These New Hampshire Grocery Stores Have the Highest Quality Meat Departments

Warm weather is upon us so it's grill season, baby! It's time to get outside and grill up copious amounts of meat; lots and lots of meat. If you are in charge of grocery shopping in your house, you want to make sure you are providing your family with the highest quality food and that includes high quality meat. We don't want any preservatives or funky stuff going on in our meat. Just the good stuff!

A publication called chowhound.com did a piece recently on the top 12 grocery chains with the highest quality meat departments. While Publix and Wegmans and few others on the list are not accessible to Granite Staters, I was pleased to see that several stores that we have here in New Hampshire are on the list!

Let's review, shall we?

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BJ's Wholesale

BJ's has lots of locations in New Hampshire including Seabrook, Portsmouth, Salem, West Lebanon, Nashua, Manchester, and Tilton. BJ's offers a wide selection of meat including grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, and antibiotic-free products. A lot of the company's offerings is from their private label, Wellsley Farms, and overall, the steaks from the store get rave reviews online (the ribeyes get a lot of love in particular)

Costco

At the time of publishing this article, we only have Costco location in New Hampshire and it's in Nashua. But if it's not too far for you or you don't mind a drive, Cosco's rotisserie chickens are cheap in price but rich in flavor. Also, the one and only Julia Child preferred Costco's meat department so if that is not a worthy endorsement, I'm not sure what is.

Whole Foods

There are four Whole Foods locations in New Hampshire; one in Portsmouth, two in Nashua and one in Bedford. Whole Foods isn't the most accessible grocery store for most working Americans, at least on a regular basis, because of it's exorbitant prices. But if high quality meat is priority for you and for your family, it might be worth just doing your meat shopping there. Even after they were acquired by Amazon,  the meat continues to be antibiotic-free with a traceable supply chain. The company also now has programs to train people to be butchers rather than just employees who happen to cut meat which makes the shopping experience better because the people behind the meat counter are really educated in what they are selling you.

Sam's Club/Walmart

There are a TON of Walmart locations throughout the state, too many to name. I am a fan of the Walmart supercenter in Portsmouth, you can find absolutely everything there including a nail salon and yes, high quality meats. Walmart shoppers report high marks for meat quality. Ribeye, tomahawk, and cowboy steaks have been singled out as great, and plenty of online comments say Walmart has been consistently good for quality meat.

Aldi

Aldi is becoming far more popular in New Hampshire with locations in Keene, Concord, Plaistow, Dover, Portsmouth, Derry, Nashua, Manchester, Salem and Newington. Shoppers report excellent reviews for Aldi's beef. The company marks down meat products as the use-by date approaches, with a massive 50% price cut closer to the date. Lots of customers take advantage of this. However reviews seem to not speak highly of the chicken referring to it as "woody" in texture.

I hope this list was helpful as you map out your meat destinations this Summer. Happy grill season, my friend!