Which Cut Should You Buy First?
The temptation is to buy the most expensive thing. The better first order is the one where you already know what good looks like.
People usually start with the most expensive steak on the page, cook it a way they have never cooked before, and then have no idea whether the result says anything about the beef. Start somewhere more useful.
Start with what you cook most
If your household eats ground beef three nights a week, buy ground beef. It is the least glamorous recommendation on this page and the most honest one. You will cook it the way you always do, and the comparison against what you usually buy will be immediate and fair.
“Or, you know, the other side of it is it's the lower quality meat is made cheaper because you're giving up something. You're giving up the authenticity and the quality and the process.”
Gray Shipley
If you want to try a steak
Buy chuck eye rather than ribeye for a first order. It sits right next to the ribeye on the animal, it eats remarkably close to it, and it costs less. If you mistime it, you have learned something cheaply. Our cut map shows how close the two really are.
What not to start with
- A whole tenderloin. Expensive, very lean, and unforgiving of a minute either way.
- A brisket. A superb cut and a ten-hour commitment with a lot of ways to go wrong.
- A half share. About 175 lbs is a great deal and a terrible first purchase from anyone you have not bought from before.
“Because it's tough for smaller farmers to, you know, have something available, 200 pounds ready to go. And we don't know whether you're coming or not. Because if you're not coming, then we still have to find a home for it. And if you are, we have to have it ready.”
Gray Shipley
Then decide about dry-aging
Once you know you like the beef, the next question is whether you can taste the aging. Buy one of each of the same cut and cook them the same night. We set that out in Signature or Proper Meats.
“Yeah, no shortcuts just means, you know, it's a mindset, the mindset of looking for a shortcut. You know, it doesn't mean that we don't look for improvement. It doesn't mean we don't look for ways to do things better.”
Gray Shipley
Close to ribeye, lower price, forgiving.
View Product
You already know how you cook this.
View Product- Freezing and Food Safety, USDA FSIS
- Grades and Standards: Beef, USDA AMS
Food-safety temperatures and storage times on this page are cited to the agencies above rather than to us.
Written at Shipley Farms in Vilas, North Carolina: a family cattle farm raising and dry-aging beef in the Appalachian Mountains, now in its fifth generation. No shortcuts since 1872.
Every quote on this page is Gray Shipley talking, the man who runs this farm. We sat down with him, turned on a recorder, and kept his own words. Hesitations are trimmed so they read on the page. Nothing else is added or reworded, except where Gray revised his own words in review.
Nobody knows this beef better than we do. On food safety we leave it to USDA FSIS, and we have linked their pages above. Reviewed 3 October 2026.
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