I am always up for trying meat from new merchants. Porter Road first came on my radar last year so I placed an order just to see what it was all about.
Let’s just start this off simple and I will give you 6 things I really like about Porter Road:
- Pasture raised meat from sustainable farms
- The beef is dry aged
- Free shipping
- Most meat ships fresh, not frozen
- Generally costs less than other online merchants
- Excellent quality
I will elaborate a bit more on those as I go through this review but just wanted to give you some quick bullet points before I get into the details.
Disclosure: This post is monetized with affiliate links. If you buy something through them I earn a commission which helps support this site and lets me buy more meat so I can write about it.
Who is Porter Road?
Porter Road is a butcher out of Nashville that started selling online in 2017. They source their meat from local farms and process the meat in their Kentucky facility. I am a huge fan of their process since they control the meat from the farm to the slaughterhouse to the butchering process.
The farms they work with in Kentucky and Tennessee pasture raise their livestock and are raised on non-GMO vegetarian feed. The cattle aren’t “grass fed” but I don’t really care about that. Grain isn’t bad for cattle. The reason most people look for “grass fed” is they usually just want to avoid feedlot beef. Porter Road beef is 100% pasture raised so the animals spend most of their lives eating grass but are also fed a custom grain blend to finish the beef.
Raising cattle this way has numerous benefits to the well-being of the animals, the positive environmental impact these farms have, and most importantly for me the taste of the meat. You get the added richness and flavor of “grass fed” beef but also get the extra marbling and size of standard cattle.
Tell me about the meat
Last fall I placed two orders (one in September and one in November) to try some of what Porter Road has to offer. Between the two orders I got some ribeyes, a pork butt, a whole chicken, some tri-tip, bacon, a picanha, and some ground beef. I also just placed another order recently for more ribeyes and tri-tip.
I will go fairly in depth to 3 of those cuts and then mention the others as well:
Boneless Ribeyes
I am a huge ribeye fan and it is easily my go-to steak. No other cut of beef has the same combination of flavor, marbling, and texture. I have tasted ribeyes from a few different online merchants as well as local butchers, grocery stores, and Costco. And I have to say this without hesitation: These were the best ribeyes I have eaten in a long time.
That isn’t to say these are the best ribeyes ever. What I am saying is the three I got were amazing, especially the one in the middle in the picture above. The marbling on that steak is very impressive and it was cut from the chuck end of the rib primal so it had a big piece of spinalis muscle (in the pic it is the bottom of the steak).
I salted these steaks and reverse seared them on my Weber kettle. All three of these steaks were just over a pound so they were the perfect size for a nice dinner.
Here is what they looked like when they came off the grill. When you get a good ribeye it should almost fall apart like the middle one in the pic above. All the different muscles have started to separate and while it might look a bit of a mess it is delicious. They also got a nice sear on them which adds a great layer of flavor and texture.
And of course a pic of the inside of the steak to finish it all off. The flavor of these steaks was excellent. It has a much more complex, beefier flavor than that standard commercial beef you get at the grocery store. The texture of these ribeyes was also great and they were very moist and succulent due to the marbling.
Porter Road sells their boneless ribeyes for $24 for a 15-17 oz steak. Yeah, that is considerably more than you will spend at the grocery store. Ribeyes will usually run $8-12 per pound at the local market so you are paying a premium for the quality of the meat. If you are a coffee drinker think of a standard cup of coffee vs. a cup from an artisan roaster. Or if you are a beer guy think of it like a Budweiser vs. a nice microbrew. Yeah, you pay more but you can definitely tell the difference in quality.
Pork Butt
One thing I instantly noticed about this pork butt was the color. Compare this to a commodity pork butt and you will see a definite difference. This one is much darker and richer looking.
I smoked this pork butt again on my Weber Kettle. Most pork butts I make get smoked at 225 but I wanted to try a bit higher heat so I ran this one at 275 until the internal temperature was right around 200 degrees. The higher heat resulted in an awesome bark on the outside of the pork butt.
This pork butt was definitely moist enough but the biggest difference between this one and most that I have cooked was the flavor. The pork butt from Porter Road had a much richer flavor than most standard pork butts. A lot of that gets covered up by the smoke and seasonings but there is a definite difference and you can tell it is a much higher quality product.
