BEST OVERALL
Porter Road
- Ships fresh
- Whole animal butcher
- Often sold out
BEST HIGH GRADE
Snake River
- Above USDA grades
- Farm to table
- Often sold out
BEST SUBSCRIPTION
Butcher Box
- Great range
- Ships free
- Only subscriptions
BEST BUILD A BOX
Farm Foods
- Great range
- Value for money
- Minimum order
BEST FOR GRILLING
Perdue Farms
- Very wide selection
- Shop by value
- Grilling focused
BEST READY TO EAT
Southside Market
- Delicious
- Reasonable prices
- Not free shipping
There’s a lot of companies offering meat subscription boxes these days. And, most are great quality. But, if you’re barbecuing, you’ll need one that offers the right kind of cuts for smoking.
Instead of you having to sift through them all, we’ve rounded up a list of the best places to order meat online for smoking and barbecue.
Here you’ll find fresh and frozen deliveries of all sorts of meats and seafoods including Wagyu brisket, Kurobuta pork and wild caught salmon. Most are raised free from anti-biotics and hormones. Some are farm to table.
There’s even some already cooked options for quick mid-week bbq dinners too.
If you’re looking for predominately steak options, this isn’t the right review. But, you’ll find our favorite mail order steaks right here.
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How We Tested the Best Places to Order Meat Online
If you’re new to Burning Brisket and haven’t read about us, we spend half of our time cooking barbecue for reviews while the other half is spent operating a boutique cattle ranch with our young kids.
And, as much as we love the process of cooking, we understand that quality barbecue starts with quality meat. There’s absolutely no substitute for a well-raised animal.
So, in this exciting to us review, we’ve put our knowledge of quality meat and the ranching process together to find the best places to order meat online. And, best doesn’t just mean the most expensive, we took these factors into consideration when rounding up our favorites:
Good butchering can make a huge difference to how well a smoked brisket, rack of ribs, or pork butt can turn out. You need the chewy stuff gone, and enough fat left to melt perfectly on those low and slow cooks.
We tested a range of popular smoking cuts on the barbecue from each of these recommended online stores.
The online world opens us up to being able to source an incredible range of meats. From high-quality wagyu beef, to organic chicken, humanly raised pork, and wild caught seafood, we focused on getting the the good stuff to your table as fresh as can be.
And, of course that included farm to barbecue options that support smaller producers too.
It’s great if you can get an incredible brisket from one place. But, unless you’re okay with ordering a bit from here and a bit from there, we tried to select retailers that sell a good selection of the best types of meat for smoking so that you can get what you’re after in a single order.
We haven’t tried these online butchers just once.
Many of them are where we regularly get our meat from for the barbecue. As such that’s given us a good perspective on how good their quality is over time. We’ve also seen if their meat selection is available seasonally or all year round.
Yes, some of the best places to order meat online are expensive. And, rightly so, it’s top notch stuff.
But, if you don’t have the budget for Kurobuta baby back ribs, you’ll still find quality options on this list that are a more reasonable price.
Table of Contents
The Best Places to Order Raw Meat Online
Delivered to your door fresh or frozen, these subscription boxes have options or include cuts of meat that are suitable for smoking.
If you love a good brisket like us, Porter Road is our go-to for getting high-quality meat for the smoker delivered.
Their base boxes like the ‘Best of Porter Road’ and ‘Beef and Pork Basics’, are usually more suited to the grill or week-night meals. But, they’ve got a great assortment of extras including tri-tip, whole beef briskets, spare ribs, pork brisket and pork butt that you can add-on for that weekend smoke.
Or, put through a one-off order of everything good for the smoker.
All of their beef is 100% grass-fed, their chicken is organic and free-range, pork is raised crate-free and their seafood is wild-caught. Nothing has been raised using antibiotics or hormones. And, it’s delivered fresh not frozen (except for some cuts). You’re really getting premium.
There’s even an extra discount for Military, First Responders, Teachers and Government Employees.
Pros
- Good selection
- Humanely & sustainably raised
- Ships fresh, not frozen
- Whole animal butcher, no waste
Cons
- Popular cuts often sold out
For unparalleled quality, Snake River Farms ranch to table boxes include graded American Wagyu Beef and Kurobuta Pork. Now, this stuff is so good that it’s actually graded above the highest USDA scale grade.
