22 of Our Favorite Groceries From Costco—and What to Make with Them

Anyone who’s ever bought groceries can tell you that meat prices can make or break a grocery budget, so the Costco meat department was our first stop—and it did not disappoint! (Pro tip: There are also some great deals to be found on meat in the freezer section; see numbers 12 and 13 on this list.)

1. Kirkland Signature Ground Beef, $3.79/lb

One of the best prices we’ve found on this staple protein! Note: These packages were all between 5 and 6 pounds each, so you’ll likely want to divide into 1-lb portions and freeze when you get home. (Speaking of, do you need quart or gallon freezer storage bags? Costco has you covered.)

Recipe Inspo: Cheap Ground Beef Recipes That Taste Like a Million Bucks

2. Kirkland Signature Organic Ground Beef, $19.99/4 lbs

While it costs more per pound than its conventional counterpart ($4.99/lb vs. $3.79), this organic ground beef is still an amazing deal. It also comes portioned out in sealed packages you can put straight in your freezer.

Recipe Inspo: Ground Beef Dinners Ready in 30 Minutes (or Less!)

3. Kirkland Signature Pork Loin Chops, $2.69/lb

These might just be the most consistently thickest and juiciest pork chops we’ve ever seen in real life—and for the quality, this price is nearly impossible to beat.

Recipe Inspo: Best Pork Chop Recipes

4. Kirkland Signature Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, $2.99/lb

If chicken breast is your family’s dinner protein of choice, these mega packs of whole breasts are a no-brainer. (The day we visited, our local Costco was even running a special for an additional $4 off per package.) And we appreciate how the perforated, sealed pouches make it easy to freeze what you don’t need right now.

Recipe Inspo: Non-Boring Ways to Turn Chicken Breasts into Dinner | 5-Ingredient Oven-Fried Chicken + Easy-Fancy Sauces

5. Kirkland Signature Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast Tenderloins, $2.99/lb

If there are kids in your house, this great deal on breast tenderloins—aka “tenders,” “fingers” or “strips”—is news you can use.

Recipe Inspo: Chicken Tenders Kids Can’t Say No To

6. Kirkland Signature Fresh Fryer Boneless Thigh Meat, $2.79/lb

We’ve long sung the praises of tender, flavorful, affordable chicken thighs as an alternative to chicken breasts—and Costco is speaking our language! We’re always happy to turn chicken thighs into an easy family dinner, and at this price, a good thing becomes even better.

Recipe Inspo: Chicken Thigh Recipes That Practically Make Themselves

7. Kirkland Signature Applewood Smoked Spiral Sliced Ham, $2.99/lb

It’s often reserved for holiday dinners, but at $2.99/lb, you could buy one and make several meals with it over the course of the week. Serve it for dinner, then use the leftovers for brunch the next day.

Recipe Inspo: Dinners to Make with Leftover Ham

8. Kirkland Signature Seasoned Rotisserie Chicken, $4.99 each

Costco is pretty famous for the Kirkland Signature Seasoned Rotisserie Chicken, which they’ve sold for a mind-blowing $4.99 apiece for as long as we can remember. All you have to worry about is the sides!

Recipe Inspo: Best Side Dishes to Serve with Chicken

9. Hand-Pulled Rotisserie Chicken Breast Meat, $12.99/package

Giving the original a run for its money is this even-more-convenient pre-shredded version. No bones, no skin, no carving required—just 2.62 lbs of perfectly cooked pulled chicken ready to be added to any dinner you can imagine.

Recipe Inspo: The BIG List of Rotisserie Chicken Recipes

The biggest bargain news in the Costco dairy case? Butter, y’all! If you do a lot of baking, this alone could make the cost of membership worth it.

10. Kirkland Signature Butter Quarters (salted or unsalted), $9.99/4 lbs

Lest you underestimate what a great deal the butter is at Costco, four 1-lb. packages = a whopping 16 sticks of butter. That’s $0.62/stick, which is definitely the lowest price we’ve ever seen.

11. Kirkland Signature Organic Butter Quarters (salted or unsalted), $9.89/2 lbs

At $1.23/stick, there’s a marked price difference between conventional and organic butter. But if you typically choose organic dairy, you know this is still a heck of a deal.

Recipe Inspo: Christmas Sprinkle Butter Cookies | Easy Praline Sauce | Instant Pot® Mashed Potatoes

The freezer section of Costco is a magical place filled with magical things. It was very hard to keep this list short, so we narrowed down our recommendations to the most versatile ingredients we use the most frequently.

12. Kirkland Signature Ground Beef, $14.99/5 lbs

For the absolute thriftiest option on ground beef at Costco, head for the freezer section, where you can get FIVE frozen single-pound tubes of ground beef for a total of $2.99 each (when ground beef costs the same per pound as chicken breasts, that’s a big deal!). Best of all, they’re already portioned and frozen, which makes them a meal prepper’s dream.

Recipe Inspo: Ground Beef Recipes to Make on the Regular

13. Kirkland Signature Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, $16.89/6.5 lbs

Yet another amazing deal in the freezer aisle! If fresh vs. frozen isn’t a sticking point for you, these $2.59/lb frozen chicken breasts will save $0.40/lb over fresh. We could see this being an especially great item to grab if you’re in a smaller household and struggle to use up fresh meat before it spoils. Let’s hear it for “cheep” chicken!

Recipe Inspo: Chicken Dinners for When You Don’t Want to Think

14.Kirkland Signature Italian Style Meatballs, $16.99/6 lbs

Frozen meatballs have always been on our radar, but the past few years have seen a real meatball renaissance in the Pillsbury kitchens. We use these for soups, casseroles, sandwiches, stuffed biscuits, appetizers, pasta, you name it! And at $16.99 for 6 lbs of this versatile meal-starter, we have a hunch you might become a meatball fan, too.

Recipe Inspo: Super-Easy Weeknight Dinners That Start with Meatballs

15. Kirkland Signature Organic Mixed Vegetables, $7.89/5 lbs

These caught our eye right away on our walk around Costco, because frozen mixed veggies are a key ingredient for our Classic Chicken Pot Pie (1900 rave reviews and counting, people!). Toss some of the pulled rotisserie chicken mentioned above into your cart, and you’re in business!

Recipe Inspo: Classic Chicken Pot Pie | Freezer-Friendly Mini Chicken Pot Pies | Family Hamburger Soup

16. Kirkland Signature Organic Broccoli Florets, 4 1-lb bags, $7.99

At $1.99/lb, even if this broccoli wasn’t organic, this would be a great deal! At a regular grocery store, it’s common to see frozen broccoli sold in 12-oz. bags for the same price. Use this versatile veggie in soups, casseroles and more, or pair it with one of Costco’s famous rotisserie chickens (above) for an effortless weeknight dinner.

Recipe Inspo: 5-Ingredient Instant Pot® Cheesy Chicken, Broccoli and Rice | Broccoli Soup Recipes

By the time we got to the refrigerated foods, the Pillsbury team figured we’d already seen all of Costco’s meat and dairy selection. Boy, were we wrong! In addition to even more deals on chicken and beef, we found a secret Costco crescent roll hack, the best price ever on cheddar cheese, and so many more awesome finds.

17. Kirkland Signature Cage-Free Extra Large Eggs (24 ct), $3.29

If we could only pick one food to get at Costco, there’s a very decent chance it would be eggs. Hard-boiled! Scrambled! Egg bake! Desserts! French toast! Eggs are key ingredients of so many of our favorite recipes and you just can't beat the price.

Recipe Inspo: Fully Loaded Egg Bakes | Classic French Toast | How to Boil Eggs

18. Little Smokies, $9.99/3 lbs (~120 sausages)

Are you ready for some truly exciting news? We spotted 3-lb packs of Wimmer’s Little Smokies—about 120 mini franks. That’s a solid deal! But this became VERY EXCITING just one aisle over, where we spotted a match so perfect it must have been fate (see #19).

19. Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, $7.89 for 5 8-oz tubes

That perfect match was a 40-pack of Pillsbury’s very own crescent rolls. “Oh, you could make Mini Crescent Dogs!” we thought. (Already pretty great news.) But then we did a little math and this officially became a Very Big Deal.

To make Mini Crescent Dogs, you cut each crescent roll into 3 narrow triangles before wrapping each triangle around a mini sausage. Forty crescents, times three, is 120. That means that if you bought items #18 and #19 on this list, you’d end up with exactly one strip of crescent dough for every sausage, at a total cost of just $0.14 per Mini Crescent Dog. Like we said—it’s fate!

Recipe Inspo: Mini Crescent Dogs | Air Fryer Mini Crescent Dogs

20. Kirkland Signature Shredded Sharp Cheddar, $12.49/5 lbs

Our favorite cheese of all time also happens to be the most affordable of all the shredded varieties at Costco. We couldn’t believe this pack of two giant 2.5-lb bags of shredded cheddar was only $12.49. That’s just $2.49/lb—literally HALF what you’ll pay at a typical grocery store, where those little 8-oz bags of shredded cheddar usually cost between $2 and $2.50. Tip: Toss one of the bags in the freezer when you get home so it stays fresh longer.

Recipe Inspo: Better Together: Bacon + Cheddar

21. Cream Cheese, $7.99/6

Guys, we LOVE cream cheese. We could use it in literally every meal of the day, plus a million kinds of desserts, and still not get sick of it. It’s just so dang versatile, and this mega-pack comes out to a lean $1.33 per 8-oz brick.

Recipe inspo: The Surprising Secret Ingredient That Fixes (Almost) Every Cooking Dilemma

22. Honorable Mention: Yoplait Go-Gurt Simply, $7.99/32

No, it’s not an ingredient—but at just under $0.25 per tube (it was even on sale for just under $0.15 per tube the day we visited), Go-Gurt Simply is a no-brainer snack to keep handy. Toss frozen tubes in lunch boxes, or hand to kids when they need a little something to tide them over until dinner’s ready.