Best Mail-Order Steaks
Get your paws on tender, buttery filets mignons, and meltingly rich rib-eyes without leaving the house
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Steak isn’t exactly everyday food. Aside from the expense, a high intake of red meat is known to adversely affect your health, and beef production has some dire environmental impacts. Reducing consumption and opting for pasture-raised beef can help.
That said, you might want to indulge in an occasional juicy rib-eye on special days. When you do, get your money’s worth because not all steaks are created equal. We found that some of the mail-order steaks we tried were worlds better than the typical supermarket steak. The steaks are all flash-frozen, arrive in the mail deeply frozen, and can be kept in the freezer for up to six months (for optimal quality).
Snake River Farms specializes in American Wagyu—a crossbreed between the Japanese Wagyu and continental breeds. Due to the meat’s above-par marbling, Snake River Farms’ steaks can achieve scores above USDA Prime.
For the first year of their life, Snake River Farms’ cattle are pasture-fed grass and hay along the high plain of the Snake River in Eastern Idaho. They’re then finished on a diet of hay, forages (grasses or legumes that grow in pastures), grains, potatoes, vitamins, and minerals. Snake River Farms says they don’t use growth hormones on their cows and only use antibiotics when completely necessary.
Snake River Farms has sustainability measures in its operation, including capturing methane to power the processing plant, composting cattle waste into fertilizer for farmers, treating wastewater for reuse, and sourcing a majority of cattle feed within 150 miles.
The unboxing: This was the best packaging of the three brands. A compostable insulated cooler arrived nestled in a cardboard shipping box. The cooler is lined and partially filled with dry ice. Inside, a reusable insulated branded black bag holds the deeply frozen, vacuum-sealed, and well-labeled steaks. This is the only brand of the three that doesn’t come with a giftable cardboard box, but you could certainly use the tote for gifting.
Photos: Snake River Farms Photos: Snake River Farms
The filet: Snake River Farms’ American Wagyu Gold Grade filet mignon is hands down the group’s favorite. “Filets are usually tasteless, but this has a rich, beefy flavor and great texture that’s not at all chewy,” one taster says. The 4-ounce filets (6-ounce, 8-ounce, and 10-ounce are also available) are the smallest of the bunch, but the marbling is exceptional. All tasters say it’s buttery, with a distinctly beefy flavor that lingers on the palate. “The appearance is a bit rough,” one taster says, “but it’s a meltingly tender bite of steak.” At $8.50 per ounce, these filets are the priciest of the three brands, but we think it’s worth it, especially if you’re indulging on a special occasion.
The rib-eye: The 40-ounce American Wagyu Gold Grade cowboy steak is the top pick for two tasters, who think it has a balanced, full flavor that changes throughout the chew. The Kansas City Steak Company ultimately wins that taste test, but we still think Snake River Farms’ cowboy steak is a stunner that would gratify any meat lover. The butchering is perfect and evenly trimmed on both sides, with an equal amount of meat on both sides of the bone. The sheer size of the $158 steak is meant to wow—both salivating dinner party guests and rabid Instagram followers. (When you break it down, that comes to $3.95 per ounce.)
The Kansas City Steak Company is a steak distributor based in Kansas, one of the top three cattle-producing states in the U.S. The Kansas City Steak Company sources steaks from various Midwestern producers.
The unboxing: The rib-eyes and filets arrive vacuum-sealed, deeply frozen, and packed in separate cardboard boxes but placed in the same styrofoam cooler with dry ice. It comes with a giftable cardboard box.
Photos: Kansas City Steaks Photos: Kansas City Steaks
The filet: Kansas City’s 6-ounce USDA prime filet mignon (8-ounce also available) is the tasting panel’s runner-up. The filets are uniform and well-trimmed. “It has a fulfilling bite and unique flavor that lasts longer than the others,” one taster says. But some say the texture is a little soft and chewy. At $5.83 per ounce, you could argue it’s a small sacrifice for the money you save by buying this one over our top pick.
The rib-eye: Most tasters pick this 18-ounce USDA prime frenched bone-in rib-eye as their No. 1 in the blind taste test. “It looks a little more gnarly than the others but tastes more tender and distinct,” one taster says. Another taster considers it a traditional choice that would be a good pick for a family cookout. “I love the pockets of fat!” another says. We bought a four-pack of rib-eyes, which is $71.24 per steak—not bad when you’ve got a lot of mouths to feed that don’t like to share.
The Kansas City rib-eyes have good marbling, but the fat is a bit less distributed throughout the meat, and these appear to have more and bigger fat pockets than the others. They’re also ever so slightly less well-trimmed and cut. The bones aren’t uniformly centered or hugging the edge of each steak, which might affect cooking if you’re using a method other than grilling. (The bone could block direct contact with a hot cast-iron pan.)
Omaha Steaks claims to have invented meat delivery in 1952, so they’ve been at this for a minute. The company sources steaks from producers in North America, the majority being in the U.S. We ordered the Private Reserve filet and rib-eye gift, which includes six 7-ounce filet mignons and two 24-ounce bone-in rib-eyes for $369.99.
Private Reserve is Omaha Steaks’ premium brand, which includes steaks hand-selected for quality, color, and marbling, and aged for a minimum of 28 days. Both the filet mignons and rib-eyes cost less by weight than the other two brands we bought. And while Omaha Steaks isn’t anyone’s favorite in either taste test—many compare it to a really good supermarket steak—it’s still a perfectly fine option and an especially good value.
