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How to Eat Through a Beef Share: Recipes and Tips for Every Cut in Your Freezer
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Time to read 11 min
A beef share — whether you buy a quarter, half, or whole — is one of the most cost-effective ways to fill your freezer with high-quality, grass-finished beef. But if you've never bought beef in bulk directly from a farm, knowing what to do with every cut can feel overwhelming. This guide breaks down every cut that comes in a P&K Family Farms beef share, organizes them by category, and gives you recipes and tips for eating through your entire share so nothing gets forgotten at the bottom of the freezer.
Table of Content
What's Actually in a Beef Share? Premium Steaks — The Cuts Everyone Knows Roasts & Specialty Cuts — Where the Real Flavor Lives Ground Beef — The Workhorse of Your Freezer Offal — For the Adventurous How to Organize Your Freezer After Delivery It All Starts With the Beef Frequently Asked Questions Related Readings
Here's the truth about buying a beef share: the steaks take care of themselves. Nobody needs help figuring out what to do with a ribeye. The real question is what happens when you're staring at a chuck roast on a Tuesday night, or you've got twelve packs of shank you've never cooked before, or you're forty pounds deep into ground beef and running out of ideas.
That's what this page is for. We organized every cut in your share by category, paired them with simple recipes our families actually cook, and built a game plan for working through your freezer week by week. Whether you bought a quarter or a whole, the goal is the same: use every cut, waste nothing, and eat better than you ever have.
Did You Know?
- When you buy a beef share, roughly 40-50% of your total weight is ground beef. That's not filler — that's single-animal-sourced ground beef from a 100% grass-finished cow, which means it has a completely different fat profile than what you'll find at any grocery store.
- Beef shanks — one of the most overlooked cuts in a share — are the foundation of real bone broth and meat stock. A single shank braised low and slow produces some of the most nutrient-dense, collagen-rich food you can eat.
- The USDA estimates the average American family of four spends roughly $1,200 per month on groceries. A beef share from a regenerative farm can supply 6-12 months of beef for a fraction of that per-meal cost when you break it down by serving.
What's Actually in a Beef Share?
When you purchase a beef share from P&K Family Farms, you're getting a full breakdown of a single animal — not a box of pre-selected cuts. That means you get everything: premium steaks, roasts, ground beef, stew meat, fajita meat, shanks, brisket, and offal if you want it. Every cut is from the same 100% grass-fed, grass-finished animal, raised regeneratively on diverse pastures by our partner farm under P&K's strict protocols.
The share sizes — quarter, half, and whole — scale proportionally. A quarter gives you a taste of everything. A half fills a standard chest freezer. A whole is a full year of beef for most families.
Here's how it all breaks down by category:
Premium Steaks — The Cuts Everyone Knows
These are the reason most people buy a beef share in the first place. When you break down the per-steak cost compared to buying grass-finished steaks individually at retail, the value becomes obvious fast.
Your share includes:
Bone-In Ribeye — The king of steaks. Rich marbling, deep beefy flavor, and that bone adds even more during cooking. Best on a screaming hot cast iron or over charcoal. This is the cut that makes people close their eyes when they take the first bite
Cast Iron Seared Ribeye Recipe →
NY Strip — Leaner than a ribeye but still packed with flavor. Great on the grill, excellent reverse-seared in the oven and finished in a pan. A weeknight steak that feels like a weekend meal.
Filet Mignon — The most tender cut on the animal. Mild flavor, butter-soft texture. Best seared in cast iron with butter, garlic, and thyme. Don't overcook it — medium-rare is the move.
Top Sirloin — An underrated everyday steak. More affordable per pound than ribeye or strip but still excellent when cooked right. Great sliced thin for steak salads, fajitas, or stir fry.
Flank Steak — Lean, flat, and packed with beefy flavor. Best marinated and grilled hot and fast, then sliced thin against the grain. Perfect for taco night or laid over rice bowls.
Skirt Steak — Similar to flank but even more flavor. The classic fajita cut. Sear it hard, let it rest, slice it thin. One of the most versatile cuts in your share.
Hanger Steak — The butcher's secret. There's only one per animal, so if you got a whole share, you've got one. Incredibly tender and flavorful. Treat it like a filet — hot pan, simple seasoning, don't overthink it.
Premium Grass-Finished Ribeye
Further Readings
Roasts & Specialty Cuts — Where the Real Flavor Lives
This is where most people get stuck — and where the best meals in your share are hiding. A chuck roast from your share that you braise for four hours will outperform a $50 steakhouse meal. The secret isn't technique. It's the beef.
Bone-In Chuck Roast — The ultimate comfort food cut. This is what Mississippi Pot Roast was made for. Low and slow in a Dutch oven or slow cooker until it falls apart with a fork. Our go-to recipe uses real ingredients — no seasoning packets, no processed ranch mix. Just good beef, peppers, butter, and time.
