Speaking personally I love good beef and I’m always happy to pay a bit more for a nice piece that has a beautiful flavour and texture. However, if you want something just a little bit better it’s not always easy to find.
To find a source of first class beef I needed to meet a butcher who could guide me in my search and give me an insight into what makes fresh meat great rather than just simply good.
The answer came when I met Ian Warren, master butcher whose family owns and run one of the finest fresh meat establishments that I have come across anywhere in the country.
The basis they believe lies in using beef from traditional breeds, rather than continental crosses that have pastured in areas where they have plenty of exercise and access to a rich verity of herbs and grasses. Then, once they’ve selected a carcass for sale it’s hung for at least 21 days before cutting… that’s it, simple really. It also helps that the family also farm their own beef so they really do know the subject ‘from pasture to plate’
I’ve been lucky in getting to know Ian and spend time in his business learning about what makes for really good beef. I asked once whether it’s the length of time the carcass has been hung (assuming, as most people do, that the longer the better) that produces the best beef. The short explanation is no it isn’t. The length of time is, of course, important but you need the quality right from the start otherwise after 21 days of hanging, the beef will still not reach the highest level of quality required by the discerning customer.
What Ian actually said was “you can hang a tractor tyre for 28 days if you want, but it’ll still be a tractor tyre”.
Another interesting anecdote from Ian was about his father, also a master butcher, who still to this day goes out to local farms and selects the beef he wants for the shop while the beastie is still roaming around the pasture.
“The first thing he does,” Ian says, “is to get down on his knees and grab a handful of grass, rub it in his hands and give it a good long sniff.”
Wow, and that’s before he gets down to assessing the animal. If you’re looking for that little bit of extra quality in your Sunday roast, that’s got to be a good place to start!
According to Ian the key to producing the best beef comes from a combination of the breed, the age of the beast (where really two-and-a-half to three years old is optimal), the pasture the animal has grazed throughout its life and the how much stress it suffers at the end.
Personally, I think that the long and short of it is that mass produced meat is delivered to our plates on the basis of how much it costs on the supermarket shelves. There’s nothing wrong with that, as consumers we’re being supplied with what we’re asking for so we mustn’t complain if what we’ve bought falls a little short of our expectations.
However, as always I think it’s worthwhile just looking to see just what the difference really is in terms of price and just how much more per person you’d be paying for something which is truly excellent rather than just ‘fine’.
Depending on what and where you’re buying you’ll probably find that the difference is about 50p to a £1 per person between a slow grown pastured animal and an intensively farmed one. The basic equation here is “a bit more for a lot more” which sounds pretty good to me.
Warrens have a shop on Pennygillam Industrial estate, near Launceston and just off the A30. It’s a fabulous place where you can watch the butchers at work and talk to the guys about what you’re looking for, just like the old days…
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