Don't go to Walmart to buy your prepping meat

 This may not be something most folks like to hear, especially when grocery bills already feel too high, but it needs to be said plainly and without sugarcoating: the meat most Americans buy today is not the same meat we grew up on, and pretending otherwise doesn’t do anyone any favors.

This isn’t an attack on Walmart, and it’s not about shaming anyone for where they shop. Walmart exists because people need affordable food, and for a lot of families, it’s the only store within driving distance. That reality matters. What also matters is understanding what kind of meat you’re bringing home, how it affects your health over time, and whether it truly belongs in a long-term food plan.

The Kind of Meat You Are Actually Buying

When we talk about meat from big-box stores, we’re not pointing to one bad product or some hidden ingredient nobody wants you to discover. What we’re really talking about is an industrial system built to move massive volumes at the lowest possible cost, where speed and efficiency are prioritized far above quality.

The animals are raised quickly, processed quickly, packaged quickly, and shipped long distances before they ever land in a refrigerated case.

By the time you pick up that package of chicken or ground beef, it has already lived a much harder life than most people realize.

Anyone who’s been cooking for decades knows something is off. Chicken breasts today often look bloated, cook unevenly, and lose a shocking amount of liquid in the pan. Ground beef browns more like it’s boiling, and pork chops that look thick in the package turn thin and dry by the time dinner hits the plate.

This isn’t your imagination. Much of today’s mass-produced meat carries extra water and has muscle structure that simply isn’t as firm as what older generations remember. Animals that are pushed to grow fast don’t develop the same density, and that affects both texture and nutrition.

Over time, eating meat like this every day means you’re getting less out of each serving. You may feel full, but your body isn’t getting the same depth of nourishment it once did from similar portions. That matters even more as we get older.

The Problem with Antibiotics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO have both warned that routine antibiotic use in livestock contributes to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These resistant bacteria can spread through food, water, and the environment, making infections harder to treat when they reach people.

Even when meat meets legal safety standards, this system still has consequences. Constant low-level exposure to antibiotic residues and resistant bacteria places extra strain on the immune system. It doesn’t cause immediate illness, but over years, it can quietly reduce resilience, especially in older adults or anyone already under physical stress.

This is one more reason to know how to source, preserve, or procure your own food. When you control how meat is raised, handled, or replaced with wild protein, you reduce dependence on a system that trades long-term health for short-term efficiency.

If you’re a homesteader or living off-grid, chances are you already have a solid set of skills under your belt. But true self-sufficiency is a journey, not a destination and even experienced hands can refine and sharpen what they know.

Take something like poultry, for example. How confident are you that the birds you’re buying are truly healthy and capable of providing the nutrients you’re relying on? Even if you think you’ve already got everything figured out… this will make you see things differently.

Where Prepping Changes the Conversation

Meat that has already been heavily processed and transported doesn’t age well in a freezer. Even when stored properly, it tends to lose texture and flavor faster, and in some cases, it becomes downright unpleasant after extended storage.  A freezer full of meat looks reassuring until you actually start cooking through it months later and realize you’ve been stockpiling disappointment.

Modern supermarket meat often struggles with these processes.

Pressure-canned beef can turn soft and crumbly. Pork that should cure firm and rich can end up tasting flat or overly salty. Smoking sometimes fails to bring out depth because there wasn’t much there to begin with. So, if the meat starts out weak, no amount of skill can turn it into something it isn’t.

Remembering What Used to Work

If you’re old enough to remember buying meat from a local butcher or splitting a cow with neighbors, you already know there’s another way. Meat used to come from animals that lived longer, moved more, and ate what they were supposed to eat. That meat cooked better, froze better, and tasted better months down the road. It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest. 

The truth is, these old methods make more sense today than they ever did. We may have more kitchen gadgets than our grandparents could have imagined, but no blender or air fryer can replace time-tested preservation done right. There’s a reason jerky and smoked meat have always been staples for preppers who think long-term.

That curiosity is what pushed us to build a small Amish-style smokehouse and try doing it ourselves. We kept the setup simple, used only a handful of basic tools and ingredients, and focused on doing things the old way instead of the fast way. The results were better than we expected, not just in flavor, but in how well the meat held up.

The beef came straight from the barn, was stored in a traditional fridge, and that quality showed through. If you are curious about my  smokehouse experiment, click here that will show you a few secrets about how to cook quality meat here. 

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Meat from Walmart…

One thing most people don’t realize is that Walmart’s meat operation is designed around one priority above all others: scale. Feeding millions of customers every single day requires a system that values uniformity, speed, and price control.

