There's still a difference between the stores having meat on their shelves and the stores having every kind of meat on their shelves. And every kind of vegetable, every kind of drink, every kind of cheese as well.
If you think the average American supermarket has every kind of meat, cheese, drink, and vegetable, you are in for a big surprise traveling the world.
In many ways American markets have fallen behind relatively poorer countries in variety. Most of what is sold are monocultures and packaged foods. The selection of fresh produce (or any produce) is often disappointing.
Yep. For example, one staple dish of Cajuns is called "rice and gravy." Essentially, you sear thinly cut 7-steaks, remove them, cook down some trinity, then add the steaks back with some water or broth and seasonings. That's it. The steaks simmer in the broth for hours and create their own gravy. We serve it over rice, usually accompanied by some roux peas (tres petit pois cooked in a roux with onions and bacon) and cornbread. Simple, easy, flavorful.
But I live in Texas now, home of all the cattle, if you believe the marketing. And I can't find 7-steaks unless I go to a Mexican meat market, because the DFW area is so bourgeois nowadays that the steaks simply don't pass muster for the local market. Hell, I'm more likely than not to end up in a Mexican market simply because the produce is better and cheaper.
Same with beef shank. Osso bucco is traditionally made with veal shank, and oxtails are all the rage, but I can't find beef shank unless I go to an HEB. Most places don't carry the cut. And if I couldn't find beef shank, I could always go with beef neckbones, but uh... HEB is the only place around me that sells that either.
Yeah, that's a 7 steak. I guess most people sorta see it as a trash cut, but it's got enough fat in the spaces between muscles that it ends up being a nice gravy. Collards and turkey necks are not hard to find out here. Just don't ever expect to find any good hoghead cheese. I tried some Boar's Head recently and that reminded me of the 1970s era images of stuff suspended in aspic.
from a google search: "A 7 bone steak is a cut of beef from the chuck section of a cow's front shoulder, which is considered a tough area of the animal.". You're not going to find that in a regular grocery store because not many people will buy it. You will find every other cut of beef, pork, and poultry considered edible though.
You can go to a butcher but they're less common than a regular grocery store. Also, butchers usually have less selection since they're a smaller operation.
EDIT: i live in Dallas, Texas and "HEB" is just another brand of grocery store so "having to go to HEB" just means having to go to the grocery store.
In most places I've lived, including Seattle, butchers typically buy the whole animal. They move smaller quantities but every possible cut of meat is available, you just have to ask. They may run out of a cut, since availability scales with the number animals they butcher and demand is uneven over the entire animal, or you might want something unusual outside the scope of their default breakdown of the animal, but you can always ask them to reserve that part from the next animal and they've always been happy to oblige in my experience.
> Also, butchers usually have less selection since they're a smaller operation.
That’s curious; I’d have thought you’d have more selection since the butcher is, y’know, doing the butchering, so any cut is possible. In the past if I’ve needed an “exotic” cut, the butcher would be where I’d go.
lol Dallas is the only major city in Texas where "going to the store" doesn't almost always means HEB, too
also, complaining that you can't find Thing unless you go to a Mexican meat market is a weird way to boast that your area has specialty grocery stores.
Yes, exactly. Because when I want to talk about food issues, I "boast" by talking about the scarcity of what is perceived to be a lower quality cut of meat near my location, and how I'm driving to find a shop in a poorer neighborhood to meet my food demands. You nailed it, champ.
HEB "just another grocery store". Hoo Lordy, better not say that in the South! HEB is ultimately a corporation, but as far as corporate ethics exist, they're a good place and the stores are great.
The selection they have pre-cut and on display is a subset.
But unlike a supermarket, you can just ask a local butcher to save you some of whatever off-cut the next time they're trimming it. Normally they'd just throw it away.
I won't buy meat at Walmart. The couple times I have, it looks great in the package, but when you open it, half the weight is a big fat cap on the bottom. I've seen it happen several times. It's often cuts that should go to a grinder or other use, but not fit for use as a steak.
