Absurd Brisket Prices
I’m willing to accept that Kosher beef costs more than non-Kosher beef, but it’s starting to get to me that brisket constantly hovers around $12/lb. For our family seder, we procured a delicious 10-pounder, but the price was no laughing matter.
Traditionally, Brisket has been among the cheapest of beef cuts given its need for slow cooking to make it tender. And, outside of your kosher butcher, it is still very cheap — between $2-$4/lb. for a non-Kosher slab from Stop & Shop.
It’s a bit old, but this Kosher Today article from 2001 seems to capture the unanimous verdict of the industry — supply is down, and despite increasing demand and expanded sales venues (more kosher steakhouses, major supermarket kosher sections), there’s little interest in the greater slaughterhouse community to include kosher slaughter.
Granted, there is a certain baseline that effects kosher and non-kosher processors alike — mad cow, etc., affect prices across the board. However, I don’t see how the industry (from ranch to retail) can use this explanation to fully defend prices that are 3-to-6 times as expensive as non-kosher products, in the case of our brisket.
When I see that Chabad of Iowa offers brisket at the sane price of $5.29/lb. through their community meat co-op (given their proximity/relationship to the Rubashkin factory), it makes me fiercely curious what the detailed breakdown of retail meat costs is.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to start a monthly kosher meat index, cataloging prices across the country and comparing them with their treyf counterparts?
In NYC, freshdirect.com carries non-kosher as well as Rubashkin beef. Unsurprisingly, kosher brisket is $10.99/lb, while non-kosher brisket goes for $6.49/lb. But what is strange is that their kosher bone-in ribsteak($9.99/lb) is actually cheaper than non-kosher. I wonder if this is because their non-kosher ribsteaks are USDA Prime ($13.99/lb) or Choice ($11.99/lb), a quality level that to my knowledge is unavailable to kosher retail consumers (I’ve heard that restaurants obtain all of the limited supply of the higher quality kosher meat). But their $6.49 treif brisket is USDA Choice, so I don’t think that’s the cause of the disparity.
The brisket cut of meat is one of the leading selling cuts of Kosher meat. The demand is great. My butcher explained to me that it is also the cut used to make corned beef and pastrami. Hence, during holiday season when people want brisket -he does not get in new shipments of packaged corned beef from ALLE meats.About the steaks, the bad news is that Rubashkin ribsteak is way way inferior to the non-kosher product. Rubashkin uses heifer meat, which is mushy. The non-kosher steaks are Angus steers, breed to produce an american beefsteak. Heifers are not even USDA choice, they are usually sold as frying steak. Besides the availability in kosher restaurants, there are only a few kosher stores that sell real steaks.The rise of chasidic slaughtering in the USA, which was accepted by all the NYC caterers, drove the litvak slaughters out of business. The litvak companies used to be willing to live in the midwest and produce quality kosher beef.The Chassidic meat companies do not care about the quality of the beef. The kosher beef that your families ate in the 1960’s and 70’s was of the same or even higher quality than non-kosher.Alas, it is now much worse than non-kosher (except at the restaurants).
Shoprite supermarkets in NJ sell Rubashkin meat not at 5.29 as in Iowa, but at $6.49.
You need to be making apples to apples comparisons. Freshdirect’s $10.99 brisket is "First Cut Brisket" - if you look on the Chabad of Iowa they have plain Brisket for $5.29 and First Cut Brisket for $7.89. So now we’re only talking a $3/lb difference in price.You should see if the butcher that was charging $12/lb for the pesach brisket was giving you first cut brisket (probably) or not.
Simcha Valley offers glatt (star K) choice black angushttp://www.simchavalley.com/31 Westridge Cr.Edmonton, AL T5T 1C7Canada780-487-7633 (home/bus.)
Kosher brisket is expensive because it’s in demand. It’s a matter of both nostalgia and practicality. In the "old country", where Jews were poor and couldn’t afford better, they would braise tough cuts such as brisket for their once-a-week-on-Shabbos red meat. Family recipes grew out of this, and brisket became the comfort food of choice, relatively lean and usable(unlike chuck, which has a high percentage of bone and fat). And why not? Brisket is very forgiving, and will still be edible if braised an hour or 2 longer than optimal(if you get home from shul late), whereas dry-roasted meats such as rib roast will be burned to a crisp. Personally, I find it highly interesting how a secondary cut could rise to preeminence in Jewish cooking. I far prefer a rib roast or shoulder roast, or marinated, grilled skirt steak. But they do require care in cooking. So brisket is in greater demand than the dry-roasted cuts, which slightly brings down the prices of rib roast or rib steak as it elevates the price of brisket, which suits my tastes just fine.As to the general high price of kosher meat, there has been a general increase in the price of nonkosher meats as well. With spongiform encephalopathy, we’ve stopped importing meat from Canada. Prior to that, most meat was brought in from Canada. And remember that before spongiform encephalopathy was found in the USA, most foreign countries had been buying meat from the USA, driving the price up,as they had given up on Canadian and British beef. The increase in beef prices was to be expected. What is interesting or tragic is that prices have not decreased now that Europe and Asia have stopped buying beef from the USA, now that all of the cattle whose carcases would have gone overseas are available for the domestic market. I think that the big farmers and slaughterhouses have lost so much money on this problem that they’ll "milk" the market for as long as they can– nonkosher prices are still up. But unlike Jews, the nonJews will go to other meats if the prices get too expensive. Jews still typically think of red meat as a luxury item for Shabbos and Yom Tov and simchas, and are willing to pay such prices on luxury items.