I expected a fair amount of waste, but at least 50+% of it was fat and gristle. Once I cooked the meat that was left, I'd say I ended up with 30% of what I started with. It was delicious but too expensive for what I got and too much work cutting all that tough fat and gristle off.

If you are unfamiliar with cheeks, whether beef or pork, you may not like this but it looks like there is lots of waste. In fact, you cook the "connective tissue" as well as the meat, trimming off the fat only. I had very little waste because I have eaten cheeks my whole life and know what to cook and what to pitch. The meat is very rich and full of flavor. I put it in a dutch oven, browned it thoroughly, added broth (I had chicken), 2c dry red wine, onions, potatoes, carrots, thyme, bay leaves and put it in the oven for 6-8 hours on 275F. They were so tender, I cut them with a spoon. Immediately after cooking, I emailed all my family to check their local Sam's Club for them. Next time I will buy a case.

The first 2 beef cheeks I pulled from the package looked like their photo. Clean. No skin. No fat. Trimmed great! Beautiful color. From that point on, the remaining 6.5 pounds were awful. Half the package contained fat, gristle and skin. Useless! I ended up with maybe 3 pounds of edible meat. What a lying scam!!!!!!

The meat is packed with no trimming whatsoever. You only get 30-40% of actual beef after cleaning it the rest is unusable fat and membrane. A few years ago i could find clean cheek beef in these packs where 80-90% was actual meat, no more i suppose. i recommend you start looking to other vendors for quality beef cheek.

I have gotten these before and the quality of the meat was fine and tasted/smelled great, but this time I opened the package and they had a weird smell. Not a rancid smell, but like a definite cow smell. I tried to cook it out of the meat, but it didn’t help. That weird smell was still there. I read it might be due to the cryovac? Anyway, kind of a waste this time around but I will try again.

Purchased 3 packages at approx $33 each package. Majority (more than 2/3 of each package) was fat. Amount of actual meat was less than the size of one of the packages after all of the fat pieces were removed. This is the second instance of this occuring. About 2 years ago, it was the other way around which is why I had hoped the last time it was an anomaly, but I was wrong as it appears (based on other recent reviews) it's now the norm. Almost seems like the company that packages it (Sam's club doesn't cut and package it) tries to scam the Sam's club custormer on purpose.

There is a lot of scraggly bits that need to be trimmed off. That isn't waste!!! I took the beef cheeks, seasoned them and put them on the smoker. I removed as much of the sinew that I could, then seasoned up the trimmed pieces and put them on the smoker too. After about four hours on the smoker, I took all of it (beef cheeks and trimmings) and put them in two half pans (one for the beef cheeks and one for the trimmings). I braised them with onions, sliced garlic and beef stock. After another four hours in the oven, I took them out. The cheeks were sliced and the trimmings were shredded. I ended up with more barbacoa (by weight) than what the beef cheeks weighed. There is a lot more meat in those trimmings than what you would think. You still will have some sinew to remove after the braising of the trimmings. The rest makes a wonderful barbacoa. When you do it the way I did, there isn't much waste. Even as a percentage of what you start with and what you end up with, you trim off more fat and silver skin off a brisket than what you lose from the beef cheeks. You just have to know the cut of meat you are working with and what to do with what you trim away. I plan on buying another pack (or two) by this weekend.

I pay for 4 pounds of meet but I took out one pound and half of fat Not a good deal at all

Was absolutely the worst meat ever... 90 percent fat

Meat was good, but there was to much skin I had to clean off.