To ask how you determine the quality of the meat you by?

[FoxesRevenge]

Inspired by the meat washing thread.

A few people refer to 'decent' and 'good quality' meat. How do you determine what this and why? Do you judge the quality by price, where you purchase it, what it says on the packaging etc?

Title should have said meat you buy. (Blaming the wine)

I only buy meat very very rarely. I get beef and chicken from local farm shop and butchers as has dates of slaughter etc and location of breeding (local). You pay a premium but confident of provenance. I don't eat it myself but do sometimes cook for those that do.

I think meat is one of the things you get what you pay for.

It's good if I don't get poorly after eating it. That's how I judge

I buy organic chicken because I think you can taste the difference to the cheap stuff that's just pumped full of water.

Red meat I don't really have a clue - I just look at it and pick something that looks ok

The colour and the fat on it. A lot of people think fat is bad, but it's not, it's where the flavour comes from. You want to see enough thin white lines of fat but not thick lines, that will make it tough. It should be mostly the one colour and nice and bright.

A good butchershop is a diamond, ask locally.

I go by taste mostly. Massive difference between the rump steak at tescos and the rump steak from our local farm shop. Plus you can actually see the cows at the farm, they look so big and tasty!

I'm a butcher's daughter. My dad taught me all he knows.

Farm assured labels

We buy ours from a farm shop that sells its own meat.

I buy from suppliers I trust. I know their meat is good quality because of the look of it, the texture and the taste, and if I'm not happy with it I don't go back. I'm lucky enough to have the choice of five local butchers: two are good, two are fantastic, and unfortunately they've spoiled me for pre-packed supermarket meat. Even the top supermarket ranges don't have the same flavour and are far more expensive.

And I never wash it.

It is interesting. It is experience .

A few weeks ago I bought a big piece of pork for roasting. ( cheap cut). Halfway through the roasting about half a pint or more of water had come out, so Had to drain the roast. Meat was stringy.

This week I bought the same cut, but it was organic free range, local. It oozed zero water. It was tastier and just better.

It is like cheap bacon: masses of water oozes out and you are left with teeny bits.

Real ( unadulturated) bacon just goes crispy, not wet.

I disagree somewhat with getting what you pay for.
It depends largely on how you cook it.
I make oxtail stew today for dh and I plus our 5 children, it was delicious, every bit was eaten.

I buy most of my meat from a couple of local butchers. It is definitely superior in texture & flavour to supermarket meat, and a little cheaper.

I would love love love to go to my local butchers/ fishmongers, but money means we can only afford 'less than 20% fat' mince and asda value chicken, but treated the right way you can still get some decent flavour..

we spend our birthday and Christmas money from parents at the butchers, we are like kids in a sweet shop!

I buy from the supermarket. I don't buy value meat as its pumped full of water. If I do a roast I like a happy chicken.

I don't have a local farm shop or butchers.

I have a good local butcher in a shop and another butcher on the local market both can tell you exactly where the meat is from and prepare meat to order. I do know another butcher on the market sells what I'd class as sub standard meat and I wouldn't touch it.

I chat to the cows before I decide what one is going to get deaded

I chat to the cows before I decide what one is going to get deaded

Jab ands a butcher. He gets the meat!

Source
Source
Source
Provenance
Provenance
Provenance

I only buy fresh meat from Waitrose or my local butcher
my local butcher has the postcodes of all his supplier farms in the shop

I buy any cut there is.
I Only ever buy organic or free range if its really reduced in price.
The onlything I do buy percifically is 5% fat or less steak mince because im on Slimming World.

Can I afford it?

Yes? Ok, that'll do.

I used to buy from a local farm that looked after its animals well and they were open to you looking at the conditions and where the animals were kept. I turned up one day to see two calves in the barn and couldn't help asking when they would be ready. The meat only travelled a few miles to the abbatoir and back and was butchered by the farmer. There is lot to be said for good butchering rather than production line factory stuff. Sadly that place has now shut, but we have a couple of local butchers who source their meat locally, one butcher gets his meat from family farms.

The meat does taste better than that from the supermarket, but like lot of families we buy a mix of meat from the supermarket and butche.r

It comes from Waitrose or M&S and will be organic, preferably Scottish (because of concerns about distance to abbatoir as I'm in Scotland rather than being patriotic about Scottish produce) and if pig or chicken free range. (lamb, beef and venison is not intensively farmed )