Wagyu Brisket And Dino Ribs.......In A Grocery Store?
I was just at an HEB grocery store in Pt. Arthur, Tex. today and was surprised at what I found. If you’re not familiar, HEB is a Texas based grocery store with 340 locations only in Texas and some in Northeastern Mexico. Anyway, while shopping for steaks there I found Wagyu Briskets and 4 bone packs of beef plate ribs! I’d never seen these in a large chain grocery store before. Maybe others have? But anyway it looks like the growing popularity of these items are going more mainstream. Have any of y’all seen Wagyu or Dino Ribs in a large chain grocery store before? The Dino ribs were choice grade. The Wagyu brisket was only $6.99 lb. Saw a good selection of choice briskets on sale and had to get one. Haven’t done a brisket in a while.
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Last edited by Panhead John; January 3, 2021, 02:48 PM.
They’ve had Wagyu brisket from Mishima Reserve and now SRF for about a year and a half. Did a couple of posts on cooking them probe tender, aged and pastrami. The ribs began showing up about 6 months ago.
HEB seems to stay in touch with current trends in Texas. Dino ribs have taken off in the past few years so they started carrying them, as Steve said, about 6-7 months ago. I've cooked a rack and they were good. I ran across the wagyu briskets at an HEB in Austin in May 2019 and bought one. I was headed to Fredricksburg and hit the HEB there, they had three - me and my friend bought them out. They ended up being the best briskets I've ever cooked. They were also $5.99/lb back then.
The Port Arthur location only carries the wagyu briskets around holidays but you can ask them to order some anytime.
Last edited by 58limited; January 3, 2021, 04:52 PM.
Yeah, I was very surprised when I saw them today. I didn’t know the Wagyu briskets had been for sale that long. But again, I rarely shop at HEB, wish I had one a little closer to my house.Thanks for the heads up on ordering one. Didn’t know that.
Panhead John, I'm thinking his son was Howard Butt, Jr. who did those "The High Calling of Our Daily Work†radio spots up until he died a few years ago?
Actual Wagyu in Japan are raised on open-air farms, unlike the open range pastures we have here. I guess open-open-air pasture is no go for top quality Wagyu.
HEB is clutch.
We've been in Dallas less than a month and I already miss them.
I went to the closest grocery store and asked the person behind the butcher counter if they had pork belly. They said "No. I don't even know what that would look like".
Asian grocery down the street had a stack of them, thankfully
Yea most of them are Mishima Reserve which is an American Wagyu farm out of Oregon. Every once in a while an SRF makes an appearance, probably their black grade not sure. I can tell you the Mishima's are the real deal, cook up great, better than their Prime 1. Forget the HEB label, that's something they slap on there.
As for the price, I have no idea how they do it but I kiss the hand of the guy that buys their meat !! Must be a volume deal, that's all I can think is happening.
Troutman There was a barbecue trailer here in town that served SRF American Wagyu briskets. He told me the price he was able to get them for directly from SRF and I nearly fell over. I believe it was something like $4.29 a pound or something around there. So for a place like HEB I would guess they could buy a pallet or two of briskets from SRF, sell at $5.99 a pound, and still make some decent money.
We’ve had the Briskets for a month or 2 and Plate Ribs and other Wagyu pieces since the end of the summer. I’m west of Austin.
My dad had me over sometime during the summer for some Waygu ribeye cap steaks, very good, but they we’re insanely expensive. He claimed it was heart healthy beef, I laughed pretty hard. After doing some research, there is a ranch in Columbus who has one of the largest heards of ‘Wagyu†cattle outside of Japan and they raised the bull that its related to 80% of the ‘Waygu’ cattle outside of Japan.
There are a growing number of operations raising them in Texas now so it didn’t take long for H-E-B to get ahold of some. my neighbors son who works in the meat dept in my H-E-B says they come just like the other sides of beef and are coming up with different ways to cut them up to take advantage of some of the parts that usually get turned to ground beef. I’ve found boneless chuck ribs which were very good and a chuck eye steak that was great. He says they tried cutting plate ribs, they kept them for themselves and cooked them on the smoker behind the store, it will be interesting to see what they will charge for them when the put them out on the shelf. The Ribeye’s run between $45-50 and I’m sure they have a $ amount they are expecting to get out of each side of beef and are trying to figure out what works and what will sell.
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