Quality, in the traditional sense, simply cannot sit at the top of that list without breaking the model. To keep shelves full nationwide, Walmart depends on a small group of enormous meat processors.

These companies source animals from many different farms, often mixing livestock raised under very different conditions into the same production stream. By the time that meat reaches the store, it no longer represents a single farm, a single region, or even a consistent standard beyond what’s legally required.

That matters because meat reflects how an animal lived. When animals are raised quickly, fed for growth instead of strength, and moved through the system as fast as possible, the meat carries those shortcuts with it. Walmart isn’t hiding this, but it isn’t advertising it either.  

None of this makes Walmart meat dangerous or illegal. But, if your goal is dependable nutrition, that’s a tradeoff worth thinking hard about before you keep stacking those packages in your cart.

Quality meat is expensive. And while it’s absolutely worth every penny compared to supermarket meat pumped full of water and antibiotics, it still leaves you dependent on a fragile system.

If you live off-grid, you might like this book. No matter your age, learning how to build small-game traps, fish efficiently, or cook without modern tools can save you today… and when SHTF.

Wilderness Long-Term Survival Guides help your forgotten skills that help you take control of your food, your safety, and your independence, without relying on processed, nutrient-poor meat that weakens your immune system.

Final Thoughts

We need to be clear about this – no one is saying Walmart is evil or that you shouldn’t shop there. This is about understanding the limits of a system that was never built with long-term resilience in mind.

If you care about your health and your ability to feed yourself well no matter what happens, then it’s worth stepping back and asking whether the meat you’re buying truly supports those goals.

Our parents and grandparents didn’t get everything right, but when it came to food, they understood one thing very well: strong bodies come from good food, and good food starts at the source. That lesson hasn’t changed, even if the grocery store has.

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Making Beef Jerky

When purchasing a whole cow carcass, we start dreaming up what we can do with it. Roasts for the winter? Stew? Burgers on the grill all summer? Of course!

But what are you doing with those skirt steaks? They’re thin, flimsy, and usually aren’t usable for much other than two things: stir fry and jerky.

Today, we’ll be taking a look at how to make your own jerky. No special equipment is required and with a simple recipe that anyone can follow, we’ll get you preserving that bounty of beef in no time. Keep in mind that you can, of course, use other cuts of beef. I just prefer the skirt steaks and other, already thin cuts of beef because it makes my life a little easier when it comes to cutting everything down to size. Let’s get started!

Flavors and Marinades

Jerky can be made to taste like anything you prefer, but most people (at least in the US) are used to jerky with soy sauce and brown sugar. Your average bag that you grab at the grocery store is almost always some base combination of those two flavors with extras added depending on the variety they’re going for.

You can get recipes like that absolutely anywhere. We’re going a little more spicy this time around. My family loves my sweet and spicy recipe. We use pineapple juice, habaneros, and a handful of other ingredients that give the beef a kick and a sweetness that lingers in the back of your mouth after every bite.

At the end of the day, the biggest thing you need to worry about is making sure that you’re marinating long enough. If you can start your marinade 24 hours prior to baking your jerky, do that. Yes, it’s a big gloopy bag in your fridge. If you need to, you can double-bag the marinade to make sure it doesn’t leak. Or, by all means, put it in a bowl. We aren’t going to talk about all the accidental drips I’ve had over the years, right? 

Cutting and Storing

“What?” I get that a lot when I bring this up. Toss your thawed meat in the freezer for an hour or two (per 3-4 pounds) to firm it up. It won’t wholly freeze, but it will stiffen the fibers and crystalize some of the fluid enough to make it easier to cut your jerky strips. This means less knife slippage and fewer accidents. 

Storage should be in an airtight container. Your jerky will be okay on the counter for a week, but I prefer to put mine in the fridge. If there is any possibility of mice or rats in your house (as there often is during the cooler months in older homes and on farmsteads), this jerky is extremely attractive to them. Use glass if storing on your counter, if possible. Otherwise, you will wake up to a mouse gnawing a hole in your jerky container. Another good place to store it is this underground root cellar you can build in your backyard that is also hidden from any prying eyes. 

The Recipe

We title this section like this just in case you want to skip ahead. We know what it’s like: ten billion words and no recipe. Not here.

You will need:

Skirt steak or round steak, at least 2 pounds. Feel free to ratio the recipe up or down depending on how much meat you have handy.

- 1/2 cup brown sugar

- 1 dozen red habaneros

- 1 cup pineapple juice

- 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

- dash or two of salt

- dash or two of garlic powder or 2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced 

- liquid smoke to taste: for beginners, we usually use 2-3 tablespoons for a charcoal BBQ-level flavor

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees F. Slice your beef into 1/8-1/4″ thick slices, as long or wide as you prefer. Personally, we go for about the length of the knife and no broader/wider than a credit card in most instances.

