Omaha Steaks

For quite awhile now, we’ve been sending my Grandma and Great Aunt Omaha Steaks as a Christmas gift.  They’re on a very limited income, and this is an easy way to make them feel spoiled. A few years ago, I found out that my Great Aunt doesn’t really LIKE steak much, so now we mostly pick the seafood items, with a few steaks thrown in for Grandma, who DOES like steak, though she likes it so well done it probably tastes like a hockey puck. No matter.

This year when I was planning my gift giving, I decided to send some Omaha Steaks to my brother, Richard, and his wife, in Alaska. He pays for half of the gift to Grandma, and I thought they might like to know what they’ve been giving all these years. When I told Ted that, he said, ‘maybe we should try them, too.” I thought about it, but didn’t want to spend that much money on frozen meat when we have a pretty darned good butcher down the road. But then I received a letter in the mail from Omaha Steaks, that while I had paid a few dollars extra to have my gift delivered in the ‘prime holiday’ time frame, it had in fact been delivered early, outside of that time frame. To apologize to me, they were giving me $20 off my next order. So I waited for their next ‘free shipping’ sale (I get emails from them almost every day, telling me what great deal is going on now), and ordered some steaks.

Our order was 4 top sirloin, 4 bacon wrapped top sirloin, 6 stuffed baked potatoes, 6 hamburgers, and 6 crab and scallop stuffed filet of soul. The first dinner I made was top sirloin and baked potatoes. It was OK, but not great. I think that may have been my fault, as I salted the steaks early and let them sit for a few hours before cooking them. I do that with chicken, and it makes the chicken very juicy and flavorful. I later read in the booklet to season your beef right before cooking. So the salt probably drew all of the juicy yumminess out of the steaks. Bummer. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, I’ve never done it with steaks before. And I won’t do it again, either. Even then we could tell that it was good quality meat. Not better than my local butcher, but clearly better than your average ‘case ready’ value pack at the grocery store. The baked potatoes were good, but again, not better than Ted’s aunt’s recipe for twice baked potatoes, which is really yummy. For ease of cooking, though, they got a thumbs up. Put them in the oven, still frozen, at 350, and take them out 30 or 40 minutes later. Easy.

Our second meal was the fish, which was quite good. The fish itself was very mild, and perhaps could have used some salt or lemon pepper, but the filling was delicious, and eaten together, it was a winner.

Third, we tried the hamburgers. Again, better than the case ready stuff at the grocery store, but perhaps not any better than the burgers I get at the butcher. (I like a mix of ground sirloin and ground chuck…yummy.)

Lastly, we tried the bacon wrapped steaks. Ted’s not a fan of bacon, so I peeled it off of his steak before cooking. This time, I didn’t season them ahead of time. Instead of using my grill pan, I just pan fried them with a little bit of olive oil and a touch of butter. I made a delicious pan sauce by deglazing the pan with a bit of red wine, then adding a spoonful of Williams-Sonoma Demi-Glace and a tiny bit more butter. This time the meal was a winner. I’m not sure if it was the cooking technique, the fact that I didn’t season it too early, or the yummy sauce.

Overall, I’d give them two thumbs up, but not enthusiastically up. I don’t think I would order from Omaha Steaks again. The steaks were indeed very good quality meat, and it’s quite convenient to have them in my freezer, but it’s expensive (about $20 a pound for top sirloin, and that’s the sale price), and not any better quality than what I could buy at my local butcher for about 25% less. If, however, you don’t have access to really good quality meat, I would suggest watching for a good sale with no-shipping costs, and giving them a try.