Aldi or Walmart: Which is the Best Choice for Your Next Steak Purchase?

With rising grocery prices squeezing household budgets, many people are cutting back on luxuries — including steak dinners. But before you cross steak night off the calendar, consider the alternative: It is possible to enjoy a good steak at home without sacrificing flavor or emptying your wallet. Surprisingly, affordable retailers like Walmart and Aldi offer high-quality cuts of meat that won’t break the bank.

When it comes to choosing the perfect budget-friendly cut for your next steak dinner, the question looms large: Aldi or Walmart, who’s got the beef? In the name of journalistic integrity (and because I was hungry), I embarked on a noble quest to find flavorful steaks that won’t break the bank and compared three popular cuts from both stores. Armed with online reviews, unsolicited advice from fellow shoppers, and a meat-laden shopping cart that drew a few side-eyes, I hereby present the Aldi vs Walmart Steak Showdown.

The longstanding German discount grocery store chain Aldi keeps its overhead low in order to offer lower prices on fruits, vegetables, dry goods and meats. With over 2,500 locations in the U.S. and expanding, Aldi does rank among the grocery chains with the highest quality meat departments, but it isn’t a household name yet. It also is not your typical grocery store with a wide range of products, so it’s important to know what this retailer specializes in before you visit. Aldi sources its meat from both domestic and international suppliers, including the well-known Tyson and Cargill meat processing plants, and claims to support local suppliers when possible, but the exact source of each cut can indeed be vague.

Walmart is, of course, a well-known retailer, and its smaller Neighborhood Markets offer essentials, groceries, basic household items, and fresh produce and meats. Walmart, too, sources from Tyson and Cargill but has more of a focus on its own hormone-free Black Angus line of beef, particularly its McClaren Farms line of all-natural, hormone-free Angus.

As part of their measures to keep overhead costs as low as possible, thus passing savings on to the consumer, neither Walmart nor Aldi staff butchers or meat specialists in-house so the identification of the source of the meat available came down to what was printed on the label, what is declared on the retailer’s website, and the general consensus of the Reddit populous, which seems to span the gamut of beef expertise. I also happened to interview fellow shoppers during each visit.

“Oh, don’t buy Aldi; it’s garbage,” said the knowledgeable gentleman at my side at the Walmart meat display case. I seized the opportunity to dig into this stinging condemnation. My source had been buying and cooking meat from Walmart for the last 20 years and sang the praises of the McClaren line of Black Angus. Although he had only purchased beef from Aldi a handful of times, he was proud to go on record stating that Walmart’s steak could stand up to any major grocery store steak any day. A fellow shopper at Aldi claimed similar loyalty, but to Aldi’s steaks, of course.

In the attempt to keep the playing field as level as possible, I pitted three popular cuts of steak, ribeye, sirloin, and New York strip from each store, comparing the McClaren Farms offerings from Walmart with equivalently-packaged (vacuum-sealed) and priced options from Aldi.

At $12.89 per pound, Aldi’s USDA Choice ribeye steak is less than one-third the per-pound cost of my local grocery store ribeye of the same grade. Walmart’s McClaren Farms’ USDA Choice ribeye steak is mere pennies more than Aldi per pound more at $12.97 per.

Both the Aldi and Walmart ribeye cuts boasted similar marbling and texture prior to being seasoned with sea salt and ground pepper and grilled to a medium rare center. While I did not find a massive difference between the two, the ribeye from Walmart was slightly more tender and more flavorful.

Online reviews yield similar findings, with Aldi being favored slightly over Walmart when it comes to ribeye. Some opinions say they shop at Aldi only for ribeye steaks and the general consensus is that Aldi’s ribeye steaks have better marbling, but one might argue that there is an equal community of Walmart supporters touting the glories of Walmart steaks.

This one was definitely a close contest but in my case I preferred the Walmart ribeye steak just slightly over the Aldi cut. (It is also important to note that because Aldi says it uses local suppliers for meat, the quality could indeed vary depending on your location.)