While wearing gloves, so you don’t hurt yourself later on, slice your habaneros into halves. 

You can slice them further if you want to, but we’re really just using them for the heat. Not the pepper itself.

Pour your marinade mix (everything but the beef) together in the largest locking plastic bag you can find. One gallon is usually fine, but if you can find two-gallon, size up. More room is better. Zip the bag, and shake it all up until it seems to be relatively well combined. Add your meat, zip it again, shake it again, and pitch it in the fridge for the next 12-24 hours. It will keep up to 48 hours, but I prefer not to do this. At that point, all you are doing is adding cooking time and effort to your jerky.

When your marinade is finished, go ahead and fish out your beef. Place it all on a cooking wire rack (or two, or three; or however many you need, we’re not judging here). Bake in the oven until the meat is dried all the way through. This usually takes three to five hours. I highly recommend checking it every now and again. Once the meat is dry, it tends to char pretty fast.

If you want plans to smoke your meat I have a great plan here for doing so with a homebuilt smokehouse!

Or you could build a smokehouse barrel click here.

I use a smokehouse for my meat I use... it dries it out just fine and there is something about a smokehouse flavor that is to die for. 

Some of the elements that will affect your personal drying time are your elevation, the fat content of your meat, the thickness of your slice, the type of oven you’re using (a convection oven is going to be towards that three-hour mark), and so on and so forth.

Since we don’t know the specifications of your house, your kitchen build, or the exact type of meat you’re using, it’s very difficult to say that your jerky will be done exactly at this time or another. Again, our suggestion is to simply make certain that you check on it every 10-15 minutes after the three-hour mark.

Final Thoughts

We mentioned this before, but we’ll say it again: this jerky should keep for up to a week on your counter. However, I keep mine in the fridge just to be on the safe side. This should be kept readily for short-term hiking and camping, especially in cooler weather. If using it in warmer weather, watch to see if the meat sweats significantly. If it does, please dispose of it.

The meat is not thoroughly dried and can easily make you ill. 

That said, happy cooking! I would love to hear how our jerky recipe goes for you. Hit me up in the comments down below.

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How To Build A Smokehouse

One of the best and tastiest ways to conserve meat is to smoke it. The meat is delicious, and if you keep it in a cool, dry place, it can last up to a year and sometimes even longer. Here’s how to build a smokehouse in your backyard.

The system used is pretty simple. You make a fire, and the smoke goes through a long tube or pipe. The smoke will then cool down and reach the meat at the appropriate temperature (85 degrees to 125 degrees Fahrenheit).

Why Building a Smokehouse?

You ever think about building a smokehouse? It’s one of the best things I’ve added to my homestead. You can preserve meat, fish, even cheese, and the flavor you get—nothing beats that smoky goodness.

Plus, it keeps your food longer without relying on a freezer, which means less energy use and more space.

It’s not too expensive to build one yourself, and you know exactly what’s going into your food—no weird preservatives. Whether you’ve got a big harvest to save or just want amazing smoked meals, a smokehouse is totally worth it.

There is no parts list just basic measurements and what you have on hand to build. 

Step-by-Step Guide:

Dig the groove. The fire pit will be built downward so that the smoke can go upward.

A pipe should be laid out between the holes so that the smoke can travel to the meat. Try to stay away from metal as it could rust decorate and even collapse over time. 

Cement was put in the first hole to create a floor. You can use regular concrete for this. 

The fire pit was built using bricks and cement. It will get hot regular concrete for the bricks can crack and split with heat. For the bricks be sure to use refractory cement / mortar.

A cast iron door was installed in front of the fire pit.

You will have to remove the ashes with a small garden shovel over time. 

You need to use the right kind of wood, preferably hard wood, to build the top structure for the smokehouse. Ideally, the trees used to construct the smokehouse should be cherry, pear, apple, or apricot.

A space for the horn has been carved out and for the wires used to hang the meat on.

The finished product:

Dirt was put around and over the pipe, and wood pallets were used as steps.

Here are the meats being smoked.

The best types of wood for smoking meats are hickory, red oak, mesquite, cherry wood, and apple-wood. This smokehouse can be your next weekend project.

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Raising Rabbits for food

Raising rabbits for meat is a great, cost-effective way to keep your freezer full. Also, rabbit meat is very lean and healthy for those who are trying to cut fatty foods from their diets. Since raising rabbits doesn’t take up a whole lot of space, you don’t need to live on a farm to do it. People in the city who have a decent-sized garage can join the program and get a little taste of the country life. There are a few things that everyone should know before getting started though.