As a cattle farmer myself, I really appreciate the focus Snake River Farms place on developing good cattle. Using renowned Japanese Wagyu bloodlines, they’ve been refining their herd for 30+ years to maintain that buttery marbling with a robust beef flavor that’s perfect for the smoker.
You can get a really wide range of beef and pork cuts from Snake River. Most of their selection is focused on more grilling-based meats like high-quality steaks. But, you can get a range of other luxury cuts like gold grade American Wagyu brisket or American Kurobuta baby back ribs.
Snake River choose to ship frozen, except for their dry-aged beef. Everything arrives in eco-friendly packaging direct from their Northwest farms.
The business focus on sustainability in their practices and it’s nice to support a quality farm to table operation.
Pros
- Higher than USDA standard grades
- Farm to table
- Focus on Wagyu & Kurobua pork
- Also sell wild seafood
Cons
- Popular cuts often sold out
For options galore that are all 100% grass fed beef, free-range organic chicken, humanely-raised pork and wild-caught seafood, Butcher Box gives you the freedom to pick and choose the cuts you want, when you want, while swapping them up month to month.
Shipped frozen for free, you can choose an assorted Butchers Box based on meat type, or, create a custom box of your own choosing which is what I’d recommend for smoking.
Ranging from your standards like ground beef and chicken thighs, to more specialist cuts like St Louis ribs, pork butt, ground bison, tri-tip and sockeye salmon, there’s lots of options that are just begging to be smoked or grilled.
You can choose how often you’d like boxes to be delivered, change up what’s in them and cancel at any time. But, you can be confident that everything that arrives on your door will be high-quality and surprisingly good value for money.
Pros
- Great range
- Ethical sourcing
- Always ships free
- Often have joining offers
- Good value for money
Cons
- Focused on subscription boxes
We love the range and focus on building your own box that Farm Foods gives you.
Here you can get all sorts of cuts of grass-fed beef, heritage pork, pasture-raised chickens, turkey, and wild-caught seafood. It’s all great quality, well-butchered, and ethically sourced from one of three farms that you can learn all about.
There’s usually free shipping over a certain value, it’s all sent frozen, and the meat prices are pretty reasonable considering the quality that you’re getting. There’s value packs for more savings too.
But, our absolute favorite thing about Farm Foods is that you can sometimes get a 1/4 or 1/8th of a pig or a cow. It’s unbeatable value for money and really gives you that rancher experience along with a mixture of great cuts you might not normally try.
Pros
- Great range of cuts
- Ethically raised
- Good value for money
- Free shipping
Cons
- Minimum order value
- Often out of stock of 1/4 and 1/8th animals
For choice that you couldn’t possibly get from your local store, Perdue Farms gives you access to a family of farmers across the USA.
Here you can shop for meat and seafood that’s certified humane, grass fed, organic, pasture raised, non-GMO, nitrate-free, crate-free, hormone free, and the list goes on. And, what we love most is that you can easily filter their available products based on these factors or even shop by an individual farm.
But, regardless of what you choose, the quality from Perdue is right on up there.
They don’t have quite the same range when it comes to common meats for smoking although we have seen brisket on here occassionally. But, for grilling and kitchen cooking, Perdue is our go-to. There’s even some pre-cooked options plus delicious desserts that can be added to your order as a treat.
From time to time, there’s curated bundles we normally go for to give you cheaper prices on a few different products. And, buy a certain amount for free-shipping throughout the contiguous states.
Pros
- Very wide selection
- Shop by value
- Frequent sales & value packs
- Free shipping
Cons
- Not many smoking meats
The Best Places to Order Cooked Meat Online
The internet is amazing, you can actually get the very best barbecue from across the United States delivered to your door whenever you feel like it. Plus, an unbeatable range of cured meats.
When we want a treat (or want to send someone else one), this is where we go every single time.
Southside Market & Barbecue Online lets you order freshly smoked meats from the oldest authentic Texas BBQ joint in the state. These guys know what they’re doing through and through.
There’s whole smoked brisket, ribs, turkey, and their incredible sausage slammers.
The prices aren’t bad, especially when you consider that you’re bringing the restaurant to you. You can choose your quantity. And, they offer a low, flat rate shipping fee.
Some meats are sold raw as well if you want to cook them on your own grill or smoker. You can also get Southside Market sauces and rubs for unbeatable flavor you can pull off as your own.
