
I was buying Brazilian packaged meat for a while, as my local ethnic market had some and the ethnic xxx sorry International aisle in our big grocery store had some as well.
The canned beef was in heavy, thick metal cans. They failed dramatically shortly after their best by date. I didn’t replace them. As I’ve mentioned before, my storage conditions are very bad though, so ymmv.
The meat in pouches, aimed at and flavored for the spanish/hispanic market was really tasty, and lasted long past best buy.
There have been a number of scandals involving brazil and argentina and canned meat products but they were supposedly only for “domestically” sold product and not product for export. That’s my recollection anyway, and you can take their assurances for what their worth…
n
Ate that same brand about 2 months ago as a test. Flavor was good, texture good. The only negative was my can had huge pieces of artery in it. Removing them was not a big deal but it was a surprise.
Not to discount real meat, but for those really poor I have two suggestions. Potatoes are a complete protein ( even if the total delivered is small. But a big portion of potatoes will stretch out a very small amount of meat ). Beans do the same thing. But if you can’t stock much beans, think about buying at least some soy meal. The feed store has them, about $35 a fifty pound back. Twice as pre-Corona, but the store beans- pinto, white, whatever- are going way up as well. I hate soy, but come the end of food stores, soy protein is better than nothing but wheat. Don’t buy store dry potato flakes. Dry your own, including skins. Or it is just an empty food like white sugar. And the soy is defatted, so it stores a long time ( store the fat separately, and don’t wait as the price on those explodes as well ).
Suggestion three: change career paths to stop being ‘really poor’.
Granted, genteel poverty is my choice. But I might suggest that during an economic collapse, career paths have the tendency to become unavailable. Not saying you made the wrong choice, merely saying some might choose to “collapse early and beat the rush” as Druid Dude would say ( he was an Optimistic Ollie, too-LOL ). Just another option, is all. And if nothing else, the advice of frugality can be applied after one chooses money, and then that doesn’t work
Even “really poor” can save money if they can get some time loose for looking. Given the stimulus checks and unemployment benefits, and SNAP for kids, this would be a great time to not spend 20 hours a day at minimum wage, but use some of the time to improve your condition.
There are ‘help wanted’ signs EVERYWHERE around here.
There are so many ways to ‘live better on less’ but they do tend to take more time.
There are plenty of side gigs. Even scrap collecting can pay $100/day and the work is mostly at night.
And reselling items from the curb, or thrift stores is something anyone can do in one hour a day. I see plenty of folks on their lunch hour at the Goodwill Outlet looking for bargains for themselves, or for stuff to resell.
n
LEARN.TO.CAN. Stop relying on sporadically-available stuff in the store that’s full of preservatives and God knows what else. Pressure can your own food, then you know what’s in it, can tailor it to your own tastes, and it is much much cheaper. Lay in some jars, Tattler reusable lids, get and read a copy of Ball Blue Book Guide to Canning, and take control of your own food supply.
Amen to home canning. Yes, pressure canning is time intensive, for meats. But know how to do it, it’s a skill like any other. And check the seals on your jars every couple weeks. Once in awhile, one will fail over time. I’ve had canned food last for years.
Home canning is nice and spiffy and all, but glass jars are a poor substitute for tinned steel actual cans when it comes to robust storage.
I concur on the home canning and especially when it comes to a full freezer and prices only escalating. I will say that investing in the Jarbox (Amazon) or this slightly different version is a great idea – lose a jar of jelly and it’s sad. Lose a jar of meat and it is a real downer.
https://www.rootsandharvest.com/product/canning-safecrate-pint-and-quart-jars/canning-accessories
I have been focusing on canning beef Q42021 and think I will continue the trend a bit and then focus on chicken in Q2.
Or, you can get over the silly 6 yo gurl attitude and face the fast approaching reality. We have been eating a variety of canned meats for 10+ years and never have a problem with it. Just today I cracked open a can of Great Value chicken, drained the water, mixed in mayo, sweet pickle relish, salt and pepper and made lovely chicken salad sando’s for my spouse and me.
Having stocked it, I can say that Ox & Palm is the best canned corned beef I’ve ever had. I couldn’t tell you who is second. They have other meats too, which you can find in Asian supermarkets (one of these days I’ll spring for a can of mutton, because why not?).