An 8-10 pound pork butt from Porter road will cost you $56 (you can also get a half butt for $32) so about $5-6 per pound. At the grocery store you will spend $2-4 per pound depending on where you live and what is on sale any given time. Again, you are looking at about twice the price but the quality easily justifies the extra cost here.
Tri-Tip
I love tri-tip. It is an awesome cut of beef that has a great flavor and texture. It takes well to a number of different seasonings, rubs, and marinades or it is great with just some salt and pepper. But unless you are on the West Coast it can be tough to find. When I lived in Florida I would rarely see it at the grocery store meat case and I have heard from many others throughout the country that they have trouble finding it.
The tri-tip from Porter Road was an awesome cut. Overall the flavor and texture was as good as any I have ever had. And the best part about it? Porter Road sells their tri-tip for only $31. If you can find tri-tip locally it will probably be $7-8 per pound unless you can find it on sale. At Porter Road it works out to just over $12 per pound. This is an awesome option for those that can’t tri-tip locally.
To cook the tri-tip I have found the reverse sear is the best way to go. Cook it at a fairly low temperature (225-250) until it hits 115-120 degrees internal. Then load up the hot coals and sear the heck out of the tri-tip.
One thing to keep in mind is some cuts like tri-tip aren’t always in stock. Porter Road butchers every morning so they don’t have dozens of these sitting in a freezer somewhere. Usually I see about 6 of them available every day, usually around 10 AM Eastern. So if they aren’t in stock when you look check back the next day.
Overall I was very impressed with most of the cuts I got from Porter Road. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for some quality meat.
Like I mentioned earlier one thing that separates Porter Road from other online merchants is they dry age their beef. It is only for 14 days so you don’t get that real funky 30 or 60 day dry age flavor but those 14 days do make a difference in the overall texture and quality of the meat.
Also Porter Road ships most of their cuts of beef fresh, not frozen. Some of the cuts will be frozen but most of the steaks and other smaller cuts will come well packed, cold, but not frozen. Some people aren’t a fan of frozen meat so this is a great option.
Compared to most other merchants Porter Road is less expensive for most cuts. For example, I have seen tri-tips for $40-60 on other sites but Porter Road has them for only $31. The average cost per ounce of ribeyes on many other sites is $3-4 but at Porter Road it is only about $1.50. So while their prices will be more than you would spend at the grocery store they are less expensive than most other online merchants but the quality is still there.
Another great thing I love about Porter Road is they ship free on orders over $100 and most weeks they will throw in something extra on orders over $75. This week they are throwing in a pound of ground beef ($9 value) and other weeks I have seen bacon, chili ground beef, sirloins, and some other items.
As far as the other cuts I ordered: The bacon was better than grocery store bacon but not the best I have had, the ground beef was very good, the picanha was excellent, and the chicken was so-so. Maybe I just got a mediocre chicken and others would be better? Again, it was still better than grocery store chicken but not as good as other pasture raised chickens I have had.
Overall I am a big fan of Porter Road and I wouldn’t hesitate to order from them again (and I just did again today). The combination of very high quality, price, sustainable farm practices, and free shipping makes Porter Road a great option for anyone looking for some great tasting meat. It will be much better than anything you will find at the grocery store.
Aside from purchasing individual cuts Porter Road also offers some curated boxes and even subscription boxes. Porter Road offers beef, pork, chicken, and lamb as well. Check them out and get your order in today.
UPDATE: Since writing this post I have ordered from Porter Road a number of times and every time I have been very, very please with the quality of meat I have received.
A few weeks back I did a bone in ribeye taste test featuring Porter Road and three other online meat sources and Porter Road had the best tasting ribeye. I also did a side by side comparison of burgers made from their ground beef to the ground beef from Snake River Farms and Porter Road once again came out on top.
I also tried the hanger steak from Porter Road (featured above) as well as a denver steak and both of those were delicious. Those cuts are very hard to find but Porter Road does carry them.
All in all if you are a meat lover I would highly recommend you buy some meat from Porter Road. The quality is hard to match and the prices and service are excellent as well. Order some meat from Porter Road and I am sure you will understand why I recommend them and continue to order from them. And to sweeten the deal use code MEATLOVER and save $15 on your first order over $100.