[Clean Mississippi Pot Roast Recipe → link to future recipe post]
Top Round Roast — Leaner than chuck, best sliced thin. Roast it low, let it rest, and slice against the grain for sandwiches or serve alongside roasted vegetables. Also excellent as deli-style roast beef when chilled and sliced paper thin.
Tri-Tip Roast — A West Coast favorite that's becoming more popular for good reason. Grill it like a thick steak — season simply, sear over high heat, pull at medium-rare, and slice against the grain. One of the most underappreciated cuts in the entire share.
Quarter Brisket — Your share includes brisket portioned into quarters, which makes it much more manageable than a full packer. Smoke it low and slow if you've got a smoker, or braise it in the oven with onions, garlic, and stock. Shred it for brisket tacos and your family will request it weekly.
[Braised Brisket Tacos Recipe → link to future recipe post]
Shank — This is the cut most people ignore, and it's a mistake. Shanks are the foundation of real bone broth and meat stock — packed with collagen, marrow, and connective tissue that breaks down into the most nutrient-dense liquid food you can make. Braise them whole for osso buco, or throw them into a pot for Brunswick stew.
[Beef Shank Meat Stock Recipe → link to future recipe post][Brunswick Stew with Beef Shank → link to future recipe post]
Stew Meat (1 lb packs) — Pre-cut chunks perfect for beef stew, curry, stroganoff, or chili. Brown them hard first to build flavor, then let them braise low and slow until tender. Stew meat is also excellent in a pressure cooker if you're short on time.
Fajita Meat (1 lb packs) — Pre-sliced strips ready for a hot skillet. Sear them fast with peppers and onions for fajitas, toss them into a stir fry, or pile them onto a sheet pan with vegetables for an easy weeknight dinner. These packs are the fastest meal in your entire share — 15 minutes from freezer to plate.
Premium Beef Chuck Roast
"A chuck roast from our share that you braise for four hours will outperform a $60 steakhouse meal. The secret isn't technique — it's the beef."
Further Readings
Ground Beef — The Workhorse of Your Freezer
Let's talk about the elephant in the freezer. Roughly 50+% of your share by weight is ground beef. For a whole share, that's around 250 one-pound packs. For a quarter, it's about 65.
Here's the thing — this isn't grocery store ground beef. This is single-animal-sourced, 100% grass-finished ground beef from a cow that spent its entire life on pasture eating diverse grasses. The fat profile is completely different. Higher Omega-3s, better Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio, more CLA, more vitamins. It also tastes noticeably different — cleaner, beefier, less greasy.
The key to not getting bored with ground beef is variety. Here are the categories we rotate through:
Quick Weeknight Meals — Tacos, spaghetti and meat sauce, stuffed peppers, chili, sloppy joes, burger bowls. These are the meals you can get on the table in 30 minutes on a school night. Keep it simple and rotate through five or six staples.
[5 Quick Weeknight Ground Beef Recipes → link to future recipe post]
Slow Cooker / One Pot — Chili, soup, meat sauce in bulk, stuffed cabbage rolls. Make a big batch on Sunday and eat off it for days.
Global Flavors — This is where ground beef gets exciting. Asian caramelized ground beef over rice is one of our family favorites — sweet, savory, a little heat, and on the table in 20 minutes. Korean beef bowls, Greek-seasoned beef in pitas, Mexican picadillo, Thai basil beef.
[Asian Caramelized Ground Beef Recipe → link to future recipe post]
Burgers — Obvious, but worth saying: a grass-finished burger on a good bun with simple toppings is one of the best meals you'll eat. Don't overthink it. Salt, pepper, hot grill, done.
Offal — For the Adventurous
Offal is available upon request with your share. If you're new to organ meats, here's the honest truth: they're the most nutrient-dense cuts on the entire animal, and our ancestors ate them first for a reason.
Heart — Surprisingly mild and tastes more like a lean steak than you'd expect. Slice it thin and sear it hot, or grind it into your ground beef for a nutrient boost without changing the flavor.
Liver — The original superfood. Loaded with Vitamin A, B12, iron, and copper. If you're not a liver fan, try blending a small amount into ground beef for burgers or meatballs — your family won't taste it, but they'll get the benefits.
Oxtail — Technically not offal, but it's in the "adventurous" category for most people. Braised oxtail is one of the most luxurious, deeply flavored dishes you can make. Fall-off-the-bone meat in a rich, collagen-heavy broth. This is restaurant-quality food from your own freezer.
[Braised Oxtail Stew Recipe → link to future recipe post]
Oxtail
How to Organize Your Freezer After Delivery
When your share arrives, resist the urge to just stack everything in the freezer and figure it out later. Ten minutes of organization now saves you months of digging.
