Walden Meat Company -responsible meat delivered!

Where to start in my search for sustainable meat?  Google of course!  One of the first places that pops up was a site called Walden Meat Co. (https://waldenlocalmeat.com/).  I am guessing this came up as a top search since I live in the Boston area and this company is marketed towards local farms in New England and New York and they are based in the Boston area.  They even have a butcher shop in the South End neighborhood of Boston.

The website does a great job explaining their standards which tick all the boxes:  “grass-fed and finished”, “raised outdoors on herbicide and pesticide-free pasture”, “never received antibiotics or hormones”, “humanely handled without the use of electric prods”.  There are a lot of options to choose from ranging from just ground meat to picking what meat and cuts you want (to some degree will explain later).

The Just Grind, Basics and Complete Options they pick what you get as described.  The Custom option you have a lot more control over what you get.  I went for the custom option.  Based on their recommendation for our family (I only counted 4 people since our 3 kids don’t eat a full serving) they recommended  20-21 lbs per month which are about to 10 meals (according to the website).  Around 2 lbs per meal sounds right. For the custom option, you need to make selections from each of the following: Base Cuts (pick at least 2), Middle Cuts (pick at least 5) and End-Cuts (pick at least 5).  There are a lot of options.  You will not get all of your choices, you will get a selection of your choices depending on what is available.  For example, you can’t just load up on ground beef and chicken breasts to fulfill your 20 lbs.

Got to say I was a little excited to see what I would get with my delivery.  The box above arrived exactly as expected – everything was packed in dry ice.  We ended up getting: ground beef, sausage of the month, hot Italian sausage, pork chops, beef sirloin steaks, beef brisket, beef roast, chicken legs.  I also got the bacon, eggs, and butter as an add-on. Each was well packaged and labeled – the meat like the steaks and chicken were also labeled with the farmer and farm where it came from – this was a big selling point for me since the transparency of knowing that it comes from a farm that has good practices is important.  For example, the chicken leg quarters were from Ben and Ruth Kane from Alton, NH.  A Google search for them comes up with their blog and website (http://crunchyfarm.blogspot.com/).  Great, they are a real local farm and all of their values look to be well represented.

However, when I looked at the ground beef I didn’t see a farmer or farm name listed.

So I decided to email Walden and ask them for a list of farms that they work with by product.  This was their response (very rapidly):

Hi David,

 Thanks for your question! Because the list of farms we work with changes often, we don’t publish a list. However all of our products with the exception of ground beef, sausage, ham and bacon will have a farm of origin listed on the packaging! Please let us know if you have any further questions!

Best,

Ceilidh

Not exactly the answer I wanted.  Would be good to know that their ground beef is also coming from a particular farm that is doing the right thing.

Onto the next, very important, question – How does it taste?  In my opinion, this meat is some of the best tasting meat that I have cooked myself.  You can definitely taste the difference.  How much of this is placebo effect…

In summary, this is a great service but may not be for everyone.  You have to be open to getting some cuts that you may not usually buy – could be a good thing since you will end up cooking meals that you wouldn’t usually cook – if that’s your thing.  It’s also quite expensive, 21 lbs/$234=$11/lb.  Also, this covers about 3 meals per week – for the rest of the meals you either need to supplement with other sources of meat or eat vegetarian.  Or you need to double the amount you order which gets very expensive.  But it will be some of the best tasting meat you have ever cooked and you will feel good about yourself.