The first thing you want to do when getting started is to make sure you have the proper space to raise your rabbits. A medium-size garage is efficient when raising meat rabbits. You then want to furnish the garage with your rabbit pens. There are several different types of cages, but when living in the city, you should probably invest in rabbit pens with drop pans. This will help keep the floor of your garage clean and make clean up a breeze. You can use newspaper to line the drop pans, but wood shavings are ideal because they are more absorbent. You also want to get rabbit pens that help utilize the space you have. Rabbit pens that stack on top of each other will help conserve space and leave you room to still walk around. These pens will typically hold three to six adult rabbits.

What Types of Rabbits Make the Best Sense for Meat Production?

Once you have designed your rabbit shelter to your liking, the next step is to fill those cages with meat. There are many breeds of rabbit, but not all make meat rabbits. Some rabbits are strictly show or pet varieties, and would not serve your purpose very well. While any breed “can” be used for meat, the best ones have thick, heavy muscling along the back (loins) and hind legs. Finding the right breed of rabbit is critical. Some of the best choices are as follows:

• New Zealand Whites
• Californians
• Beveren
• American Chinchillas
• Silver Fox
• Satins
• Cinnamon
• Palomino
• Champaign d’Argent

These are the most popular and common breeds of meat rabbits. These rabbits will get as big as ten to twelve pounds on the average. The mighty New Zealand White can actually attain weights of up to twenty-five pounds each. Keep in mind that “live weight” will produce less when slaughter time comes. However, rabbits are one of the most efficient animals for meat production livestock. The average cow converts live weight to what is known as “hanging weight” (the meat and carcass remaining after processing) at about 30 to 35%. Rabbits have a 50% on the average conversion, so for a ten-pound rabbit, you can expect a five-pound carcass for food.

Husbandry Practices

When raising meat rabbits, you want to keep a few choice breeding animals around. These rabbits are the lucky ones, and will not make it to the dinner table. Breeding your rabbits is actually a quick and easy process, but there are a few tricks to keep in mind when you get started. You always want to take your female rabbit and place it in the male rabbit pen. You wouldn’t think it makes a difference, but it does more than you think. Female rabbits tend to be overprotective of their space. If you place a male rabbit in the female pen, they will be fighting too much to get any breeding done.

The first time you introduce your rabbits, it may take them a little while to warm up to each other. Once they get accustomed to each other, the breeding process will only take a few minutes. You will know when the male gets the job done because like humans, he will just roll off and find a place to sleep. After they have bred, you remove the female and place her back in her pen. You will also need to put a nesting box in the female pen so the rabbit has a place to have her babies.

You can either buy a nesting box or, if you want to save some money, you can always make one yourself. They are really quite simple to assemble. You also want to make sure you put some wood shavings inside to help insulate the babies when the female isn’t in there. If it is the winter season and it’s really cold, you should use a heat lamp to keep the babies warm.

Caring for Your Meat Rabbits

A rabbit diet is pretty basic and cheap. You can find rabbit food online or at any local feed store. You really don’t have to worry about over-feeding your rabbits; they are pretty good about only eating when they need to. You just want to make sure they always have something to eat. Rabbits need a lot of water too, so you want to make sure they have plenty. You can use the same type of water bottle that is used for a hamster. Water bowls are another possibility, but they are easy to tip over and get dirty fast. The rabbits learn to drink from drip bottles quickly, and you won’t have to worry about cleanliness as much. A great addition to your rabbits’ diet are alfalfa cubes. You can get them in bags at a local feed store, or fresh from a field if you have a stand of alfalfa. Grass is good too. Just make sure there are no pesticides or chemicals on it. Make sure you place a little salt block in their pen as well.

Choosing the right time to butcher your rabbit is pretty important. For the best efficiency, you don’t want to feed them longer than you have to. Eight to twelve weeks is the ideal time to butcher your rabbit because by then it should have already reached its peak weight and will not get any bigger. The longer you keep them past twelve weeks, the meat gets older and tend to gets a bit tough. You can use older rabbits when they have outlived their production purposes to make fantastic stews, however. So there is no waste in the rabbit meat breeding process.

As you can see, raising meat rabbits is rather easy. Once you get started it only gets easier. The hardest part is the start up. It is well worth the effort to give meat rabbits a try. They are a great way for a meat lover to keep their freezer stocked with meat, and it can be done by anyone whether you are a rancher, or a city slicker.

