Supermarket meat

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Time to find a good butchers me thinks,bought some beef from Asda and it must of been the worst bland crap i have ever eaten..Any tips on best cut of beef to buy that doesnt cost the earth..
 
If you can't get to a decent butchers, then of all the supermarkets I find Morrisons to be the best for their meat (and fish and veg). Asda and Tesco are just utter crap. Bland, insipid, packed full of water rubbish. Morrisons have their own butchers in most stores and tend to offer cuts you won't find in the others; pork cheeks,oxtail and the like.
 
I bought four nice sized feather cut steaks (taken from the blade) from my local farm shop for about a fiver. Cooked quickly they were just as juicy and flavoursome as other prime cuts but you'll never find them in a supermarket.
 
hunnymonster said:
Decent meat from a traditional butcher is about the same price (or often less) than mediocre shite from supermarkets...
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+1

My local butcher can even tell me what farm 75% of what he sells came from, never get a duff joint.
 
We're lucky enough to have a friend who's dad owns an organic farm in South Wales. So twice a year we get the chance to buy some real quality stuff at a more than reasonable price. Organic beef that's been hung for a good couple of weeks in the autumn-winter and lamb in spring. At the moment we've got a freezer full of lots of different cuts, should keep us going for a few months. They also gave us a load of the fat, which I've rendered down and not only does it make great roasties but I've contemplated trying to have a go at making some shaving soap. :oops:
 
Jeltz said:
My local butcher can even tell me what farm 75% of what he sells came from, never get a duff joint.
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75% not bad... mine's 100% and none of them are more than 12 miles from the shop. The most food miles the meat does is between the shop and my fridge :hungrig

Those in Scotland can do worse than looking for a butcher on the Scottish Craft Butchers website, those in the Irish Free (with every 5 gallons) State try the Irish equivalent.
 
slash said:
Time to find a good butchers me thinks,bought some beef from Asda and it must of been the worst bland crap i have ever eaten..Any tips on best cut of beef to buy that doesnt cost the earth..
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If you want to get interested in decent meat, where to get it, what cuts you can get for cheap and how to cook them, I can only recommend (yet again) Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book Meat. If you read through the chapters on meat production I swear it will change what you eat.

Meat is muscle, and as a rough guide, meat that works a lot (legs and neck, say) is tough and needs long, slow cooking, but is usually dirt cheap, whereas meat that doesn't do much (like beef fillet) is tender, cooks fast, and costs lots. Also, roughly, tough meat has more flavour than tender meat; so a sirloin or rump steak has more flavour than a fillet steak.

Meat from supermarkets generally isn't aged properly. As meat ages it tenderises but it also loses weight in the form of moisture (ageing = controlled "going off"). Since weight is money, the supermarkets like to get the meat onto the shelves as soon as possible. It made me laugh when Sainsbury's bought out their 21-days matured beef; the message that sends to me is that they're admitting all the other beef they're selling is rubbish. Good meat shouldn't be red and springy, it should be almost purple/brown and leave a dent when you press a finger into it... almost sticky to the touch in fact.

Ah man I could write about this for hours and bore everyone to death. Get Meat.
 
I can second cheese_dave's endorsement, Meat is a fantastic book, that'll tell you everything you need to know about how to cook it properly.

On a side note, does anybody know where I can purchase saltpetre for making corned beef (the proper type), bacon and the like. I've bought it in the past from ebay but they seem to have put a stop to the sale of it on there, which is understandable really considering what else it can be used for.
 
rangers62 said:
Beef needs to be aged, not stuck under plastic still dripping blood.
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It's worse than that, a decent butcher will have had his meat dry hanging for up to 4 weeks, which will give it great flavour, however the ageing process causes the meat to loose weight, something that is pretty bad for a supermarket that has taken great care to pump as much water into the flesh (ever notice if you cook supermarket "dry smoked" bacon there is water in the pan, proper bacon doesn't do this because there is no added water.

Super markets will do wet ageing, whereby the meat is vacuum packed and the enzymes that break the protein are kept in place, the meat will be made more tender, but crucially there is no concentration of flavour, giving you a bland bit of meat. Because it's all enclosed in the pack, there is no loss of weight, which mean more money for Mr. Tesco/Morrisons/Asda etc (delete as appropriate)

One of the reasons that I hate the adverts for Waitrose, where they state that their roasting joint is aged for 28 day, however it is wet aged, and so still tastes like shite.

[/Rant off]
 
Cheers fellas,love this place..going to get that book cheesedave recommends..And found a farm shop that has been recommended so will give it a try.. ;)
 
Just assume that if they claim the beef is "aged" it's wet aged whereas they usually definitively tell you it's dry aged.

Here's a nice little guide...

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Were lucky to have an excellent local butcher.
He buys only local meat, personally, at the local market as he does the poultry.
Superb quality, not cheap, but worth every penny and the service is just 'the best'
Supermarket meat :shock: ,,,,,,wouldn't touch it now.
It's sad so many butchers have now disppeared from our high streets.
regards, beejay
 
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