A5 Grade Wagyu Ribeye Steak.....from Costco?

For the last several years, we have been buying un-graded Wagyu steak here in Houston with mixed results, sometimes it looks great and tastes great....more often than not lately, it looks no different than a “prime” cut so for $55 a pound it’s a hard pass.

So we had been hearing rumors that Costco occasionally had actual graded steaks from official Japanese farms. But the order window always seems short. So about 10 days ago, we found an open order window and ordered 12 lbs for $800 ($67 per lb).’

So received it late last week, it looked great, and grilled up a steak yesterday.....amazing flavor, a big upgrade from the un-graded stuff.

 

Pictures!!! Details!!

I've only have A5 wagyu @ a Gordon Ramsey place in Vegas. It was definitely something special.
Have seen the Costco one online, but never pulled the trigger. Which cut did you get?

We mail order this, and it was quite good. Very rich though. Could not eat much of it in one sitting.
https://www.debragga.com/japanese-wagyu-beef-from-miyazaki-region-12oz-ribeye-steak.html

T

 

So we bought Ribeye, while I wait for the wife to send me pics, here is the front and back of the certificate we received with it and the grade scale Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login :

 

Tom,
The link you posted kept re-directing itself so I bailed out.

 

His link works for me. Goes to a 12 oz grade A5 steak for $149.95.

 

Ok, that is consistent with other online vendors, these are higher on the BMS scale than the Costco but you pay a lot more....

 

yup, there is nothing/not much special about a cow being merely a "wagyu" breed in my experience. Its all in the raising and finishing...

We live in cattle raising country and...sure enough...many/most of the local ranchers have switched at least part of their operations to wagyu over the past few years as the marketing hype has built. I have eaten loads of (non Japanese) wagyu over the years, and have not found it superior to a well-selected "usda prime" beef. So, I'm with you, not really worth the premium...

Japanese waygu, otoh, is a whole 'nuther thing of course. There was one gentlemen rancher here that tried some Japanese techniques with his wagyu for a brief period of time several years ago...he was a friend and thus we got to try some from the 1 steer he raised that way. It was very comparable to high bms high grade Japanese. But he quickly ran out of interest in this high effort endeavor and didn't repeat the experiment. I actually ate one of his old steers (raised on grass only) the other day (posted it in the diner thread) at age 7 or thereabouts iirc. It was dry aged for a fair bit and still wasn't that impressive.

I am very interested to see how your costco purchase turns out (I have seen a few youtube vids of their Japanese wagyu and it looked legit)...look forward to your future pics/posts...

 

Thanks for the reminder....here I am trying to hack through it with a knife not up to the task. It was well marbled throughout. We are very happy with the value, while recognizing that if one buys $140 lb A5, it is higher on the scale....I mean it is Costco. And it tasted great, WAY above anything we were getting locally these days.

I think you are correct, that there are alot of US attempts right now because it is trendy. That is probably why we have stopped buying the ungraded stuff.....having said that, we did buy some ungraded New Zealand Wagyu a couple of weeks ago (haven't had any yet). Did it look great? No.....it was just the novelty. Or who knows, maybe Southern Hemisphere Beef is really good....LOL.

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Sorry. Not sure what's up.
It was DeBragga, out of NY, I think. They have something called Miyazaki beef...T

 

You've had good luck with Snake River Farms, no? For online orders of wagyu...T

 

I've had Australian wagyu. Can't remember much more than that, though. So, it may be a sign! There is also a Texas company that sells beef from full blooded akaushi, Japanese red cattle. Good stuff. Company is called Heart Brand.

If you're going to get into cutting up your own meats, I can recommend the breaking knives by Victorinox (the Swiss Army knife people). Really makes the job less of a pain. But, get some cut resistant gloves, because that knife is sharper than a grumpy old lady's tongue! [emoji2]

T

 

i never liked frozen steaks, it seems to alter the texture and taste. so how are you guys preserving 12 lbs of meat?

 

That is a well known region for Wagyu beef, wins awards.

The Costco steak I bought comes from the Kuroge region, also well known.

 

FWIW - we just ordered from Snake River Farms. My wife and I went to our local steakhouse - Top Cut. They purchase their Wagyu meets from Snake River Farms. So we figured we would try and ordered the Steak Lovers Collection. Packaging was great. The collection comes with four American Wagyu Black Grade Filet Mignon 6 Oz. The meat was good and tender. However, it tasted no different that the "regular" filets that we purchase locally. We also tried the USDA Choice Ribeye 1.5" - not our favorite cut of meet. I would say that ribeye from SNF was 100% no different that buying locally. Bottom line we would not order again from SNF.

We would, however, order from Holy Grail Steaks. We ordered the wagyu cuts from this company, and we would say that the taste was on a completely different level - very very very rich flavor. Almost took some getting accustomed to. We are not wagyu experts - have only ordered twice now. But, there was a world of difference in the wagyu cuts from Holy Grail compared to SNF.

