The Best Meat Subscription Boxes for Carnivores

I love to barbecue. I am in charge of several of WIRED's grill guides, which means no shortage of barbecue crosses my plate. I also used to run a restaurant and am comfortable making just about anything on a grill. But there's one thing I rarely make: brisket. It just takes too long. I love it, but I dislike making it. Enter the Salt Lick BBQ.

Unlike the rest of these services, Salt Lick ships cooked meat, including brisket. And not just any brisket—one of the best I've ever had, certainly the best that's ever graced my grill, even if it was just on there to reheat. I know it sounds like a Mitch Hedberg bit, FedExing some brisket to your door, but it works. I ordered the Family Style Dinner for July 4 and everything arrived on time, nice, cold, and ready to go. I followed the reheating instructions the next day and had a fabulous Independence Day feast. Nothing could be easier. If you don't need a full family-style feast, you can get a smoked beef brisket for $108 (3.5 to 4.5 pounds, feeds six).

My mouth waters and my stomach grumbles when I think about this box. The tester arrived with two New York strip steaks. We heated two cast iron pans at 700 degrees Fahrenheit in a pizza oven, took them out, put the steaks in the pan to sear, then finished them in the oven for a few minutes and let butter melt on top while they rested. I am crippled by the memory of how juicy, tender and flavorful these steaks were. They were finely marbled and had just the right amount of fat on the edges to add crispness and umami, without being slimy or greasy. My family ate it all right off the cutting board after it rested. We didn't even make it to the plates on the table.

Each box comes with premium, aged, hand-trimmed choice cuts like ribeye, filet mignon, or even lobster tails, and you can select three-, six-, or 12-month subscription plans. This comes at a price—at $190 for three months, even the cheapest subscription plan is much more expensive, for much less meat, than any of our other boxes. But if you're looking for a gift for a very special person who loves to grill, they will remember this and think of you forever. I know I'm still thinking about it. —Adrienne So

Pat LaFrieda will be a familiar name to readers in the New York area. The butcher made its name in the 1970s, supplying beef to some of New York's finest restaurants and famously, the blend for Shake Shack's burgers. There's no subscription here, but one thing different from most of the services in this guide is that LaFrieda ships out the beef refrigerated, but never frozen. Does that make a difference? Well, it's hard to say, but I can say that the hanger steaks I sampled were hands down the best steaks I've tried for this guide. The skirt steak was similarly excellent, as was the 30-day dry-aged prime ribeye.

All the meats are delivered fresh and kept cool for shipping (overnight UPS delivery) with ice packs. Aside from the potential flavor improvements, it means these are ready to cook immediately. You'll want to make sure your meat is delivered at a time when someone will be around to get it; I think it'd probably last an afternoon in the box if ambient temps aren't too bad, but this meat is too good to risk it.

I subscribed to this box for my dad as a Christmas present two years ago, until he confessed that he could not eat this much salmon and started sneaking it back into my freezer. Sitka Seafood Market is based in Sitka, Alaska. The company is transparent about its sourcing and lists the local seafood processors. It also donates 1 percent of its revenue every year back to fishery conservation and local habitat preservation. All the fish is flash-frozen within three to five days of being caught, which makes it exceptionally fresh.

There are three different options. You can choose a Salmon Box for $129, which is about 4.5 pounds of salmon in individual 6- to 12-ounce portions. You can also pick a Premium Seafood Box for $159, or a Build Your Own Box starting at $10/month. You can also select if you would like your box delivered monthly or every other month, and check what fish you're getting each month in your plan's Projected Harvest. The salmon box gets two varieties each month; I tried the sockeye and the coho. Both were fresh and excellent, and the packaging was sturdy and attractive enough to work as a gift. —Adrienne So

Crowd Cow isn't exclusively grass-fed beef, but it's one of the better sources I've found for grass-fed, grass-finished beef (see above for an explainer of what those terms mean). There's a good selection of other meats as well, from Wagyu and free-range organic chicken to Kurobuta pork (a highly marbled pork) and wild-caught seafood like salmon and even Chilean sea bass. You can subscribe or order a one-time box if you'd like to test the waters. Subscriptions can be every four weeks, six weeks, or eight weeks.