My Recommendation for a good book on the subject is Raising Pastured Rabbits For Meat : An-All Natural, Humane and Profitable Approach to Production on a Small Scale by Nichki Carangelo

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The Dual Purpose Chicken

 

Thought I would throw it out there that I have a great affinity for the dual purpose chicken on a homestead. They serve the greatest potential while minimizing the overall workload of the homesteader. When seeking true self-sufficiency it is also best to have chickens who can replenish their own supply. Whether you want chickens for meat, eggs, or both, you have to get the chicks from somewhere.

Even flocks totally dedicated to egg-laying will require occasional replacement of the hens. The average lifespan of a chicken is about seven years, but many other factors can play into that, shortening the lifespan greatly (hawks, foxes, lose dogs, etc.). However, even if your chickens live their full lives, only part of that time is in production.

The first year of a hen’s life is spent growing, regardless of the breed or type of chicken she is. You will not see any eggs for at least six months, and closer to a year in most breeds. In the beginning, egg production is still low as well. It is a good idea to bring in new stock at least seven months before you need them so they have time to develop before you need their eggs.

A hen’s production level will also drop off after a few years. After the initial peak, it will begin to wane and eventually stop altogether. As a rule, chickens will lose most production value by the time they are six years old. They may still produce the occasional egg, but the geriatric chickens will have to be replaced if you wish to continue with your egg supply. That means that between older chickens going out of production and younger chickens needing to mature, you will need to bring in new stock every five years or so, if all of your chickens live to old age.

If you wish to produce meat for your freezer, you will need to buy new chicks every time, usually at least once a year. This creates a very heavy dependency on outside hatcheries. It isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but does defeat some of the staunch homesteader’s desires to be self-sufficient.

The dual purpose chicken can do it ALL for you.

These breeds are well-known for their outstanding production of eggs and meaty bodies. While they do not produce either eggs or meat as heavily as breeds designed for those singular purposes, they do both with great style. The biggest benefit is that most of the dual breeds are excellent setters. They go “broody.” In chicken vernacular—broody is a GOOD thing.

Broody means they will sit on their eggs and then raise the resulting chicks to maturity. Those instincts are largely bred out of egg-layers who will “drop and run.” Larger meat breeds also have the desire bred out, but even when they would try and sit on the eggs, their greater weights make it a losing proposition: many eggs end up crushed beneath their large frames.

Some of the most popular and easy to find dual purpose breeds are:

Aracana: These chickens are colorful and have attractive feathering that stands out like a crown around their necks. They do well in all climates and are easy going, but slightly skittish. One of the most attractive features of this breed is the unusual egg coloring. They lay bluish/green eggs that are a real conversation starter, but the eggs taste the same as all other eggs and have the same nutritional value. The Aracana has excellent brooding qualities and will hatch out eggs whenever you allow her to.

Australorp: The Australorp is an attractive black bird. It is very friendly and becomes quite attached to its owners. They are quiet birds with very docile temperaments and have high egg-production qualities. They lay medium to large sized brown eggs. They are only average setters, but they will hatch out eggs occasionally.

Brahma: Brahmas are beautiful black-and-white birds that produce large, light brown eggs. They are very easy to handle and are friendly.

Buff Orpington: This breed is classified as a “heavy” breed. The hens, when mature, will weigh in at around 8 pounds. These birds are very tolerant of the cold and seldom have trouble laying during the short days of winter. They lay pinkish brown eggs.

The Buff Orpington is known for being one of the most broody of the chicken breeds. They are very nurturing to their young. They are also one of the most calm and friendly of the chicken breeds as well.

Crevecoeur: This is not as common a breed, but it bears mentioning because it produces lovely medium sized white eggs and is extremely unusual to look at. It has a long, spiked, hair-like comb on the top of its black feathered head and is quite distinctive to look at. It is a friendly chicken that is very docile, but it isn’t a very good setter and will only occasionally become broody.

The Rooster Debate

For egg production, roosters are not a necessity regardless of what type of bird you get. However, if you want to reproduce your own chickens, they are an absolute requirement. Most chicken owners love

the sound of a cocky rooster strutting around their yards.

If you live in an area that restricts roosters due to the noise, or just don’t like the noise yourself, then you are probably better off with one of the breeds dedicated to a specific purpose since you will have to replenish the flock through a hatchery in any case. Dual purpose chickens lose a lot of their value without a rooster. It doesn’t make as much sense to keep them for egg production when an egg-laying breed will provide more eggs, and you can’t get a continued supply of meat from them.

A book that I recommend How to Raise Chickens for Meat: The Backyard Guide to Caring for, Feeding, and Butchering Your Birds by Michelle Marine

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