The Best Meat Subscription Boxes for Carnivores
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Finding high-quality meat at your local grocery store can be difficult. Richly marbled and grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pork, and free-range chicken are uncommon in these days of industrial meat production. If you're lucky enough to live near a good butcher shop, start there, or try buying direct from your local farmer. If you can't find a local farm, the next best option is ordering online.
Even better, try one of these meat subscription boxes, which will bring a variety of cuts—from ground beef and dry-aged ribeye steaks to pasture-raised pork and chicken, even fish—to your door every month. Whether you want filet mignon, an organic free-range chicken breast, or a delicious cut of wild-caught salmon, there's something here for every type of carnivore.
Be sure to check out our other buying guides to subscription boxes, including the Best Subscription Boxes, Best Snack Subscription Boxes, Best Kids Subscription Boxes, and Best Coffee Subscriptions.
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- Photograph: Adrienne So
The Best Selection
ButcherBoxThe first reason ButcherBox earned our top spot is the packaging, which was much sturdier than several other boxes we tried. The last thing anyone wants is to come home to a box of spoiled meat. The second is sourcing transparency. While humane-washing is a real thing and ButcherBox does not disclose the names of specific farms it works with, it offers third-party oversight, like Certified Humane and USDA Organic certification. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.
You can select from two subscription plans: Custom or Curated. Custom allows you to choose specific cuts and proteins, and each box comes in a Classic size (9 to 14 pounds of meat) and Big, which could be up to 22 pounds of meat. You can choose the frequency: every two weeks, monthly, every six weeks, or bimonthly. I chose the curated Classic box, the cheapest option, and it arrived with seven different cuts (I calculated about 10 pounds of meat). This more than fed two families throughout a full weekend camping.
If you’ve never had grass-fed beef, it can be a little more gamy (see our grass-fed explainer below) and not quite as tender or marbled as other high-end steaks; one tester said the ribeyes were quite gamy, and I found the steak tips to be noticeably gristly in tacos. But overall, the quality was high. The bacon was not overly fatty; my picky children did not object to the seasonings in the pork sausage. Overall, this is a convenient and fun way to stock a family’s freezer with meat more responsibly sourced and less subject to the pricing vagaries in your local supermarket. —Adrienne So
- Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Best for Pasture-Raised Meat
Porter Road Butcher's Choice BoxPorter Road was my introduction to ordering meat online. I was gifted some steaks for my birthday a few years ago and I was hooked. Porter Road has a wide selection of beef cuts (though my favorite, the hanger steak, is rarely in stock), including some that I've found to be strangely regional (why is it so hard to get a tri-tip outside of California?). You can also get pork cuts and chicken as well. To test for this guide, I tried the Butcher's Choice Box which is $165 for 8 to 10 pounds of meat. That works out to about $18 per pound, which is more than the grocery store but comparable to my local butcher and farms.
The Butcher's Choice Box is one of several curated boxes Porter Road offers, which means it varies each time. The base is two sirloin filets, two (thick) pork chops, 1 pound of dry-aged ground beef, and 1 pound of pork bacon. There are also two dry-aged premium steaks. The premium cuts in my box were two large, excellent ribeyes (a New York strip is the other possibility). All the meat is pasture-raised on farms in Kentucky and Tennessee, with the dry aging cutting happening at Porter Road's facilities. You can choose a delivery frequency of every two, four, or eight weeks.
The Butcher's Choice Box is a good selection of meat, though aimed at a couple rather than my family of five. I grilled a little bit of each for three nights (meat night as my kids called it). If you want to stick with beef, there's also the Dry Aged Box, which is $140 and includes 7 pounds.
- Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Best for Barbecue
Salt Lick BBQI love to barbecue. I am in charge of several of WIRED's grill guides, which means no shortage of BBQ crosses my plate. I also used to run a restaurant and am comfortable making just about anything on a grill. But there's one thing I rarely make: brisket. It just takes too long. I love it, but I dislike making it. Enter the Salt Lick BBQ.
Unlike the rest of these services, Salt Lick ships cooked meat, including brisket. And not just any brisket—one of the best I've ever had, certainly the best that's ever graced my grill, even if it was just on there to reheat. I know it sounds like a Mitch Hedberg bit, FedExing some brisket to your door, but it works. I recently ordered the Family Style Dinner for July 4 and everything arrived on time, nice, cold, and ready to go. I followed the reheating instructions the next day and had a fabulous Independence Day feast. Nothing could be easier. If you don't need a full family-style feast, you can get a smoked beef brisket for $110 (3.5 to 4.5 pounds, feeds six).
- Photograph: Wired
Best for Gifting
Harry & David Fine Meats Steakhouse ClubMy mouth waters and my stomach grumbles when I think about this box. The tester arrived with two New York strip steaks. We heated two cast iron pans at 700 degrees in a pizza oven, took them out, put the steaks in the pan to sear, then finished them in the oven for a few minutes and let butter melt on top while they rested. I am crippled by the memory of how juicy, tender and flavorful these steaks were. They were finely marbled and had just the right amount of fat on the edges to add crispness and umami, without being slimy or greasy. My family ate it all right off the cutting board after it rested. We didn't even make it to the plates on the table.