Pros
- Delicious food
- Great selection
- Reasonable prices
Cons
- No free shipping
You know we’re here for smoking in the backyard ourselves. But, Gold Belly’s Monthly BBQ Subscription gets you world class bbq delivered from some of the USA’s best smokehouses delivered to your door. It’s such a treat!
This isn’t raw meat ready for you to smoke. It’s brisket, pulled pork, ribs, and anything and everything else delivered smoked with instructions on how to reheat it well.
You don’t know what you’re getting before it arrives. You might find yourself eating from Memphis Central BBQ one month, New York City’s Mighty Quinn’s BBQ the next, and North Carolina’s King’s BBQ after that. All in the comfort of your own home, without having to buy a plane ticket.
The box is designed to feed 4 and we find the servings quite generous.
If you love trying different types of barbecue and using it as inspiration for your own backyard game, your Gold Belly BBQ Box will be the highlight of your month.
We can’t get enough!
Pros
- Nations best BBQ joints
- Easy to reheat
- Generous servings
- Free shipping
Cons
- Random selection
Carnivore Club get how much we love meat.
Here you can get a huge range of premium cured meat boxes delivered to your door with a carefully curated selection of the best there is.
You don’t have to get a monthly subscription although Carnivore Club offer that too.
From the on-the-go snack box, jerky box, or the salamis, bacon and biltong of the classic box, their selection is spot on and in another league from what you get at your local grocery store.
They’ve got us hooked on some brands and flavors we never would have tried otherwise. And, their range is expanding all the time. But, boxes can be sold out and quite often are. So, if you see something you like the look of, snag it before it’s at everyone’s house but yours.
Pros
- Best selection of cured meats
- One-off or recurring subscriptions
- Decent value
Cons
- Often sold out
Why Should I Buy Meat Online?
While everyone’s got their own particular motivations, these are some of the advantages of buying meat online:
Order it from home, work, or the car line and it turns up at your doorstep a few days later.
Online butchers often offer a wide variety of cuts, types, and sources of meat. This gives you more choice and the ability to source hard to get cuts for grilling, smoking, or cooking up in your kitchen.
A lot of online meat retailers sell high-quality and ethically sourced meats. You can even learn about the particular farm where the meat was raised including their farming practices and quality standards. It’s the next best thing after growing your own meat.
A lot of the best places to order meat online, including the ones we’ve recommended in this review offer subscription boxes. This not only makes meal planning a breeze because you know exactly what you’re getting, it can also save you a decent amount of cash by setting up a recurring order of your favorites.
Scroll up to see our tried and approved best places to order meat online to make sure you’re buying from a reputable vendor offering quality products.Â
Make sure you check out the shipping costs before you place your order too. Some online butchers offer free shipping while others don’t.
FAQs About the Best Places to Order Meat Online
Ordering your meat online gives you access to a much wider range of meat types of a higher quality than you’d most likely find at your local grocery store.
It’s also very convenient to have a week, fortnight, or months worth of meat turn up at your doorstop.
We use online meat delivery services to make budgeting and meal planning easier. And, because we’re buying more meat at once, we have found that we’re able to buy better quality for the same amount of money we’d spend at our regular grocery store.
We generally browse Porter Road, Farm Foods, and Perdue Farms when we’re shopping for our meat online. Which one gets us hitting the order now button depends on what they’ve currently got in stock and what the prices at like at that time.
We do on and off run a meat subscription through Butcher Box instead or as well.
If we’re after something really special as a bit of a splurge, our go-to online butcher is Snake River Farms. The quality is next to none.
For more information on what each of these meat delivery services is like to use, read our reviews above.
Some online butchers do charge a higher price for what appears to be the same cut of meat at your local grocery store.
But, the best places to order meat online that we’ve recommended here are all suppliers of ethically sourced, antibiotic-free, often free-ranged, grass-fed, pasture-raised, wild-caught, heritage bred, etc., etc., cuts of meat. So, their higher prices are justified by the higher quality that cooks up better, and is generally better for your health too.
Kate Brown is the founder of Burning Brisket, where she shares hands-on smoker reviews, barbecue gear guides, and practical tips for backyard BBQ. She has cooked extensively on charcoal, pellet, electric, and kamado smokers, using real-world experience to help beginners choose the right equipment and make better barbecue at home. Her focus is honest, straightforward advice that makes smoking and grilling easier without unnecessary complexity.
