I don’t currently have any ethnic grocery stores near me, but when I did, the Mexican ones always had chicken thighs for cheap, and also limes.
Like, the regular grocery store might have limes at $0.50 each (in the midwest), while the ethnic store would have 10/$1.00. (pre-covid, pre-inflation prices.)
And there was this Ukrainian place where, from the deli, they would sell in trays a mix of the butt ends of the deli meats and cheeses. They’d label it by weight some bulk price that was often cheaper than some of the meats or cheeses contained in it.
It was like being able to get a cheap meat/cheese sampler tray. So there’d be chunks of salami, turkey, olive loaf–or swiss, american, munster…just whatever meats or cheeses they got to the ends of recently.
At an Asian place I used to go to, I could get tilapia, basa, or swai in frozen fillets for cheap. I actually liked the basa and swai–they’re basically farmed asian catfish, but can’t be labeled catfish as a way to protect the north american catfish industry. I can see why they wanted to prevent competition–I find that basa and swai don’t have the “muck” taste that local catfish have.
Anyway, what are some good deals you have been able to find at local ethnic grocery stores?
It’s an undertaking that definitely isn’t for everyone, but once in a while I’ve been able to find whole lambs in the frozen section at Costco.
I didn’t have a freezer at the time but now that I do I’m definitely grabbing one to butcher up if I see them again. IIRC (been a couple years) they were in the neighborhood of $3/lb, so a whole lamb would run around $120 and net you probably around 30-40lbs of meat plus bones for stock and such. Even if I’m wildly misremembering and/or prices have gone up, and it costs twice as much, at least around me, you’re probably not going to find a better deal on lamb.
You need to be reasonably confident in your knife skills to break it down of course, you need a plan on how to thaw it out, workspace to do your butchering, and a plan to pack up all the cuts and store them
I did actually buy one a few year ago, I’m on good terms with my boss at the pizza shop I used to work at, so he let me use the walk-in there to thaw it. We roasted it whole over a fire for a party so no real butchering to be done. Definitely recommend doing that if you have some outdoor fire pit cooking space and are looking for something different and eye-catching for the main event for your party (google “lamb al asador” to get an idea what our setup looked like, it’s something to behold)