Dry Ice Plays A Key Role With Omaha Steaks
Ever wonder how Omaha Steaks manages to keep their products fresh, even while they’re shipping them all the way across the country? As Dr. Youling Xiong wrote in Lawrie’s Meat Science, “Raw meat is one of the most shelf-unstable food materials due to its abundance in nutrients ideally suited for microorganisms.” This means that transporting uncooked steak products from state to state takes a lot of care.
When the company began its mail-order operations in 1952, they settled on using wax-lined cartons filled with dry ice to keep the meat cool essentially mimicking a refrigerator. As polystyrene and vacuum packaging became more popular and mainstream, Omaha Steaks ditched the wax-lined containers and began using those, in conjunction with dry ice as the means of keeping the meat cool.
Vacuum packaging, combined with the dry ice, ensures that the meat has no exposure to air and thus, bacteria while the dry ice keeps the temperature down low without requiring any electricity.
The Omaha Steaks Inventory Has Expanded Beyond Just Beef Products
The name “Omaha Steaks” is, admittedly, quite a bit misleading. While beef might be what comes to mind when you first hear the company’s name, you might be surprised to find that you can actually get a much wider range of specialty products. In the 1960s, Omaha Steaks began expanding its catalog from only offering steaks to also include premium cuts of pork, poultry, and seafood. Since then, they’ve added an even more extensive range of products to the menu, as the company’s delivery services have become much more widespread.
While steaks are still the prime cut of meat at Omaha Steaks, you can actually purchase a huge range of products besides their signature beef as well from Polish-style kielbasa to hearty wild halibut fillets. They’ve even got an expansive set of accoutrements to serve alongside the main course, including charcuteries and potato-based side dishes, as well as some decadent wines. Perfect for your next steak dinner. Or your next kielbasa dinner. Or your next halibut dinner.
A Little Goes A Long Way At Omaha Steaks
Omaha Steaks is quite well-known for its lavish and pricey boxes of food. For example, some of these boxes, like their Gourmet Stock-Up Package, which features filet mignon, sirloin, chicken breast, and many, many more meats and side dishes, will cost you a couple of hundred dollars. While these are great deals for doomsday preppers, chances are, you don’t need to be spending that much on some fancy meat that you probably can’t get rid of fast enough.
That said, Omaha Steaks has plenty of more reasonable packages for the everyday diner as Business Insider reported in 2018, $20 can actually go a long way over at Omaha Steaks. For starters, it’s hard not to find at least a couple of promotional sales on their website. But also, you can typically grab a pack of eight sausages for around and a lot of times, just below $20. The same goes for certain cuts of beef, like their tenderloin tips.
But what’s the point of a cheap steak if it doesn’t taste any good? As Business Insider reported, the quality of what you get at Omaha Steaks typically surpasses that of what you can find in your local supermarket. If you’ve got the extra cash to spare and want to go to a local butcher or steakhouse, then, of course, you can’t beat that but Omaha Steaks might just be the next best thing.
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Heres What Customers Are Saying
User reviews for both companies were somewhat mixed, but we encountered more positive testimonials for Butcher Box than Omaha Steaks:
I must say I love Butcher Box. I have tried many different meat companies in the past year or so, and so far they have been the best.
– Brett P
On Trustpilot
The site gives you flexibility in choosing your next box meat selections, as well as ship date, and shipping frequency. Without exception, I receive my box within 1-2 business days after the billing date.– Sabrina MOn Trustpilot
I realized that the box saves me a lot of time at the supermarket and I reckon their prices are pretty similar to budget places like Costco.- Kristen F
For Five Generations Omaha Steaks Has Been A Family Business
In the company’s century-long history, Omaha Steaks has remained a Simon family enterprise the current CEO and owner, Bruce Simon is the great-great-grandson of Omaha Steaks founder J.J. Simon. Simon has grown up in the family business and used to accompany his father to the plant as a child before working there during summer breaks from high school and college. This made Bruce Simon a natural choice to step into the position, as he had served various other positions within the company until 1994, when he became president and CEO.
Unlike other meat industry giants like Tyson Foods and Oscar Mayer, Omaha Steaks remains a privately owned company, meaning that investors cannot purchase shares of Omaha Steaks. While going public is typically looked at as a huge accomplishment for any major company, remaining a private, family-owned business has allowed the company to focus more on its long-term strategies, rather than constantly worrying about quarterly earnings.
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Are Omaha Steaks Shipped Fresh Or Frozen
Omaha Steaks are shipped frozen to ensure they retain the freshness they need.
Every product is packed in a gift pack with dry ice, and the package is then placed in a styrofoam container.
The idea is to ensure the product remains cool during the day of the delivery to your doorstep. As soon as you receive your pack, place the meat in the cooler or freezer.
The dry ice will be well enough to keep one or two orders frozen during transportation and for sous vide cooking.
But there could be some shipping costs depending on the subtotal.
