Porter Road review: A meat delivery service with a huge selection of common and rare cuts

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While testing more than 20 grills to find the best charcoal grill and discover the best pellet smoker, we became well-versed in shopping for and cooking different cuts of meat. Porter Road is one of our all-time favorite meat delivery services because the shopping experience is the closest to actually going to a butcher shop as you can get virtually.

Porter Road sells beef, pork, lamb, and chicken, conveniently delivered to your door. You can enjoy the taste and care of the original Tennessee butcher shop, whether you live one state over or on the other side of the country.

How Porter Road works

Whether you're shopping online or at the original Nashville location, Porter Road is a butcher shop that specializes in ethically sourcing hormone- and antibiotic-free meat. All the animals sent to Porter Road's processing facility are pasture-raised and treated humanely on carefully vetted farms in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Porter Road opened in 2011, founded by trained chefs Chris Carter and James Peisker who realized that it was difficult to find quality meat and wanted to provide local and hand-cut options to their community. 

In 2018, they took the business online to recreate the local experience for home cooks nationwide. "Bringing Porter Road online truly happened out of necessity, as we had friends, family, and loyal customers outside of Nashville who kept telling us they couldn't find good quality, humanely-raised meat," says Peisker. 

Porter Road offers as close to a real butcher shop experience as you can get online. On each product page, you'll learn what part of the animal the cut comes from, how the animal was raised, and the best way to cook the meat for maximum flavor. 

What can you order from Porter Road?

You can filter your search by cooking time and gear to find the perfect meat for your taste and experience level. There are individual and bundled packages available that include beef, pork, chicken, and market extras.

For an automatic meat delivery, try Porter Road's subscription service that delivers on a 2, 4, or 8 week schedule. You can switch boxes anytime, from the Beef Box with included taco seasoning to the rotating selection of Butcher's Choice. 

Expert recommendations

Carter can't recommend the Denver Steak enough: "It is a very large, marbled piece of meat that has a nice chew, incredible flavor, and grills up incredibly well. It's also very versatile. My preferred cooking method is to sous vide, then char it on the grill. You can also braise it like short ribs, or sear it in a hot cast iron pan. No matter how you cook it, it will be incredible." 

Peisker says the St. Louis Pork (currently unavailable on the site) is his personal hometown favorite: "St. Louis Pork Steaks are a lazy cook's fantasy. They're a lesser-known cut that packs a ton of great flavor, cut from the top half of the shoulder. We leave the bone in to maximize the flavor. We like to char the steaks heavily first then cook them slow and low in BBQ sauce and beer." 

Our experience with Porter Road

Porter Road provided Insider with $100 credit, which our writer used to pick up a variety of cuts: round roast, pork tenderloin, oxtail, loose sage sausage, lamb shoulder, and filet mignon.  The meat arrived safe and cold in an insulated box within four days. 

Everything tasted great — the filet mignon was tender and juicy, the loose sausage had an elevated taste thanks to Porter Road's addition of sage, ginger, garlic, and a fennel bulb, and the lamb shoulder and oxtail were perfect for a slow cooker. Any cut we didn't cook immediately stored well in the freezer, but still tasted fresh and delicious on the plate. 

The bottom line

Since we first tested the service, Insider writers have ordered multiple times from Porter Road because it clearly cares about sharing the best meat and best cooking experience with its customers. Shipping can get expensive if you spend less than $125, so you may want to make larger and less frequent orders.

From the way it carefully controls its sourcing process to how it designed its digital shopping experience, Porter Road is a top-tier online meat delivery service.