As for sustainability efforts, Omaha Steaks says they aim to work with suppliers committed to environmental, economic, and social sustainability to enhance the sustainability of the U.S. system and set targets for continued progress. The company has signed the Protein PACT, an industrywide climate and animal welfare agreement.
The unboxing: The packaging is almost identical to the Kansas City Steak Company, with separate cardboard boxes for rib-eyes and filet mignons, and in this case, burger patties, which came as a freebie. They arrived in a styrofoam cooler with dry ice, and everything was perfectly frozen. The shipment includes a giftable cardboard box.
Photos: Omaha Steaks Photos: Omaha Steaks
The filet: The Private Reserve filet mignons are uniform and appear to be center-cut for that ideal diameter (the width of a tuna can). They are uniform, trimmed of excess fat, and appropriately marbled. “It looks perfect, almost like a toy steak, but with a bland taste to match,” one taster says. Others give it low marks for its mealy texture, which may be forgivable knowing it costs the least of the three brands, at $4.76 per ounce. We suggest serving this steak au poivre or with another rich sauce to help camouflage some of its shortcomings.
The rib-eye: This Private Reserve bone-in rib-eye cowboy steak has a nice aroma and decent flavor that fades quickly. “It’s the best-looking of all the rib-eyes, but it’s taking some work to chew it,” one taster says. There are gristly parts that are tough and lots of fatty pockets, which might put some people off. This steak comes out to $3.54 per ounce, which can save you about $10 per steak compared with the others.
As for butchering and marbling? “My hat is off,” says Paul Hope, a CR writer and the chef who cooked the steaks. “The two rib-eye steaks were cut perfectly, with a uniform amount of meat on either side of the bone. The marbling is arguably the most even and saturated throughout all of the meat, not concentrated in pockets. The rib-eye steaks are almost identical in size, and the only deviation is one has a tiny bit more fat cap reserved.”
How We Evaluated Mail-Order Steaks
We purchased mail-order steaks from three popular companies, which disclosed to us their best-selling cuts. Based on that, we chose to evaluate filet mignon and rib-eye (aka cowboy) steaks—one lean cut and one fatty cut.
- Filet steak, aka filet mignon, comes from the tenderloin area and is a muscle that isn’t worked very hard when the animal moves, so it remains tender and lean. It’s more expensive than many other cuts of steak and tends to be served in smaller portions.
- Rib-eye steak comes from the rib of the cow and is highly marbled with tiny veins of fat, which melt during the cooking process to give a buttery richness to the meat. Its flavor is one of the beefiest-tasting cuts of steak because of the hard-working muscle.
Hope fired up a grill in our grill testing lab and cooked all the steaks for a blind taste test with eight tasters, including reporters, editors, and a market analyst in CR’s Home and Food divisions.
The tasters analyzed each steak sample for aroma, appearance, texture, and flavor. Paul also noted each shipment’s packaging upon arrival and the steaks’ marbling and butchering before cooking.
Common Cattle Breeds
There are five popular cattle breeds in the U.S., favored by farmers and ranchers for practical traits, such as docility, good mothering, heat tolerance, cold tolerance, and effectively converting feed into high-quality meat. Unless the steak product indicates some kind of premium breed, such as American Wagyu, it’s likely one of these breeds: Black Angus, Charolais, Hereford, Red Angus, and Simmental.
Pasture-Raised vs. Grain-Fed Cattle
Pasture-raised cattle: Outdoor cows are fed a combination of grass pasture and processed feed. The cows may spend some time indoors if the weather is particularly brutal but are kept outside most of the time.
Grain-fed cattle: These cows start out on the pasture, eating grass for one year, and are switched to an indoor environment where they are fed high-energy processed feed to ensure that weight is put on rapidly and that the desired levels of fat are present in different cuts.
Grass-fed cattle: Grass-fed beef comes from cows solely raised on pasture plants. That takes more time for them to grow. The American Grassfed Association is a certification run by a third-party program that inspects and audits producers on an annual basis. Some producers opt not to pay for certification and use the phrase “grass-finished” to indicate that the cow has been fed pasture all its life and has not been subject to a short period of intensive feeding at the end. However, many producers of grass-fed beef don’t use the intensive finishing technique and just label their meat “grass-fed.” Yes, it’s confusing because there are no hard definitions of grass feeding set out by the Department of Agriculture. The best way to know is to ask your supplier.
Aging Steaks
The best steaks are aged, a process in which meat is stored at a low temperature for between two days and six weeks. There are no laws governing the use of the aged steaks label aside from prohibiting people from claiming an aging period that isn’t accurate. The aging process allows meat, which stiffens after slaughter, to relax and tenderize. Nothing is added; the meat just needs time for its natural enzymes to break down connective tissues and muscle fibers. The result is flavorful, tender steak. The longer it’s aged, the better, but it’s also more expensive.
There are two methods for aging: wet aging and dry aging.
Wet-aged steaks are vacuum sealed to keep mold from growing on the meat. Wet aging tends to be faster than dry aging (a few days vs. a few weeks), but because moisture is retained, it tends to result in less flavorful meat. Consumers also pay for that water weight in the end.
Dry-aged steaks are hung or placed on racks and stored in the open air. Unlike wet aging, dry aging allows moisture to leave the meat, intensifying the beefy flavor that remains. Dry aging also takes longer, and mold can grow on the dry surface.
