meat from butchers V supermarket

building_with_lego

xcarlyx wrote: »

My other half works at a farm shop and he revealed earlier that his mince is the same price as morrisons so poss try supermarket?

Or surely eat the better stuff for the same price?

Butchers' meats are in a different class to any supermarket meat I've ever bought- none of the slime and much less blood _pale_

Ask the butcher for cheaper cuts, or for offers. Chicken breast quarters are cheaper than skinless fillets, and leg quarters even cheaper if you're baking/ poaching/ sandwiching it.
My butcher bought some bacon on offer from Sainsbury's and weighed it on his scales. On offer it was still more expensive than his regular price, and you get far less water out of the 'proper' stuff then the supermarket bacon.

Your butcher is a precious resource with a wealth of knowledge- use him

sarah222

Try going in on a Monday and asking for any deals. Smaller butchers usually have something left they wish to sell off from the weekend and some do goody boxes where say its £15 but you get £25 worth of meat - obviously you dont know what your going to get but half the fun is then deciding what to do with it lol - I also use a butcher I buy half a lamb at a time. I get it all then and spend that weekend making soup, stock with bits we'd rather not eat lol, freezing and then it works out good value. To be honest it really does depend on your life style and what time & money you have available. I think a butcher is better for taste, value (if you use it all and I mean it all). But a supermarket is better for speed and convenience.

adelight

Go for cheaper cuts of meat, offers and see which butchers around you do the best deals. Whole chickens or dark meat are usually much cheaper than breasts. Pork can be very cheap on offer, supermarkets even have chops for £3/kg quite often.
How do you feel about offal? It can be very cheap and delicious, or even use half offal half meat ie steak and kidney stew.

Popperwell

Good butchers are rare around here and without your own transport difficult to find...

But I tend to buy some meat and stretch it out to go further and to be honest you can eat too much protein which are hard for the kidneys to process and as I have damaged kidneys I am better eating smaller portions anyway.

Luckily I managed to time my visit to the local SM when some things were yellow stickered so an example would be a pork loin worth £6 for £2, Diced pork worth £4 for £2 and even a turkey joint for Christmas for £2 instead of £6...

What would be seen as cheaper cuts are often not much cheaper at the SM. Mine has recently increased the variety that they sell and Lamb Neck Fillet is not really much cheaper than the better quality meat...

craigywv

our butchers does a 12 quid meat parcel which is either 1 very lg chicken or 1 good sized pot roast beef, 1 lb beef saus,1lb pork steaks, 1lb frying steak,1lb vegetable roll which is sausage meat and veg and 1lb mince steak and either a packet of bacon good thick stuff or 6 fr eggs its great value and the que is constantly out in the street he does a christmas club which i joined in august and what you get is what you ask for i love the local butchers but always look out for yellow sticker meat and veg in local tescos as i find thats were i get the best bargains.

Going4TheDream

Personally I think it depends on the butcher as to the cost. Some butchers just sell just the same quality as the supermarket imo, intensively farmed, often pumped full of water etc, lots more fatty bits thrown into the mince to make it seem more, overly fatty stewing beef etc and price accordingly, other butchers sell on quality and that is reflected in the price.

I find decent butchers meat more dense so it is more filling so I need less. I would only need one decent size butcher chicken breast for 2 people as they often come in at 8 or 10oz in weight and the taste is much better

Try cheaper cuts from the butcher, they will always advise how to cook, they will always sell you what you want weight wise rather than supermarkets pricing bigger packs at lower kg price and smaller packs of the same product at a higher kg price. Coming up to winter is a great time to look at cheaper cuts as they can be slow cooked to make very tasty meals, stews and casseroles.

Liver, scrag end, that kind of thing

hilstep2000

Some are, some aren't. Ours charges £8.98 for 5lb of pork chops and they are really meaty. We paid £65 for our turkey last year tho!

Mrs_Arcanum

If you can get it Mutton is great for stews and cheaper than Lamb but only available at the butchers. A little goes a long way too as 100g per person is plenty. Better quality meat needs smaller portions which is better all round.

I will buy our butchers sausages but only 1 each & 2 for DH as they are properly meaty and flavoursome.

krlyr

As well as sourcing cheaper meat, try to find creative ways of stretching it further. Make fajitas and bulk it out with more peppers, onion, salad - the other week I added some chopped up sausage to ours and used less chicken, it made for a different flavour and the sausages were cheaper than chicken breast. Add potatoes and chunky veg to casseroles/stews/pies. Bulk out minces with beans or pulses (e.g. add more kidney beans to a chili than you usually would, mix lentils in with bolognese, etc) and make cuts of meat look bigger than they are - e.g. stuff a chicken breast with stuffing so it looks bigger on a plate, or slice thinly and spread out so it covers 1/3 of the plate and looks more than it is. Serve cuts that are on the bone as they are, so they look bigger - a lot of our appetite is based on what we see, by the time he's reached the bone his tummy will have half his dinner in it and he may realise he's not as hungry as he thought. You might find that the better quality stuff at the butchers tastes stronger/better so you can use less of it anyway.

Popperwell

My local Tesco's does a mutton and lamb mince(combined that keeps the price down)