I avoid fresh produce at Walmart as well, mostly in that the selection usually kind of sucks. There are more and better options around. As to Butchers, there isn't really a dedicated one near me, have to drive halfway across town. But a local grocery chain does have Butchers, but special cuts usually take a few days to get in.
I have looked a few times in Walmarts and not found duck breast, which is something I eat in Australia once every 2-4 weeks. And also noticed particular cuts of beef that I'd expect are missing. I have been to the US 10+ times, usually 1-9 week roadtrips, and can't remember ever noticing an independent butcher (though sometimes there is an equivalent within a non-Walmart grocery store).
Duck just isn't commonly eaten in the US. You probably won't find it at butchers either.
Independent butchers aren't all that uncommon. Though, for example, my town has 3-4 grocers that sell meat without having a counter (but I expect you could talk to the butcher at a couple of them), a grocer that does have a counter, and then a couple of independent butchers.
Duck probably isn't eaten here all that much, but at my local supermarket there'd be breasts, Peking Duck flavoured breasts, confit legs, and another Peking Duck kit.
In that not-overly-large shopping complex, there are two supermarkets (one of which has loads of European smallgoods, like 40+ types of cheese) and also: independent greengrocer, butcher, fishmonger, bulk grains store, bakery chain, etc. Used to be a poultry-specialist butcher too. Most shopping centres I can think of here will have an independent butcher, plus more separately outside those. There'd be dozens of butchers in a city of about 1 million.
Your best bet for duck related products in the US is probably either an upscale grocery store or an Asian grocer like HMart. They tend to carry a lot of meat and offal products that most groceries in the US don't normally carry.
It gets even worse if you look at packaged stuff. “Look, twelve brands of coffee!” but actually it’s three because some of them are owned by the others, or by the same parent company.
Even though the choice is impressive in any supermarket you go, unfortunately, it's very far from having every kind of drink/cheese or almost anything else you mention. Perhaps that's being pedantic, but I believe a lot of people seem to actually believe that what's in their supermarket is all there is (not talking about you specifically)... all you need to do is travel around Europe for a little while to quickly realize how much the supermarkets do not have.
That's probably because supermarkets tend to stock those things that sell in reasonable volume. So if you're in an area where sheep's brains (to pick a contrived example) would sit on the shelf for months, they're unlikely to stock it.
I had a classmate whose father was posted to Yakutsk with Strategic Rocket Forces, and he encountered a warehouse full of cow lips (presumably shipped in from all over the Soviet Union)
It's not only that. Some products are expensive and just unknown to the locals, so it wouldn't sell... others are just a nightmare to store or transport long distances. So you're very unlikely to find them in the supermarket in the USA, though it may be extremely common in Italy, or China etc. You can still probably find those rare items if you go to specialty shops... for example, I was able to find "Stracciatella di bufala" cheese in an Italian shop in Stockholm (even in Itally, I think it's hard to get that outside its native region of Puglia). Maybe I'm wrong, but I could swear you won't find that in your local grocer?
> every kind of vegetable, .., every kind of cheese as well.
That's not my experience of American supermarkets in North Carolina when visiting on business ten years ago. Even in supposedly upmarket supermarkets like Harris Teeter the fruit and veg was really not very good and the selection of cheeses (and other dairy products) was downright poor.
I was exaggerating a bit, but by the late 80's the food situation in the USSR had deteriorated to the stage where you would have a meat (if you were lucky), a cheese or a vegetable available at any given store. We would go to the kolkhoz market for vegetables and my parents had a literal backroom deal with a grocery store manager to get beef, but the shelves were conspicuously barren.
Going from this to a country where any random supermarket would have chicken, several cuts of beef, several cuts of pork, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, several sorts of cheese and was not at risk of running out of any position would have been a shock.