Best: Omaha Steaks Bacon
Let’s be honest, bacon-wrapped anything is good. Warm, perfectly crisp, candy-like bacon that’s greasy in all the right places it’s enough to make your mouth water for days. Now, picture this heavenly hog meat wrapped around the most tender filet mignon steak. Bet we got your tummy rumbling now! This meat-filled dream is now a reality thanks to Omaha Steak’s savory Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon.
Shoppers can now have this incredible steakhouse classic at home. “Super tender” and strategically seasoned, this dish is the preferred filet mignon preparation from the Omaha Steaks chefs. Their master butchers take great pride in this delectable offering and make sure to age each filet to “maximum tenderness.” As if we weren’t drooling already, the palatable process continues.
Chefs then take the company’s best cuts of “smoky, sugar-cured” pork bacon and delicately wrap each steak filet, giving this meal the classic steakhouse look and flavor. If eating uncooked meat wasn’t so sketchy, we’d gobble up this meal raw. And according to thousands of reviews, customers share the sentiment.
Earning 4.4-star rating, shoppers rave about this dish’s delicious flavor, tender texture and affordable price, with one consumer exclaiming that “these are one of my favorite products from Omaha!” Another happy customer couldn’t say enough about how the “filets are so tender that you can cut them with a butter knife.”
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Is Omaha Steaks Worth It
If you don’t live near a quality butcher and you want an option that exceeds supermarket offerings, then, yes, Omaha Steaks is worth it. It really did impress with every offering. Start with Omaha Steaks‘ sales to see if you agree it delivers top-notch food and customer service.
If you’re ordering the beef Wellington, fire away. You’ll save yourself a lot of work and worry, plus cost over restaurant prices. But for the plain old steak itself, all it needs is salt, time, and heat. If you know how to assess a quality cut, or just have a butcher who does, you’ll create a similar experience at half the price per meal.
Even for remotely located readers, cheaper meat box subscriptions offer comparable quality. You could eat as well, or almost as well, for half the price per pound, which is ultimately a better value when both choices make you this happy. So while Omaha Steaks is worth its cost in a vacuum, better deals exist.
Omaha Steaks is perhaps best thought of not as a meat purveyor but as restaurant-grade dining for people who don’t want to go out. It will be cheaper per meal than the steakhouse if you don’t mind risking your own reverse sear, and it’s definitely a way to eat well when you get home late from work and can’t do much more than turn the dials on the stove and oven.
Omaha Steaks Vs Butcherbox
CONTENTSTimothy Woods
Both Butcher Box and Omaha Steaks are well recognized for their high quality meat and great meal delivery services.
However, many people claim that the two have some subtle differences that make one slightly more advantageous than the other.
We decided to put this claim to the test, and after many hours of research and three-month-long testing, weve gathered a few interesting facts for you.
Lets discuss both Butcher Box and Omaha Steaks below.
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Does Omaha Steaks Have A Rewards Program
Omaha Steaks has a program called Steak Lovers Rewards. It is free to join and only takes a few moments. You earn points by making purchases, watching videos and even by referring your friends. Points add up to rewards including free side dish items and more. If you spend $300 or more in a single year you move in to the Premium level with even more rewards.
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Butcherbox Vs Omaha Steaks: Packaging & Deliverability
Butcher Box makes all deliveries in small gift boxes packed with free dry ice to make sure your heritage breed pork chops and grass-fed ground beef arrive without issue.
Their grass-fed meat is shipped vacuum-packed to ensure freshness upon arrival for your carnivore diet meal plan. With Butcher Box, you can track all of your packages easily from their website for a hassle-free purchase.
The Butcher Box company delivers throughout the 48 contiguous states, excluding Hawaii and Alaska.
When I asked, they noted import and export restrictions, which prevented shipping outside the continental US. Omaha Steaks do not offer all of these services.
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Best: Omaha Steaks Private Reserve Rack Of Lamb
The meat masters at Omaha Steaks crafted this dish with flavorful vengeance. Only the best cuts of meat make it into Omaha’s Private Reserve club. Each piece of this lamb dish is hand-picked and aged for almost a month for premium meat perfection. According to Omaha Steaks, the Private Reserve Rack of Lamb offers a “deep earthy flavor” and provides an exquisite “melt-in-your-mouth texture” it’s no wonder this dish has nothing but five-star ratings.
Good lamb takes time, and to quote NPR’s feature on lamb shanks, “good things come to those who wait.” For Omaha Steaks’ lamb rack, they recommend coating the lamb with garlic, butter, salt and pepper and placing it on a rack in a shallow pan. Once this voluptuous meat is cooked to your liking, season lamb roast with chopped parsley and enjoy.
And if you’re still not sold, listen to Liz from Mississippi, who wrote that the Private Reserve Rack of Lamb `was the best lamb I’ve had in a very long time! VERY tender I could have used a butter knife to cut it!”
Let the masters of meat do what they do best: serve you some of the best seasoned meat in the entire country.
