The Popular Meat You Should Avoid Buying (Your Tastebuds And Wallet Will Thank You)

While cooking meat is usually a very fulfilling and enjoyable endeavor, not knowing exactly which meat you should buy can be incredibly annoying. It's always recommended that you ask your butcher for help when you're unsure of the best cut to purchase, but if and when they are unavailable, one general rule of thumb to follow is that you should never buy pre-marinated meats from the store. This is ultimately because these products are simultaneously overpriced and ineffective, especially compared to what you can do at home to make your meat as tasty as possible.

Christine Pittman, the founder and CEO at Cookthestory, gave us some insight into why pre-marinated meats should be avoided, starting with how the marinade itself can impact the meat. "When you're marinating something, especially when it has salt in it, which is usually what's happening with store-bought pre-marinated meats, the salt causes the meat to absorb liquid and then sometimes let it back out and reabsorb it," Pittman explained. However, the marinade often includes a lot of water to make the meat appear juicier than it is during the absorption phase. " ... That's really what you're paying for, the water," Pittman reminded, "because you're paying for the weight of the meat, which includes that water mixture." This ties into the high prices pre-marinated meats typically have.

While these two glaring issues with pre-marinated meats don't always result in a bad product (Trader Joe's generally has a pretty good selection of pre-marinated meats, for example), consumers are especially advised to avoid them due to how easy it is to mask flaws with the marinade. "When you've got marinade on there, you have no way of knowing what is going on with that meat," Christine Pittman warned. "You don't know how fresh it was when it was cut, or if you're at a meat counter, how long it's been sitting in the marinade." So, while most pre-marinated packages of meat you come across won't be outright dangerous to consume, clear indications of quality issues — such as mild discoloration or sliminess — are practically impossible to detect by the naked eye.

This questionable quality — alongside the products' frequent inconsistencies and high prices — leads many to believe it's better off skipping pre-marinated meats entirely. In fact, while using herbs, spices, and sauces to make your own meat marinades can prove to be incredibly beneficial in the long run, even the simplest meat seasoning methods are preferable to pre-packaged marinated meats. "I would even say that getting fresh, unmarinated meat and seasoning it with some salt and pepper and cooking it is going to be better," Pittman added.