My 3 year old is a devoted carnivore.
She never knowingly eats fruit or vegetables in native form but can devour a large rare steak.
She loves going to our local butchers with my mum and picking out what she wants.
I love the way my mum is passing on all her knowledge of buying great steaks, joints and stewing meat. She learnt it from her own mum who cooked the best steak & Sunday roasts ever!
I have very strong memories of going to the butchers with my mum and grandma when I was little and them chatting away to the butcher and inspecting the meat.
Unfortunately, I was not as good a student as my daughter and can't remember any of the wisdom shared on these trips!
So I asked my mum to give me her top tips for buying the best beef and here they are.
If you have your own do add them to the list ... and check out all the brilliant beef recipes shared by other bloggers at the bottom of this post ...
Top Tips for Buying the Best Beef
- Go to a traditional independent butcher if you can
- Beef needs to be well hung but cut as freshly as possible, so better to buy from a butcher where you can see the meat hanging and know it has been cut recently on site
- Get to know your butcher and ask his advice - if you chat and show an interest, they'll "look after" you
- Let your butcher know in advance what you want
- Buy beef from named farms as local to you as you can
- If you can buy beef from cows who've been grazed on organic grass land & who haven't been treated with steroids etc - if the cows have eaten a good, diverse diet, it just tastes better!
- Beef flesh should be bright red
- Beef fat should be a rick, dark cream in colour
- Make use you buy the right cut of beef for what you're cooking
- Sirloin, topside and silverside are good cuts for traditional roast joints
- Pick lean cuts with little fat for stew e.g. chuck steak or braising steak
- Buy the tenderest rib or sirloin cuts you can afford for steaks
- The most tender (and expensive) steaks are fillet steaks
- T-bone steaks are half tender fillet steak & half tasty sirloin so a double whammy of tender & tasty
- Fry steaks in a really hot pan & keep turning them over
- Quick fry cheaper rump steaks so they don't become tough
- Brisket is a good value joint but needs to be slow cooked to keep tender
- Beef shank is quite tough but can be used for soups and making stock
- You need to buy about 6oz of bone less beef and 12oz of boned beef per person
- Let steaks & roast joints "rest" for 5 minutes before actually serving
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