meat from butchers V supermarket

competitionscafe

jr666 wrote:

Can you all really tell the difference when your chicken is chopped up and put into a curry? I think there is a definite 'placebo effect' going on here. A blind taste test would be intersting.

Yes, you can tell the difference (taste the difference) maybe not as obvious in a curry but roast a proper free-range chicken and there is no comparison, taste wise the same with pork and beef. Beef you can tell the difference just by looking at it, well hung (aged) beef will have a slightly yellow coating of fat and will be a deep red colour (not bright red) and will be well marbled with fat - just by looking at it you know it will taste good. Rick Stein did a blind taste test on pork, chicken, eggs, beef etc (on Food Heroes) and on all but one occassion the overwhelming majority of people could taste the difference - even just with fried eggs.

kiwichick

funky-footprints wrote:

most meal times as a child i would of known where the majority of what was on my plate came from either our farm or it would of been 'traded' with a neighbour .. say bag of carrots for bag of swedes etc, likewise with the meat, it was either dads butchered for him.

Me too! My mum taught piano and was a seamstress so would make made to measure clothes for half the town. Very few people could pay in cash so we were nearly always paid in food, and great it was too. One of the farmers had his 3 girls learning piano and rather than pay for each lesson he would give us half a cow each year!!! All hung and butchered on the farm. Others used to give us fresh home grown fruit or veg. I would love to foster more of this barter/exchange mentality now.

Spendless

iwanttosave wrote:

I have tried buying everything from meat markets/buchers and I dont know if its just were I live but the meat is horrid. About 2 weeks ago I bought a massive cut of sirloin steak from asda (plenty for me and OH) and it was absolutly gorgeous, juicy, tender full of taste, I then bought some steak (again sirloin) and it was horrible, it had a very bland taste, very chewy and fatty. Looking round our meat market (which apparently is world famous :rolleyes: ) they are all the same. It used to be lovely, but now I find it more expencive unless buying in bulk which I have no intention of doing and less quality.

Right let the pounding begin

There's a big meat market where I live and when we first started buying meat from the market it was very hit and miss. Eventually we found a butcher we really liked. Occassionally the butcher that we buy from hasn't had any x so we've bought from another stall and quite often been dissappointed.
Re expense our market is open 3 days a week. Here I've found that Sat afternoons is best time to pick up bargains;)

ladygrey_2

I don't eat a lot of meat as I would rather buy better quality and eat it less often
it amazes me that people on here are talking about a healthy diet in one post and in another saying how they buy bags of frozen mince!!

halloweenqueen_2

I hate mince - so I don't buy it, but the lean mince is quite good, and like everything else - moderation!

Ticklemouse

competitionscafe wrote:

Yes, you can tell the difference (taste the difference) maybe not as obvious in a curry but roast a proper free-range chicken and there is no comparison,.

We had an organic roast chicken for dinner - WOW! I'd forgotten chicken tasted like that and the texture was so much better/nicer. It was firm yet moist and had a much better mouth-feel about it. Even Mr TM said how nice it was - and he'll eat some really rank things he deems to call 'food' :silenced:

loopylass

hi
i went into my butchers today and found it quite expensive a lot of people on here say they can feed their family of 4 for £30 now im a family of 6 i would love to buy things from the butchers but i cant afford it as i spend about £300 a month on food for us and 2 cats and a dog but by the time ive got lunch pack up things for the kids and hubby , cleaning stuff, dairy things, cheese, ham pets food ,veg, fruit, toilet rolls etc the moneys gone i do make my own shepherds pie, toad in the hole, pasta and we have lots of fruit and veg i would like to do more stews etc but the budget does not stretch to more meat i buy a sack of potatoes for £6 and thats from a farm shop which lasts us about a week and a half so can some1 point me in the right direction and tell me where im going wrong because reading on here what you buy from the butchers and still manage to only spend about £30 is beyond me and i buy basic baked beans flour etc so im not going for expensive brands the only thing i can say that i spend more on is toilet roll because the cheap stuff is useless thankyou

Sarahsaver

Shop around
Shop around
Shop around!
You do not need expensive cuts for stews, and we do not have meat every day. I'd rather have quality less often than cack every day.

Ticklemouse

loopylass - do you have a market nearby? If you have, go and look where the queues are. They may not neccessarily be at the cheapest stall, but you'll get an idea of who has the best meat/best value for money. The stall I go to isn't the cheapest (but still far cheaper than Tesco's) but invariably you have to queue and if you get there after lunch, a lot of their meat has gone.

Eg on my mum's market, there are 2 fish stalls. A 'proper' one and one in a little trailer. The trailer fishmonger has queues sometimes 15 deep - that tells you something about his wares You can always hang around and listen to how much other people are paying for what - and make a list of prices from your local supermarket so you can compare properly. Also remember, that the butcher may be more expensive on a couple of items, but overall, most are cheaper.

Sarahsaver

A sack of spuds lasts us 2 months, am i doing something wrong? :rolleyes:
Its usually cheaper to get things whole, like whole chickens, joints of meat. OH bought a huge beef joint from the butcher, I think it was £16, and it was enough to cut into 4 decent sized smaller joints.Local halal butcher has whole lambs cheeeeeep and they are ok you know because you can see the whole things hanging up. They will even show you in the cold store. They get all their lamb and mutton whole and butcher it on the premises.