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RE: Reducing Plastic Use
I buy it all at farmer's markets, and those guys all send their animals out for processing, get them back as plastic wrapped frozen cuts, then bring the cuts to the market frozen. My daughter even helped butcher a pig a few months ago and she was paid in plastic wrapped frozen meat. Can you freeze your meats wrapped only in butcher paper? I would definitely do that, maybe slip them together into one large reusable bag to guard against freezer burn.
We did not have good luck with butcher paper. See above comment.
yes maybe a little digging around and try to find any local cutters and ask them directly? Any butchers who process wild game might also order beef and pork for sausage/jerky.... you could always phone them and ask about packaging:)
as for the meat wrapped in paper, it obviously wont last as long as plastic wrap but we get through the year just fine, very few issues with freezer burn. we get 3 sides of beef and 2 pigs every fall so by end of bbq season we will pack up all the freezers and send off all the meat for sausage/pepperoni/jerky which gives it new life.
as for the comment below mine I'm not sure what issue they had with paper but if I can remember ill take a picture after work to show that the meat is still very much red and free of freezer burn, and this is from our butchering last fall.
That was my comment! No need to take a pix I believe you. Thank you so much for this. I will talk to my producers and see if any of them will make the switch. Excellent info.
no wait it wasn't my comment, I spoke too soon. I'm going to talk to a bunch of them and see if I can't get at least some wrapped in paper. I don't buy by a whole side though, not yet anyway. If I did, I'd worry all the time about losing power.
I live in a northern town with unreliable power grid, but if freezer is full it can last a good 2 weeks as long as it isn't opened more than once/twice per day... also as the freezer empties I will fill watter bottles and store them as ice blocks... helps keep a freezer frozen during power outage plus ice cold beer in the cooler come summer :)
good ideas. thanks
hey I know its been awhile but I found the answers to the freezer bag wrapped cuts of meat mystery, found it in a butchers manual. its called wet aging.
its a commercial form of aging the meat, they hang the beef just long enough for rigor mortis to set in, then fast process and freezer bag the cuts so that the meat breaks down in its own juices and tenderizes inside of the bag.
the reason they do this is because they can process alof of sides, like any assembly line, in and out in a couple days instead of the 2-3 weeks of hanging in the cooler. dry aging shrinks the meat but bag aging does not, so essentially they get a side cut and out the door in a couple days without the freezer costs and also charge that extra 30% that would otherwise be lost to the dry aging process.
Thanks for getting back to me! I was just thinking about this in fact.
All of that makes sense. So if I'm reading that right, everyone in the production/distribution chain makes more money freezing earlier and packaging their products in plastic, rather than aging and packaging in paper, but the final product has more water so the consumer gets less meat and a lot of plastic. I'm of two minds about this - I would like the small producers to make money!