I tested the curated box, the Best of Crowd Cow, which featured an assortment of meat, including chicken, beef, and salmon, all of which were excellent. There are also plenty of cut to choose from, everything from flat iron to top sirloin. Crowd Cow also offers recipes to go with your order, which is a nice touch. I did not test this, but I also like that Crowd Cow offers wild game meat.

As a former chef, one of the joys of cooking for me is going to the market, seeing what's fresh, and then doing something fun with it in the kitchen. These days I am fortunate to live in a rural community with access to fresh pastured meat and veggies of all kinds, but trips to the local fishmonger? Not so much. The local specialty is whitefish and lake trout, but we're a good ways from the sea. That's why the subscription boxes from Wild Alaskan Company caught my eye. Wild Alaskan Company offers wild-caught seafood from Alaska and Pacific Northwest waters. The box I tested, the Wild Combo Box, was a generous mix of Pacific rockfish, coho salmon, sockeye salmon, Pacific halibut, and Pacific cod, all in 6-ounce portions (12 in total).

The fillets were all delicious, without the fishiness that sometimes comes with frozen fish (yes, even flash-frozen fish). If I had a criticism it would be that the fillets were all on the thin side. If you wanted to grill the salmon, for instance, a thicker fillet might be nice. That said, since I was sautéing, the thinner fillets were fine.

The packaging is all nicely biodegradable, shipped with dry ice in a cardboard box. My testing was done in winter in Wisconsin, so I have no way to test how long the dry ice would last in the heat, but based on the amount used, and my experience with other boxes, I would not worry about a box sitting out on the porch for a day in summer. The company is also very responsive about changing or pausing your order if you're headed out of town.

Rampaging bird flu has spiked the price of eggs, but your chicken wings are safe for now—chickens raised for meat are generally far younger, and on different farms. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for an alternative to grocery store chicken, Pasturebird is a direct-to-consumer chicken farm where all the chickens are GMO- and antibiotic-free and are really raised on, yes, pasture, eating bugs and the like. (You can even tour the farm if you like!)

This transparency is unique, and also the prices—verily, a $28 whole chicken made my eyebrows fly right off my head. (A similar-sized one at my local grocery is $6.) Still, I was happy with what we got. We roasted a whole chicken, air-fried drumsticks and wings, and sautéed boneless, skinless breasts. The difference was palpable—while the pieces themselves are smaller, they’re noticeably heftier compared to chicken from Kroger, and the grain of the meat is much more dense. A 5-year-old tester even commented that these were the best chicken thighs he’d had. A build-your-own subscription box gives you a 10 percent discount. If chicken is the only meat your kids will eat, it’s definitely worth a look. —Adrienne So

Like Butcher Box, our top pick, Good Chop is notable for its variety—you can get everything from high-end seafood to breaded wings to the namesake chops. Good Chop's medium plan is $20 less than ButcherBox's customized-box option at $149, and offers roughly the same selection. The amount of meat you get is affected by what you order; the medium box should work out to around 10 pounds of meat in most cases. (If you really optimize for max weight by picking roasts and the like, you can get 14 pounds out of it.) Either way it was enough to feed my family of five for three nights, which, while not exactly cheap, is on par with the rest of these meat delivery boxes.

I loved the steelhead trout I ordered, and likewise enjoyed the chorizo. The wings were good as well, though not all that different from what's available at your local grocery store for far less money.

Good Chop says it sources meat and seafood from domestic family farms and independent ranchers, though there isn't much information on what exactly that means beyond that the grass-fed, grass-finished meat comes from “family farmers in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.”