New York Strip happens to be one of my preferred cuts of steak and something my family enjoys weekly, so I was looking forward to this comparison. The $11.97 price per pound for the Walmart Strip from McClaren Farms was music to my ears, particularly when pitted against the $25.45 per pound equivalent at my local grocery store. In the same vein as the ribeye cuts, Aldi’s New York strip is $.08 cheaper. However the packaging does not indicate the source nor whether the beef is “all natural,” which ratchets the McClaren strip from Walmart one notch up in my book.

Seasoned with sea salt and ground black pepper, both strips were well marbled; Walmart’s cut presented a more appealing and evenly spaced marbling as the Aldi strip was thicker and thus had a few more clumps of fat.

Grilled to a medium rare temperature, the strip from Walmart was noticeably more flavorful, with a bold, beefy taste and a satisfying chew; the strip from Aldi had a blander flavor. Perhaps this was due in part to the amount of water in Aldi’s packaging, something that is done, according to my fellow Aldi shopper, to boost the weight of the meat, although this is not confirmed by the USDA.

Once again, online reviews trend toward Aldi when it comes to cuts of New York strip, but the McClaren cut from Walmart definitely topped the Aldi version in my personal taste test.

For the sirloin comparison, I selected small sirloin tips from Aldi and weighed them against sirloin medallions from Walmart. Aldi’s sirloin tips rang up at $8.49 per pound, while the USDA Choice Angus sirloin steaks from Walmart carry a $13.94 per pound price tag. While this isn’t exactly apples to apples, I wanted to compare two different variations of sirloin prepared in a similar fashion — pan-seared with salt, pepper, garlic, and butter in a skillet.

I found that the tips from Aldi were slightly chewy, which might be to be expected of a cut often finding itself in stews and sauces. The medallions from Walmart were firm with a beautiful red center and wonderfully beefy and juicy. Again, sirloin taste can span the gamut depending on the particular cut. As expected, the medallions — because they are cut from the top end of the tenderloin—were more tender than the tips, which are cut from the flank. 

Sirloin (and filets) seem to be a popular cut of choice from Walmart fans — my helpful Walmart shopper included. But for me, once again, the Walmart selection edged out the Aldi option.

Sirloin, strips, and ribeyes aren’t the only cuts of meat available at Aldi and Walmart, so the final determination in this great steak showdown is overall selection at both retailers. In my experiment, my local Walmart Neighborhood Market had a much better selection and inventory than my local Aldi, but again, this could change with store and location. Once again, online opinion leaned in favor of Aldi when it came to the topic of selection, leading me to believe that the Aldi near me was either far inferior or my Walmart Neighborhood Market was far superior to elsewhere.

Aldi’s selection spanned ribeye, sirloin, strip, filets, chuck roast, and skirt steaks, while Walmart’s selection was much more impressive, offering the above alongside Tomahawk cuts and a wider variety of serving size options. Both stores offer the top beef grades, including USDA Choice and some USDA Prime Cuts. 

In the end, when searching for which retailer offered the best budget-friendly choice for my next steak dinner, my preference would be the steaks offered by Walmart. I appreciated the transparency of the McClaren Farms label and information; the taste and quality of the steaks I tested seemed just one step above, and while both retailers offer tremendous value for the dollar, for a few extra pennies and the peace of mind of hormone-free, all-natural meat, I would select Walmart for the win.

For this comparison and testing to determine the better place to purchase steak, whether Aldi or Walmart, I selected three similar cuts of USDA Choice ribeye, sirloin, and New York strip from both my local Aldi and local Walmart Neighborhood Market and compared them for price, appearance, and taste. I selected the vacuum-sealed options for each sample for consistency and apparent freshness. Each cut was seasoned only with ground black pepper and sea salt and either grilled to medium rare temperature or, in the case of the sirloin, pan-seared in butter with garlic. The cuts were then rated in terms of marbleization, color, and appearance prior to cooking and then critiqued for tenderness and flavor once cooked. The opinions of online reviews and steak enthusiasts further augmented my personal findings, as did the availability of information on the source of the meat and additional information, such as the use of hormones and sustainability.