Quote from: x86Daddy on October 13, 2014, 06:00:21 AM

Been meaning to post for a while, but I had a wedding and a home move that got the best of me. A friend just reminded me about the topic of custom ordered beef. I've tried Andelin's ground beef and a club steak (aka bone-in ribeye)... I'll give my verdict in a moment.

My wife and I cook steak once or twice a week, and dishes using ground beef every week or two. We like ribeyes, NY strips, sirloins, and filets, and we try other cuts on occasion. We generally purchase 80/20 ground and use it in a variety of dishes. About a third of the time, we purchase organic / grass fed, higher end beef from stores like Fresh Market, or from a good quality local butcher shop. The rest of the time, we usually get vacuum sealed steaks at Aldi, which are surprisingly good, chain-of-custody wise and quality wise, although they're very likely factory farmed.

We usually prepare our steaks simply, as we really like the flavor of good beef. We bring the steak to room temperature, heat a skillet to high heat, melt a pat of butter, slap that steak in there for about 4 minutes, salting the uncooked top, flip it, salt and put a pat of butter on the cooked side... give it another 4 minutes, and serve. This gives us a medium to medium rare steak, depending on thickness... we go 5 minutes/side if it was a thicker cut. We stopped grilling after we found this preparation method; it always turns out well. Sometimes we'll sautee some sliced baby portabellos along with it, in the skillet, and serve those on top. We rarely marinade anymore either.

So, receiving Andelin's products was straightforward. He provided a tracking number, and it arrived insulated and dry iced well. We ate a high-end, grass-fed, organic steak from Fresh Market the same week that we tried Andelin's to best compare it. We already like such steaks better than our usual Aldi steaks.

Andelin's steak was to organic store bought and good butcher shop steak, what organic store bought and butcher shop bought is to factory-farmed, low-cost, basic beef: it was another, noticeable step above in quality. We felt the same way about the ground beef. We found what we consider the highest quality beef we can buy here. Now that we've settled down from house moving, etc... I'll be placing another order as soon as we have some open freezer space.

TLDR: _Very_ good beef. Compared against best I can buy in local stores and butcher shop: noticeably superior.

Thanks for the review!