Hear all about the Snake River Farms Wagyu Corned Beef Round that I found at a Costco store in Utah in 2024.
What is Snake River Farms Corned Beef Round? This corned beef is made from American Waygu beef raised in eastern Idaho. The beef used in round, not brisket and can be found at some Costco locations or you can order it online.
I was just minding my business shopping at Costco, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a different type of corned beef than I had not seen before. It was from Snake River Farms, which I had heard of but had not had any of their meat yet.
What was really special about this corned beef is that it's from Wagyu Beef. In this post I am going to share with you a little about Wagyu beef, Snake River Farms, and about what corned beef round is as opposed to other corned beef you can buy.
Jump to:
🚜 Who is Snake River Farms?
Let me give you some basics about the company. They are an American beef company that is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Their cows are raised in Eastern Idaho. They also do some Korobuta Pork as well. You can order their products through their website mainly but I also hear you can find a limited section of products at stores like Albertsons and Safeway and of course the corned beef at Costco.
🐄 What's Different About Wagyu Beef
First we have to get this out of the way, Snake River Farms raises American Wagyu beef, not Japanese. They have a herd of cows that are a mix of Japanese Wagyu and American Cattle. It's their own unique breed.
What makes Wagyu Beef different is the intramuscular fat. There is more of it. This is the fat that runs through the meat. American Wagyu has more than the common American cow breeds. The flavor is going to be different than Japanese. I hear it's more subtle for the American palate. Japanese Wagyu is often pretty strongly flavored and they tend to use it sparely in dishes and often cut thin (this is called Shabu Shabu).
❓ What is Corned Beef Round?
Most time you are going to find corned beef made with brisket. But you can also find it made with meat from the round of the cow. That is the backside. This meat is known for being lean. However with American Wagyu you have more fat running through the meat than you normally would.
This is why I was interested in trying it out because in the past, I have had both corned beef brisket and round at the same time and felt the texture of the brisket because of the fat content was much better.
RELATED - Learn More About the Differences Between Corned Beef Round and Brisket.
👅 How Did It Taste
Fantastic! The meat had a great flavor. I felt the amount of salt was pretty good, it was not overly salty. Corned beef is always going to be a salty dish as that's the nature of the beast but this one I didn't think was excessive.
When comparing this to other brands of corned beef, I appreciate how big of a spice packet that Snake River Farms added. Often the packs are tiny and not enough seasoning. I still did at a couple of my favorite Burlap & Barrel spices to the mix like Red River Coriander and Caribbean Bay Leaves.
I think overall I still prefer corned beef made with brisket for the texture of the meat, but this was the best corned beef round I have had for sure. More tender than any others. The meat was juicy, that extra intramuscular fat really came into play.
RELATED - Read my full guide to Buying Corned Beef at Costco
🍳 How to Cook It
You can cook this corned beef in any way you normally would. I have two methods listed on the blog.
Instant Pot
The first recipe I posted is making it in the Instant Pot. This is a quicker method than the store top and it's more of a hands off approach. I do my best to try and time the corned beef so that it's tender but yet still sliceable. I don't want it to completely fall apart like pulled pork. I want slices to have to put between two slices of bread later.
🍴 RECIPE - Instant Pot Corned Beef with No Cabbage in the Pot
Sous Vide
The 2nd method I came up with is using my sous vide machine or immersion circulator. This allows me to cook corned beef for a long time to give the connective tissue in the meat time to break down.
For my sous vide method, I cook the corned beef for a full 24 hours. I also soak the beef in water for a couple hours first to try and reduce some of the salt in the meat. This is what I did with the Snake River Farms Corned Beef Round and it was perfect.
🍴 RECIPE - 24 Hour Sous Vide Corned Beef
Leave a Reply