Bottom Round Roast
Beef in the Midwest · up 8% this week
Per a typical 140g serving, scaled from the per-100g figures in USDA FoodData Central (Beef, round, bottom round, roast, separable lean only, trimmed to 1/8" fat, choice, raw).
- 1 NortheastCheapest $5.79/lb
- 2 Southcentral $5.89/lb
- 3 Midwest $6.80/lb
- 4 Southeast $6.82/lb
- 5 Northwest $6.99/lb
Buying bottom round roast in the Northeast saves about 17% versus the Northwest this week.
- How to pick a good one
- Very lean with almost no marbling, which is exactly why it is inexpensive. Look for a compact, evenly shaped roast with a thin fat cap if you can find one. There is little visual quality signal here beyond colour and shape.
- What a good price looks like
- One of the cheapest beef roasts at $4 to $6.50 a pound, and often the loss leader around holidays. Under $4.50 is a good price. Per gram of protein it is among the best beef in the shop, and the money you save over a rib roast buys a lot of forgiveness for a slightly less tender result.
- What you actually get
- A 3 lb roast gives roughly 2.2 lb cooked, about 25% loss, and serves six to eight when sliced thin. Because it is lean and uniform, it slices with very little waste and is the standard cut behind home-made roast beef for sandwiches.
- How to store it
- Three to five days refrigerated, up to a year frozen.
- In the kitchen
- Very lean and from a hard-working muscle, so it has two honest uses and one bad one. Roast it rare and slice it paper-thin for sandwiches, or braise it long and wet. What it will not do is behave like a tender roast at medium — cooked to that point and cut thick, it is dry and chewy. A thermometer matters more here than almost anywhere.
- Getting the most out of it
- One of the cheapest roasts available and the most often ruined. It has too little fat to braise into tenderness the way chuck does, so treat it either as a slow-roasted, thinly sliced roast beef cooked to medium-rare, or slice it paper-thin for stir-fries and sandwiches. Roasting it to well done makes it genuinely tough.
- Crockpot Braised Beef Ragu with PolentaRecipe by Pinch of Yum~$2.56 / serving 3 in-season
- Beef and Mushroom Pot Roast (a Slow Cooker Recipe)Recipe by Natasha's Kitchen~$3.55 / serving 4 in-season
- Roast Beef Recipe with GravyRecipe by Natasha's Kitchen~$3.60 / serving 1 in-season
- Marinated Roast BeefRecipe by RecipeTin Eats~$6.68 / serving 3 in-season
Price from the USDA weekly retail meat report (conventional, per lb). Nutrition per typical serving, computed from USDA FoodData Central.
Bottom Round Roast — FAQ
What's the price of bottom round roast this week?
As of the week of September 4, 2026, the price of bottom round roast in the Midwest is $6.80/lb, up 8% from last week. Prices come from the USDA's weekly retail meat report.
Which region has the cheapest bottom round roast right now?
The Northeast has the cheapest bottom round roast this week at $5.79/lb — about 17% less than the Northwest, where it runs $6.99/lb.
How much protein is in bottom round roast?
A typical 140g serving of bottom round roast has about 31.1g protein and 196 calories (7g fat), per USDA FoodData Central.
What can I cook with bottom round roast?
SeasonSort indexes 4 recipes using bottom round roast, each priced per serving from this week's data — starting from about $2.56 a serving. The cheapest are listed on this page, with a link to the full filtered list.