I have seem the Costco wagyu meets and have wondered if the meet was worth a try.

 

Yeah, I was seriously under knifed.....LOL

The wife had a plan to cut these until the beef punched her in the mouth (paraphrasing Mike Tyson).

After that it was one dull blade after the next.

 

Thaw at 35 degrees then cut and refreeze. We have frozen high quality steaks for a long time with no noticeable issues. Double freezer paper wrap then but into a freezer storage bag.

 

We were certainly happy with it, especially considering the value....made for a damn fine grilled steak. Crispy char on the outside, melt in your mouth tenderness inside.

Spent my Ooni pizza grill money on this instead....LOL

 

Don't understand the interest in Waygu... Way too fatty for me. Takes pretty nasty.

And I have had some of best on earth in various places in Japan.

Better beef in Japan is available.

HAve a good, good friend in Japan who knows his foods-a very well know chief in Osake/(Kobe really) -and he has exposed me to proper beef in Japan--Makes Waygu pointless.

 

I've had their wagyu from them direct, in stores here, and at several restaurants. I always find it to be "roughly the same as a good prime grade, and sometimes not as good".

I think at this point I'm sorta "meh" on wagyu and over it for the most part.

(again, not wrt Japanese high grade, high bms beef, that is amazing and worth seeking out from time to time)

 

Err...What?

The beef you had in Japan that you like, and the beef you had that you didn't like, are all wagyu...

After all, "the word wagyu simply means “Japanese/our (wa) cattle (gyu)” ".

So...there are loads of different regions in Japan, and loads of different cattle growers, with various quality of beef. Nearly all of them focus on a handful of well-established breeds (there are 4 sub-breeds in the wagyu family iirc, but I may not).

Of course the difference in end product comes from the breeding, raising, feeding, finishing, selection, etc.

There is good beef all over Japan. Some high-grade, high bms fatty stuff...some less so.

(as discussed here/above, American "wagyu" cattle end up nothing like the vast majority of their Japanese raised fellow breed.)

Anyways, Japanese beef (aka "wagyu") can and does vary a lot around the country. Not all growers go for max fattiness, use different feed, different selection (male vs female for example), different time to harvest, etc, etc.

(I think a lot of people get mixed up by the words kobe and wagyu and conflate those words, and then further err in equating those solely with the near-white-with fat, high-grade, high-bms stuff. Of course there is lots of Japanese beef - aka wagyu - that is not that type of beef. And for many kobe is far from the top beef growing region in Japan, and in any event, its only one area.)

 

I read somewhere that given the higher fat content that wagyu and related steaks responded better to freezing, as long as you were careful in wrapping to avoid freezer burn, taking on funky odors, etc...T

 

One thing I learned after trying Akaushi, Mizayaki, etc. was that given the richness that it is very easily too overdose on the stuff. I tend to err on the side of less meat and a lower level of doneness versus cheap Kroger steaks for example. I also like something to go along with it that's not too heavy - salad, steamed broccoli - or something with acidity to cut through the fatty richness...T

 

I'm new to the forums but addicted to wagyu steaks, so hi! For what it's worth, snake river farms and double 8 cattle have the best non-Japanese/ hybrid and american raised pure blood wagyu I've ever had. Snake River Farms "gold grade" is served at Restaurant Guy Savoy at Caesars Palace and several other high end steakhouses in Vegas.

But I like the real A5 japanese stuff. I regularly buy it from Crowd Cow where you can get smaller and usually higher quality meats than Costco sells. I buy the full Kagoshima A5 prime rib and NY strip roasts at similar cost per pound but you dont have to buy as much at a time, price is a little higher or lower than Costco depending on the day. Crowd cow pretty much always has A5 Japanese from Kagoshima and Miyazaki, both multiple year winners of Japan's wagyu olympics, and they also get limited supplies of genuine Kobe and Olive wagyu. Cant recommend them enough. Ive purchased from DeBragga before as well, and they have high quality small quantity meat, but usually double the price of crowd cow on average.

For what its worth, Kobe is usually most expensive due to supply and demand, but not the best. Hyogo's rating system allows beef to be certified Kobe down to B3 or B4 rating, I forget the floor, but several grades qualify as Kobe so it's all good but not necessarily A5 which is the best rating.

 

Thanks for the information. We did not have good luck with Snake River Farms,. The package we ordered came with the black grade, I believe, which might have been the issue. We will try Crowd Cow.

 

I was fortunate enough to try A5 the other night for the first time. My fiancé brought me to a great new Japanese steak / whiskey house around the corner in San Diego called the Huntress. I got a 4 ounce Satsuma, Kagoshima and it was heaven!!!
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