When it comes to steaks there are few cuts that can rival a ribeye for the great combination of taste and texture. For quite a while it has been my favorite cut of beef and there are few steaks that bring a great combination of marbling, beefy flavor, and tender texture like the ribeye.
For quite a while now I have wanted to test ribeyes from a few different online sources to see if any of them stand out above the others. Yeah, ordering a steak online is more expensive than just going to the grocery store but the quality is also much, much better. Take a bite of any of these steaks I tested and you will instantly know you are eating a higher quality of beef.
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Let’s take a quick look at the 4 condenders:
Snake River Farms
Snake River Farms Cowboy Prime Bone In Ribeye – On their site Snake River says these steaks are about 2 lbs but this monster was 2 lbs 14 3/8 ozs and was 3 inches thick. They cost $69 which is $1.48 per oz.
Snake River Farms is based in Idaho and has ranches in Washington State. They control every step of the lifecycle of the steak from ranching, feeding, and processing. They are known for their American Wagyu beef and for having some of the best briskets you can get but they also have a full selection of prime beef and dry aged beef.
Porter Road
Porter Road Bone In Ribeye – This was the smallest of the 4 coming in a 1 lb 3 ozs. These cost $27 each which is $1.42 per oz so they were the least expensive of the bunch too. It was about 1 1/2 inches thick.
Porter Road is based out of Tennessee and works with local ranches and farms that pasture raise cattle finish on vegetarian, non-GMO feed. They harvest and butcher at their own facilities and also have a great selection of butchers cuts and cuts you won’t find in most meat cases.
Crowd Cow Gebbers Ranch
Gebbers Ranch Bone In Ribeye from Crowd Cow – This ribeye weighed in a just over 2 lbs and was 2 inches thick. The one I ordered was $60 which worked out to $1.88 per oz.
Crowd Cow is a marketplace for small farms around the country to bring their products to customers everywhere. This particular cut was from Gebbers Ranch which is a 5th generation cattle farm located in Brewster, WA. They raise 100% pure Black Angus cattle and they spend most of their lives roaming the pastures and are finished with corn raised on site as well as fruit and vegetables from their produce farm.
Market House
Market House Frenched Bone In Ribeye – The Market House steak weight in at 1 lb 6 5/8 oz and was an inch and a half thick. At $45 it worked out to $2 per oz so it was the most expensive of the bunch.
Market House is based in Minnesota and works to bring high quality meat and seafood to tables around the country. Their bacon is some of the best bacon I have ever purchased.
As you can see all 4 of these steaks had some great marbling and nice, big pieces of ribeye cap on them. Overall I was very impressed with appearance of these steaks.
This picture will give you an idea of how thick some of these steaks were. 3 inches might not sound like much but when you are talking about a steak that is a monster.
To test these I wanted to make sure they were all seasoned the same and cooked to the same temperature. I salted them and put them in the fridge overnight to dry brine and then I reverse seared them.
Reverse Searing 101: Cook the steaks at a relatively low temperature (225-250 degree grill in this case) until they hit about 115-120 degrees and then sear them over the hottest coals I can get to give them a nice crust and color. The end result is a perfect medium rare steak with wire to wire pink in the middle and very little grey around the edges.
Since the Snake River Farms steak was the thickest I started that one first followed by the Gebbers Ranch steak and then the ones from Porter Road and Market House. All in all it took about 2 hours to get the huge Snake River steak up to temp. By some great stroke of luck I was able to get them all to the right temperature within 5 minutes of each other. Then it was time to sear. I like to sear 30 seconds on one side, flip and sear another 30 seconds, and then repeat. So about a minute per side total. And I also spin my grates between each flip to get the steaks on a “cool” part of the grate and avoid any burnt grill marks.
And now was time to taste. I had a couple friends over to test them with my wife and I. 7 1/2 pounds of bone in ribeye for 4 adults and 3 young children. Seems about right.
I sliced all the steaks up, numbered them, and then we ate. And ate. And ate. All 4 steaks were delicious but they each had their own unique flavor profile and texture. Now, keep in mind that if I served you any one of these 4 steaks on their own you would marvel at how good it was so there are no real losers here. It is like comparing a 98/100 steak to a 99/100 steak.
The Snake River Farms steak probably had the cleanest, most classic flavor of the bunch as well as the silkiest texture. Porter Road brought a bolder, beefier flavor and was probably the best tasting fat of the bunch. The Gebbers Ranch steak had the gamiest flavor, especially in the fat, and my friend thought it tasted the best of the bunch. And Market House was the most nondescript but that isn’t a bad thing. It was an excellent tasting steak but just wasn’t quite as unique as the rest.
It was really hard to determine which ribeye was best since the best was whatever I had just tasted. I had bites of each of these that was among the best bites of ribeye I have ever eaten. They were cooked almost perfectly and the quality of the beef really shone through. In some ways it is like trying to pick my favorite child. But of course you want a winner.
Threaten to take away all my steak and I would probably pick the Porter Road steak as my favorite with Snake River a very, very close second. Gebbers would be third and Market House would come in fourth. If I do this same test tomorrow though the results could be very different. And some of the others that tasted with me would order them differently as well.
The biggest takeaway for me is the quality of beef that is available online is vastly superior to what you can find at your local supermarket or warehouse club. When you compare cattle that are raised on pastures by smaller ranchers who care about putting out a great product to standard commodity beef you will notice a huge difference in quality.
Think of it like beer or coffee. There is definitely a market for Budweiser and Folgers but if you really want to experience something higher quality you need to seek out smaller microbrews or coffee roasters to get the full picture of what those products can be. Meat is the same. Smaller ranchers take more care in raising and feeding their cattle, are more humane in their treatment of the cattle, and have better harvesting and butchering practices. The end result is a much more flavorful steak. Give any 4 of these merchants a try and explore how good a steak can be. If you want to read more about this I would recommend the book Craft Beef by the guys who started Crowd Cow.
Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue fame also recently released a book talking all about steak that covers a lot of that and also gives great info on different cuts of beef and different ways to cook them.
And for those of you interested here is the aftermath:
