Discovering the Butchers

About this time last year I was working from home and so Matt requested steak with mushroom sauce for our evening meal.  Early in the day my plan had been to take an early lunch and get into town mid-morning and get everything I needed, avoiding the busy lunchtime rush. By now however I had been on calls for most of the day and the day had sort of slipped by into mid-afternoon. I now had a really small window get to the shops and back before my next meeting, definitely not enough time to get to town.

Then I remembered there was a butchers literally around the corner.  It had been a very long time since I had been there, and then it was just to collect an order I had placed over the phone.  In my head butchers were an intimidating place, I often had no idea what I wanted and like to browse and so tended not to often shop there.

I was however completely blown away by how spotlessly clean my local butchers was and the wonderful food they had on offer, meat, vegetables, cheese, fish, bread, dairy etc. That day I was a bit like a kid in a sweet shop and bought much more than I had intended to.  The quality and taste of the meat compared to what you can buy from the supermarket is far, far superior. I knew then that there was no way I would return to the supermarket for meat and I haven’t.

I thought that shopping at the butchers would be more expensive but actually we never used to buy the cheap meat anyway and so have not found it to be more expensive at all.  I like knowing that the meat we buy is not only good quality but that the animal had a good quality of life.  Also, because you can buy exactly what you need it means there is no wastage and that also keeps down the costs. You are not bound by what is in the packet, if you want 1 chicken breast or 2 rashers of bacon then that is exactly what you can get. 

You can also get less popular cuts of meat that supermarkets perhaps do not carry – beef cheeks and shin, lamb neck, oxtail etc. and they can cut your meat exactly how you want it.  I made a lamb hotpot which had 5 different cuts of lamb in fairly small quantities.  When ordering I specified exactly what was needed, i.e. 100g of lamb shoulder cut into 3cm pieces which meant when I started cooking the meat was all prepped ready to go. 

If you have a local butchers you have not used do try it, go in, talk to them, as what they have and what they would recommend.  I discovered flank steak this way, a gorgeous cut that cooks really quickly and is really tasty.

Since March when we went into lockdown they also now offer home delivery which is brilliant as it meant we did not have to compromise on our meat or cut it out altogether.

Something I really do love is thick pork chops with super crispy crackling, yum! I came up with this lovely recipe: thick pork chop with crispy crackling and apple two ways.  Try it and let me know what you think.

My beautiful daughter Victoria is 21 today and to celebrate yesterday we had a gorgeous rib of beef. Happy Birthday Victoria, I hope you have a day as special as you are, I love you x