Each box comes with premium, aged, hand-trimmed choice cuts like ribeye, filet mignon, or even lobster tails, and you can select three-, six-, or 12-month subscription plans. This comes at a price—at $190 for three months, even the cheapest subscription plan is much more expensive, for much less meat, than any of our other boxes. But if you're looking for a gift for a very special person who loves to grill, they will remember this and think of you forever. I know I'm still thinking about it. —Adrienne So
- Photograph: Pat Lafrieda
The Freshest Meat You Can Get
Pat LaFrieda MeatsPat LaFrieda will be a familiar name to readers in the New York area. The butcher made its name in the 1970s, supplying beef to some of New York's finest restaurants and famously, the blend of Shake Shack's burgers. There's no subscription here, but one thing different from most of the services in this guide is that LaFrieda ships out the beef refrigerated, but never frozen. Does that make a difference? Well, it's hard to say, but I can say that the hanger steaks I sampled were hands down the best steaks I've tried for this guide. The skirt steak was similarly excellent, as was the 30-day dry-aged prime ribeye.
All the meats are delivered fresh and kept cool for shipping (overnight UPS delivery) with ice packs. Aside from the potential flavor improvements, it means these are ready to cook immediately. You'll want to make sure your meat is delivered at a time when someone will be around to get it; I think it'd probably last an afternoon in the box if ambient temps aren't too bad, but this meat is too good to risk it.
- Photograph: Sitka Seafood
Best Seafood
Sitka Seafood Salmon Subscription BoxI subscribed to this box for my dad as a Christmas present two years ago, until he confessed that he could not eat this much salmon and started sneaking it back into my freezer. Sitka Seafood Market is based in Sitka, Alaska. The company is transparent about its sourcing and lists the local seafood processors. It also donates 1 percent of its revenue every year back to fishery conservation and local habitat preservation. All the fish is flash-frozen within three to five days of being caught, which makes it exceptionally fresh.
There are three different options. You can choose a Salmon Box for $129, which is about 4.5 pounds of salmon in individual 6- to 12-ounce portions. You can also pick a Premium Seafood Box for $159, or a Build Your Own Box starting at $10/month. You can also select if you would like your box delivered monthly or every other month, and check what fish you're getting each month in your plan's Projected Harvest. The salmon box gets two varieties each month; I tried the sockeye and the coho. Both were fresh and excellent, and the packaging was sturdy and attractive enough to work as a gift. —Adrienne So
- Photograph: Crowd Cow
Best Grass-Fed Beef
Crowd Cow Best OfCrowd Cow isn't exclusively grass-fed beef, but it's one of the better sources I've found for grass-fed, grass-finished beef (see below for an explainer of what those terms mean). There's a good selection of other meats as well, from Wagyu and free-range organic chicken to Kurobuta pork (a highly marbled pork) and wild-caught seafood like salmon and even Chilean sea bass. You can subscribe or order a one-time box if you'd like to test the waters. Subscriptions can be every four weeks, six weeks, or eight weeks.
I tested the curated box, the Best of Crowd Cow, which featured an assortment of meat, including chicken, beef, and salmon, all of which were excellent. Crowd Cow also offers recipes to go with your order, which is a nice touch. I did not test this, but I also like that Crowd Cow offers wild game meat.
Photograph: imagedepotpro/Getty ImagesWhat Is Grass-Fed Beef and Do You Want It?
Grass-Fed? Grass-Finished? Pasture-Raised?The USDA, which oversees beef production in the US, says grass-fed means that “grass and forage shall be the feed source consumed for the lifetime of the ruminant animal, with the exception of milk consumed prior to weaning. The diet shall be derived solely from forage consisting of grass … Animals cannot be fed grain or grain byproducts and must have continuous access to pasture during the growing season."
In other words, grass-fed cows can eat only grass. All cows start life eating grass. While farming practices vary, generally cows start nursing, grazing, and living in pasture for the first six months or so of life. Then conventionally raised cattle are moved to feedlots for three to four months (sometimes more) where they are fed grain, a more economical way of getting them to market.
There's still considerable variation between grass-fed beef though, even “grass-finished beef.” Turns out the definition of “grass” varies. The best grass-fed beef tends to stay at pasture (ideally organic pasture that isn't sprayed with pesticides), while the much more common grass-fed beef you find prepackaged at your local supermarket is sent to feed lots and fed grass pellets. The best way to get grass-fed beef that you know comes from cows that actually ate grass is to get to know your local ranchers and family farms. If you don't have local ranchers, that's where this guide comes in.
What's the Difference?
Generally speaking, grass-fed beef has more complex flavors and has less fat. Individual examples vary wildly. Grass-fed beef has a stronger flavor. Some people dislike it, describing it as "gamy" or "barnyard-y." In my experience testing for this guide and more broadly, it comes down to what you're used to. Having eaten a lot of grass-fed beef, I find grain-fed beef bland.
A key point to grass-fed beef: It usually cooks faster. In my experience, a part of the reason people say grass-fed beef is tough is that they overcook it. Make sure you get a good meat thermometer. I like the Thermapen One ($110), but this cheaper alternative will also get the job done.
One thing that deserves disputing is the idea that grain-fed beef is more marbled with fat (and therefore has better flavor). In my experience, this is false. It's not the grass, it's the breed of cattle. This is why Wagyu beef is sought after; it’s a breed with high levels of marbling. Crowd Cow has a good blog post explaining how factors like cattle breed affect marbling and how to decipher the USDA rating system for marbling. My suggestion is to try some grass-fed beef from various sources to get a sense of what it's like. If you like it, order more. If it's not to your liking, don't bother.
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