Group by category: Keep steaks together, roasts together, ground beef together. Use freezer bags or bins to separate them.
Put ground beef in the back and bottom. You've got the most of it. The steaks and specialty cuts should be the easiest to reach so you actually use them.
Keep a running inventory on the freezer. A whiteboard, a piece of paper taped to the lid, or a note on your phone. When you pull something out, cross it off. This prevents the "I forgot I had tri-tip" moment six months later.
Rotate intentionally. Don't eat all your steaks first and leave yourself with nothing but ground beef for the last three months. Mix it up week to week — a steak night, a roast night, a ground beef night.
It All Starts With the Beef
Every recipe on this page starts with the same thing — 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef raised regeneratively under P&K Family Farms' strict protocols. No antibiotics, no hormones, no vaccines, ever. No auction barn animals with unknown histories. Just clean beef from cattle raised on diverse pastures the way it's supposed to be done.
The cuts matter. But what the animal ate, how it lived, and how it was raised matters more. That's the difference you taste in every meal from your share.
If you're ready to fill your freezer, our beef shares — quarter, half, and whole — are available now.
And if you're already a beef share customer looking for your next recipe, bookmark this page. We'll be adding new recipes regularly, organized by cut, so you always have something new to try.
Further Readings
The Bottom Line
A beef share is the single best way to fill your freezer with high-quality, grass-finished beef at a fraction of what you'd pay buying cuts individually. But the value only works if you actually use everything in it. Here's what to remember:
- The steaks take care of themselves. The real wins are in the roasts, shanks, and specialty cuts most people overlook.
- Ground beef is your workhorse, not your problem. Rotate through global flavors, weeknight staples, and slow cooker meals and you'll never get bored.
- Shanks are the most underrated cut in your share. Meat stock, Brunswick stew, braised osso buco — this is where nutrient density and flavor peak.
- Organize your freezer on day one. Ten minutes of sorting saves six months of digging and forgetting.
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Eat across categories every week. A steak night, a roast night, a ground beef night. Don't burn through the best cuts first and leave yourself with nothing but hamburger in month four.
Ready to fill yours? Our beef shares — quarter, half, and whole — are available now.
The Author: Mike Parker
Mike Parker is a first-generation regenerative farmer and co-owner of P&K Family Farms in Clermont, Georgia. What started as a response to empty grocery shelves during COVID has grown into a mission to strengthen local food communities and provide families across the Southeast with nutrient-dense, transparently raised meat. Mike also runs Direct Farm Marketing, a consulting business helping farms and ranches scale direct-to-consumer sales.
P&K Family Farms is a regenerative family farm in Clermont, Georgia producing pastured chicken, grass-finished beef, and pastured pork with daily rotation, corn-free and soy-free feed, and complete transparency in every practice. We deliver throughout Georgia and ship across the Southeast.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much freezer space do I need for a beef share?
A quarter beef share fits in about 4 cubic feet of freezer space — roughly one shelf of a standard chest freezer. A half needs about 8 cubic feet, and a whole needs a dedicated chest freezer of 15+ cubic feet. We recommend having your freezer space ready before delivery.
How long does frozen beef last?
Properly frozen grass-finished beef stays good for 12 months or more. Vacuum-sealed packaging — which is how we package all our shares — extends shelf life and prevents freezer burn. Most families eat through a quarter in 4-6 months and a half in 6-12 months.
What's the difference between your ground beef and store-bought?
Our ground beef is single-animal-sourced from a 100% grass-finished cow. Store-bought ground beef is typically a blend of trim from dozens of conventionally raised animals. The fat profile is different — our beef has higher Omega-3s, more CLA, and a better fatty acid ratio. You can taste the difference.
I've never cooked a beef shank. Where do I start?
Shanks are one of the easiest cuts to cook — they just take time. Brown them in a Dutch oven, add liquid (stock, wine, or water), cover, and braise at 325°F for 3-4 hours until the meat falls off the bone. The result is incredibly tender, flavorful meat and a rich, collagen-heavy broth. They're also the base of real bone broth and meat stock.
Is buying a beef share actually cheaper than buying from a store?
When you break down the per-pound cost across all cuts, a beef share from P&K Family Farms is significantly less expensive than buying comparable grass-finished cuts at retail. You're getting ribeyes, filets, NY strips, and specialty cuts at the same per-pound price as the ground beef — which is where the real value lives.
Where can I buy a beef share in Georgia?
P&K Family Farms offers quarter, half, and whole beef shares from 100% grass-fed, grass-finished cattle. We're based in Clermont, Georgia and serve customers throughout the Southeast. View available shares here.
