To think meat is getting more and more rubbish

[Daisyxxchainxx]

I have always eaten meat. I also feed my kids meat. On an average week they have meat based tea 3-4 times.

Usually a chicken dinner
Sausage and mash
Bolognese/lasagne or cottage pie
Sometimes pork loins or a pork roast

The rest of the week we have things like pasta, fish, chicken burgers pizza or wraps

I've started to notice I can't eat sausages anymore. They make me feel so sick. Weird as I've in always had them. But I appreciate they are not good for you but it's useful with veg and mash. We also love spaghetti Bolognese but the mince is hit and miss. I often find grey patches in it. It often has a swollen packet and heaps and heaps of fat come out of it. I try and get the 5% fat one but often it's not available.

I've started cooking turkey balls as I figure they are healthier than beef mince?

I've tried musclefood chicken and wow it tasted so much nicer. I definitely noticed a difference in its quality. But they don't sell much else in terms of joints etc.

Is the best from butcher's loads better? Or is meat just rubbish in general?

I'm not wanting to go veggie but I don't want to feed my kids crap. If it's affecting me after thirty years of eating it I worry how rubbish it is.

Sorry for the waffle. Any suggestions?

We refuse to buy any meat that isn’t from the butchers. Chicken breasts in particular are horrible from the supermarket and have a weird texture. Our butcher’s chicken breasts are from local free range birds, taste so much better and are about 50% bigger and cost very little more. All our butchers meat is lovely.

Even the fancier supermarket meat is hit and miss BUT Morrison’s meat always seems good. Would recommend you eat less meat but better quality from there and local butchers maybe?

Of course theres massive differences in the quality of meat. The quality of the treatment of the animal and the meat differs massively.
I dont eat meat, but when I buy meat to serve I use pipers farm. They do loads of proper quality stuff and the animals have had better lives.
I can suggest a few quality meat alternative brands if you're considering that.

We have a butchers next door to our office. They are not neccesarily better, honestly I think some of the stuff that turns up is rejects from the slaughterhouse.

There are some online delivery places offering better farmed meat?we try and have a couple of meat free days, a fish day etc. I think provenance is increasingly important.

We buy all of our meat from the local butcher. It's always nice.

Butcher;s sausages are much better.. As are their chickens, lamb chops , mince etc. You might pay a bit more (although it doesn't feel like it to me, we go once a month and spend maybe 50 quid, but a lot of that is mince that makes meals for the freezer e.g shepherds pie, lasagna etc) but it is worth it if you uhave a good one near by,

Ours also knows where the meat is sourced from and is pretty on it - we once went in and asked for rabbit, and he said he'd had to send them back as not good enough. I liked that quality control.

You think it's shit now? Just wait til after Brexit

We buy all of our meat from the butchers, most from a farm shop which rears a lot of the animals on site. The quality is massively better than supermarkets and you can be much more sure about the welfare side of things too

Morrisons isnt too bad. As far as supermarkets go it's pretty good.

Meat from aldi and lidl is revolting though despite what everyone says about it being the same.

Maybe its their storage or packaging but the chicken tastes really weird and the mince is gritty.

I intend when lock down is properly over to hit a decent butcher and Farm shop for veg and fruit.

It's not just meat. Fish too is tasteless. Salmon, sea bass...all the farmed shit doesn't taste of anything. You have to smother them with a sauce to make them edible.

Agree to Aldi & Lidel Chicken tasting revolting.
It’s chewy and rubbery 🤢

Veggie is the way forward, for so many reasons. Meat is going to get worse after Brexit, like @BirthdayCakes said.

I wouldn't eat supermarket meat if I could help it. Butchers all the way here. Far superior quality and great customer service.

We only eat quorn mince, free range chicken from Sainsbury and other meat from butcher.

Supermarket meat and poultry is really awful. I've found it pumped with water, tons of fat, chewy, grainy and actually doesn't taste like meat. It use to be OK. Our local butchers aren't the best, I think they think profit over everything, so getting round steak mince now always has some cheap shit mixed into it!! Before covid, I actually started finding restaurants serving shite too, maybe I'll just hunt myself or eat seeds

We don't buy much meat as most of us don't eat it, but what we do buy is grass fed, high welfare, organic beef mince (and occasionally beef sausages) from an excellent local supplier. I wouldn't buy anything else.

Zero fat comes off it and it's never grey or anything like that. It's also healthier in terms of nutrients - grass fed beef higher in Omegas etc and less damaging to environment and our overall health as they aren't fed on soya, given antibiotics routinely, etc etc.

You can see the actual meat in the sausages too, I dread to think what Walls et al put in those weird beige mushy ones.

It's probably 3-4 times the price of the crap you get in the supermarket though. You get what you pay for.

We buy local and there's a massive difference. The Musclefoods chicken we got (did a panic order at the start of lockdown) was from Lithuania and not that nice. Not that there's anything wrong with Lithuania but I'd rather have British chicken. The quality from our local butcher is far superior and they deliver now too!

We have meat once, sometimes twice per week. But decent meat from good butchers. The rest a mix of vegan and veggie meals

And although it's more expensive it's not massively so.

For example, our butcher does a meat pack for £20 that's at least 400g of:

• Steak Mince
• Pork Sausages
• Chicken Fillets
• Boneless Pork Chops
• a pack of 4 Angus Burgers

We got two of those and froze stuff and they did us quite a few meals.

We only have meat about twice a week. And that is from our local farm shop, they
raise and slaughter pigs, sheep & chickens. Beef comes from a farm about 15 miles down the road. Granted it's 10x more expensive, but a joy to eat, in taste and texture! The only way we can afford it is by eating less meat and bulk buying other food stuff like pulses pasta and rice.

I've noticed a really weird texture in some chicken breasts from the supermarket...very tough. I googled it and it's called "woody breast" apparently. Really horrible. Yanbu op.

And with butchers meat I have found you don’t need as much meat because it’s decent proper stuff

I don’t really eat meat but DH eats some and I do cook it for him sometimes. There’s a big difference between organic and non-organic imo. I wouldn’t have non-organic chicken in the house. Same with eggs. During lockdown we had some normal eggs substituted for organic ones and the quality was noticeably poorer.

I think organic or local & ethically sourced is the way to go. After Brexit this will be even more important. Yes, it costs more but eating more veggie meals balances it out.

I have just looked at the ingredients for a well known brand of sausages. They contain a whole 42% pork meat which is as much proof as needed about the awful quality of them!

Our local butchers isn't that great but our local farm shop is excellent but quite expensive. Probably worth it to be honest and at least you know exactly where it's come from. I also find the meat in Waitrose and M&S much nicer than the other supermarkets.