Crowd Cow Review: Quality and Convenience Outweighs Cost

Crowd Cow meat review
Current Crowd Cow Deals
Frozen meat shipped to your door. It’s been around for quite some time – Peyton Manning must’ve had steak on his mind every time he called out “Omaha!” on the field (check out our updated Omaha Steaks review while you’re at it for a comparison). But what if you could buy incredible beef directly from small, sustainable ranches and have it shipped directly to your door with next-day air shipping? This is where Crowd Cow comes in.

How Crowd Cow Works

Crowd Cow lets you and your friends, or simply other people around the country, buy a share of a cow. Once the cow “tips” (hah!), you receive the cuts of meat you picked upon ordering. To ensure freshness, Crowd Cow doesn’t purchase the cuts of meat until the cow is fully tipped. This may sound a bit confusing, but essentially, you can simply go to Crowd Cow’s website and place an order for a few filet mignons – once enough orders are placed to “tip” the full cow, Crowd Cow will obtain the butchered meat from the ranch and package it for shipment.
Unboxing the meat
Now that you know a bit about the company, let’s dive into the important stuff. How good are the steaks?

Crowd Cow Review

Upon opening the box, you will find a white styrofoam cooler with a warning card on top that will surely freak your wife out. The warning is for the dry ice inside. You know, the stuff used in kids science experiments. Yes, it can be very dangerous if touched, so don’t do that. Check out online of how to dispose of dry ice properly. I simply let it sublimate outside.

The order was delivered around 10am and I did not bring the package inside until about 1pm. We received our first order from Crowd Cow containing two dry aged NY Strips (roughly 0.8lbs each), 2lbs of premium ground beef, and 1 skirt steak. The meat was rock hard and probably would have been fine outside for days since it was a chilly 40 degree day. I immediately tossed everything in the freezer until ready to cook, which was about 2 hours later. Naturally, we had to cook the NY Strips first. Since I’m a sous vide aficionado, this is of course my cooking method of choice.

The meat I received from Crowd Cow

Can I Sous Vide Crowd Cow Meat?

YES! This is one of the most amazing things about Crowd Cow’s service. They package their steaks in sous vide ready vacuum sealed bags. This means when it comes time to cook, I simply drop the steaks into my sous vide machine directly from the freezer. For the two NY Strip steaks, I cooked them for 3 hours total (a little longer than normal since they are frozen) at 135F.

Cooking the Crowd Cow meat with sous vide
Searing Crowd Cow steak

Crowd Cow Quality

My expectations were blown out of the water. Crowd Cow dry ages their steaks for 14 days resulting in an amazingly tender and buttery flavor. The combination of this with sous vide results in a steak so tender my mouth is watering as I write this. I can honestly say the meat is 100% better than anything I can buy at a local grocery store. I’m even going as far to say it beats my favorite local butcher. Perhaps it’s the dry aged that makes it so much better (and my butcher rarely dry ages), but the fact that this was delivered to my house takes it to a whole new level.
Finished medium rare steak

Final Thoughts

Cost is obviously your next question. The prices are up there for steaks, but you have to remember these are dry aged. At least where I’m from, dry aged steaks go for quite a bit at local shops. For example, you can easily pay $25 for a dry aged NY Strip at Wegman’s. At the time of writing this, you can get four 12oz dry aged NY Strips, two 12oz chuck steaks, and four thick 1/2lb premium burger patties. That ends up being much cheaper than what I can get local. Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed with the quality of this meat.

Current Crowd Cow Deals

7 thoughts on “Crowd Cow Review: Quality and Convenience Outweighs Cost

  • May 9, 2018 at 9:58 pm
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    Hi, Sous Vide Guy!
    I have some CC waygu coulotte cuts in the freezer (lucky me!) and wonder what time you would recommend? I SV my beef at 131, but am wondering about the time on a coulotte/picanha. Also, I season with kosher sea salt before the bath. If I were to use the CC vac package and cook from frozen, obviously I cannot season at all. Suggestions? Thank you so very much!

    Reply
    • September 18, 2019 at 11:02 pm
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      Hiya Mary! If you’re cooking from frozen try to allow for an extra 30 minutes to guarantee a total thaw. As for temperature Alinea’s ex-Executive Chef Mike Bagale recommends a four-step process. He suggests:

      1) 135F for 45-60 minutes
      2) Chill in fridge
      3) Bring to room temperature
      4) Sear

      Hope that helps!

      Reply
  • December 5, 2018 at 2:11 am
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    I ordered steaks from Crown Cow and they weren’t properly sealed in the vacuum bag. Had to throw them away. Nothing but a huge waste of money.

    Reply
    • September 18, 2019 at 11:03 pm
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      Sorry to hear that, Terry. Were you able to get in contact with them about a refund?

      Reply
  • May 24, 2019 at 4:55 pm
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    Tried them – toughest meat I ever had – I wrote them but no response

    Reply
    • September 18, 2019 at 11:05 pm
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      Howdy Roy. That sounds like a difficult situation. One idea would be to try broadening the shipping distance, provided you’re still interested in giving CC a shot. They have an option to search for farms by postal code. Local is better!

      Reply
  • May 23, 2020 at 5:39 pm
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    I received Crowd Cow meat for Mothers Day. The buffalo meat and the cod were good quality. However the short ribs were all fat and very poor quality. I also had some from
    Safeway which were of high quality for a better price. They had lots of meat on them and little fat. Do not buy their short ribs.

    Reply

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