Omaha Steaks Ordering Process
The ordering process is about as easy as it gets. Their website is pretty seamless and with a few clicks, youll have your cart loaded up. We also found the mobile ordering to be just as easy, so if your main conduit to the World Wide Web is via a smart device, youll have no issues with ordering from Omaha Steaks. When ordering, however, pay attention to quantity. Weve found in some cases, depending on the item, that its actually less expensive to order a quantity of eight than it is to order a quantity of 4 of the same item.
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What Is Omaha Steaks
Omaha Steaks is among the oldest companies in the full meat delivery business, offering everything from beef, pork, bacon, seafood, steaks, and poultry, to great desserts and sides, such as grilled potatoes and other fresh vegetables.
They have been around for a whopping total of 166 years, with humble beginnings as a local butcher shop in a city between Nebraska and Iowa.
Interestingly, their first prime steaks in 1952 arrived via mail order.
But we’ve come a long way since shipping food via mail order, so now theyre part of the country’s best and largest online meat delivery shops.
What Is The Life Expectancy Of Omaha Steaks
You are almost certainly questioning how lengthy you can keep your steaks in the freezer, especially if you are ordering bulk in Omaha Steaks. Thankfully, the shelf life covers several months as well as comes having a guarantee on freshness.
Omaha Steaks promises their steaks will stay definitely fresh, with no freezer affects, for up to 3 months. This is because of a number of processes which go into generating their meats leading good quality even when kept inside the freezer for a whilst.
Very first, meats are from grain-fed cows, which create juicy, tender, flavor-filled steaks. The meat is cut by expert butchers and naturally aged for a minimum of twenty-one days. When they have reached their full flavor by way of this aging method, the steaks are flash-frozen.
Flash-freezing can be a process where foods are frozen at incredibly cold temperatures . This not just freezes meat fully through, however it is practically instantaneous. Gradual freezing, for example what occurs when you place raw foods inside your freezer, can really slightly harm your food. It can eliminate a number of the vitamins and minerals, as well as create a stringier, much more dried out texture than flash-freezing does. Flash-freezing is one of the factors why some steaks are so juicy and tasty.
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Omaha Steaks Health & Nutrition
The steaks had an amazing texture mainly because the meat was from grain-fed cattle. Grain fed beef has a better taste and is fattier. If you are a true steak lover, this kind of meat would be your preference. Even grass-fed beef is decent as it is low on the calorie count but when it comes to Omaha steaks, they have been offering grain-fed beef for a long time.
All the products delivered by Omaha Steaks are 100% fresh and safe. In addition to that, the safest practices are used for packaging and shipment. The shipment is done in a testing cooler which keeps the food inside frozen so that it does not lose freshness when it is being delivered to you.
If you are not satisfied with the item delivered to you, you need to get in touch with them. There is an Unconditional Guarantee feature through which they replace the item or provide a payment refund. As a customer, you can choose any of the two options..
In order to assure safety, Omaha Steaks uses a Mini Deep Freeze packaging option. This assists in keeping meat fresh and frozen till it is delivered to you.
Before dispatching, all items are packed in an insulated cooler with dry ice placed inside. This assists in keeping things cold till they are delivered. However, when you open the cooler, make sure that you handle dry ice with a cautious approach because it is harmful for the skin.
Meat Quality & Grading
One red flag I ran into when researching Omaha Steaks is that they dont share the grade of beef they use.
If youre unfamiliar, the USDA grade shields are quality grades used in the beef industry to help people understand the class of beef their getting.
- Prime beef is from young, well-fed cattle. It generally has a lot of fat or marbling.
- Choice beef is high quality but has less fat than prime beef.
- Select beef is the leanest beef.
- Standard and Commercial grades of beef are usually sold as ungraded or as store brand meat.
Food Box HQ Note: In researching the beef grading process, I stumbled upon this YouTube video of how its done. Its long but very informative.
Another red flag I ran into when researching Omaha Steaks meat quality is that no where do they mention if their meats have hormones or antibiotics. In fact, I literally searched the entire site and couldnt find any mention of hormones and only one product page that mentions no antibiotics were used in raising the animal.
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Is It Cheaper To Buy Meat Online
Generally, the meat you find from online butchers caters to the high end of the market.
This makes sense, people looking to order steak online are looking for a way to get their hands on the best quality grass-fed, Wagyu, or sustainable raised beef. Not save money.
Having said that, some of the companies in our guide are cheaper than others, so its definitely worth shopping around.
Wrapping it up
You now have no excuses for wasting money on cheap steak from the supermarket.
If you dont have any good butcher shops near you dont despair. We truly live in a golden age for meat lovers with the best butchers delivering amazing quality steak to your door.
You might also want to check out our guide on where to buy Wagyu Beef online.
If youve never ordered steak online before you should definitely give it a try. Its a safe and convenient way to try steak that could previously only be tasted in the finest restaurants.
Not sure what steak to order? Check out our guide to the best steak for grilling.
