Anyone else buying cheaper meat?

[Synny]

Things like chicken thigh, Turkey mince and gammon?

Used to be chicken breast and steak but cutting back and trying to think outside the box.

Any hints and tips on best way to cook gammon? Thinking slow cooker as apparently they are also cheap to run. But do I just plonk it in and turn it on?

Any other inventive cheap meat options?

I’m buying Quorn now, it’s cheaper and tastes ok.

MANY people have adverse reactions to it. Like volcano but from all orifices.... And yo we had it at home

Flipping heck, how much did you buy? Mince is £10-£12/kg at most!

No problem @Bubblebubblebah

You can make some great East Asian dishes using minced pork and pork belly slices- the sauces and marinades tend to be highly flavoured so you find that you don't eat as much meat and the dish can be padded out with loads of pickled carrots, rice and stir fry veg. You need fish sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce and runny honey but all of those things last ages once you've made the initial purchase.
I use chicken thighs with loads of paprika and garlic, tinned tomatoes, carrots and red peppers (the grilled ones in the big jars from the world food aisle) with either rice or orzo to make a baked casserole dish. You can use sausages in this too.
Chicken thighs, mushrooms and any left over bacon / ham in a tin of condensed soup (chicken or mushroom) topped with either ready rolled puff pastry or mashed potatoes makes an excellent pie.
I am still finding reasonably priced beef joints for a Sunday roast and the leftovers make a great pie or curry, especially if you've used a slower cooked joint like a brisket.
It sounds a bit crazy but smoked salmon trimmings are a good cheap option too - they only cost a couple of quid and add s lot of flavour to something like a risotto with loads of frozen peas.
The 3 for £10 section is pretty good, but not as it used to be. You can pick up large packs of sausages or chicken thighs and drumsticks there and pork joints. The sausages and chicken packs will make a couple of meals depending on how many you're serving and you can make such a diverse range of dishes with these meats and same vegetables just switching the carbs and flavours.

Pork belly slices have become a bit of a treat in our house too - we have a Ninja Foodi so I pressure cook them in a load of Vietnamese flavours, then drain the liquid and air fry them with a bit of hoisin sauce. Can't beat it!

@MotherWol I’m not even sure, I just said enough for a big pie 🤣
To be fair, there was a lot, enough for the big pie, and put half in the freezer, but still!

I've been avoiding meat entirely and using beans and lentils more. They're cheaper and better environmentally too.

A good butcher will, although sometimes you may need to order ahead. Not based in the UK and most butchers here outsource the actual slaughtering so if it's something they don't normally sell I'll just order the week before.

Oxtail isn't cheap at all here, but one of our local butchers regularly sells good value beef cheeks, pork cheeks and other braising cuts. Veal and ox tongue is regularly sold and really yummy especially if it's pre-brined and made in a pressure cooker. Our local butchers sell them brined but it's not hard to do at home. There's a great recipe for it in Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail cookbook (which is a great resource for this sort of thing.)

Lamb isn't terribly common around here - most people don't venture away from lamb leg or cutlets. I actually prefer shoulder but need to order ahead or look for a Muslim butcher. Same for lamb kidneys or lamb heart - great recipes in Henderson. Lamb shanks funnily enough aren't cheap anymore, and they're so greasy it's put me off a bit.

For poultry we're lucky enough to be near a specialty retailer. Have always preferred thighs or whole birds anyway. We also buy a lot of chicken liver - costs pennies, is very quick to prepare (quick-seared then doused with a bit of Marsala wine and cream) and very tasty. Occasionally I'll get chicken hearts and giblets and braise them in a tomato sauce to serve with pasta. And over the past couple of years I've re-discovered stewing hens for soup - much better value than using a young chicken and actually gives a lot more flavour.

We've always enjoyed less popular cuts: beef shin makes the best stew, pie or chilli but takes a lot of cooking to really bring out the flavour and get a gelatinous gravy.

Our local butcher does cubed goat meat which is cheap and tasty but full of bones so you can't really use it for something other than an informal meal as you have to eat it with a spoon and pick out the bones as you go!

After years of prevaricating I bought my first pigs head last year. It was British and welfare farmed. I wouldn't do it again: the flavour of the cheek meat was excellent but making brawn overall was way more effort than it was tasty and it took ages to pick out the bristles (yuck).

Tongue and heart are both very dense muscle with a distinctive flavour so you really don't need much to make a very rich meal for the winter. It depends how squeamish you are: my DC can eat a stuffed lambs heart but DH has to have it sliced for him before I serve up even though he loves the taste.

We are rural so have access to game and rabbit from the farm. It is so healthy, cheap (or free) and lean but you need to be able to prep it yourself.

I do buy New Zealand Lamb, but otherwise try to buy British welfare meat, so I'd rather buy a cheaper cut of that than a 'top cut' from a less quality source.

Most people on here aren't talking about "cheap meat" as in cheaply raised meat, but about "lesser cuts", essentially nose to tail eating. Preferably from a good producer- not a good idea to buy e.g. offal on the cheap especially from somewhere you can expect improper use if antibiotics.

Just ask them about it and pre-order! Our local butchers will simply adjust their own order but need to plan ahead. Sometimes does mean ordering somewhat larger quantities and freezing part of it.

Lamb neck is way better than lamb shoulder. Totally won a cook off in our house

Re having to order larger quantities. My mum orders with her friends. So they then split the meat, save money and everyone is happy

Personally I wasn’t keen on gammon in the slow cooker. I do cook chicken thighs in my slow cooker in a jar of tikka masala sauce… yum!

Sourced or shot and killed 3 brace of duck?
sorry I couldn’t eat those. Do you pluck it and gut it yourself?

@user1471541711
He short a brace and a half and brought me back some extra that a chap who he was out with shot. Yes I pluck and gut them.
Ah do you not eat meat?

Shot even! 😂

Beef shin makes the best casserole, bourguignon and stew.
Chicken thighs are more suited to long cooking, breasts get tough and stringy.

Turkey mince is amazing and very versatile, particularly thigh mince which is cheaper than breast mince.

I was thinking this

£3 for 500g roughly

Could have been a worse typo😂
Had a look at the page and nothing near me😫 I will be obsessively checking now.

@Bubblebubblebah my thoughts exactly! 😂 you can always pop a post up for what you want and which area you are.

We have paneer instead of meat in curry’s now. I much prefer it and it’s loads cheaper.

I love chicken thigh, I always choose that over breast. It's much tastier.

I have stopped buying free range, which I always used to. But the only meat I buy really is chicken thighs and very occasionally beef mince.

We've been buying our bacon and sausages from home and bargains. 1kg of thick cut back bacon for £3.99 so it's now cheaper than aldis streaky bacon, and 2 packet of 8 fresh Springdale sausages for 99p each. The kids LOVE the sausages so that's brilliant. We have a full breakfast with half the bacon and a pack of sausages, bacon butties for lunch another day and sausage mash and peas for an evening meal.

I've also found that chicken thighs are creeping up in price so started looking around. This week the cheapest was the fresh 2kg chicken legs from Asda . On offer for 3 for £10. I do 1 full pack in the pressure cooker. Pull the meat off. Drain the stock. 1/3 of the meat goes into a chicken and sweetcorn soup with the stock. 1/3 of the meat goes into a curry. 1/3 of the meat for a roast dinner. Then I reboil the bones with carrots, celery and onions and use the stock to make gravy. Best gravy EVER.

I've also found my kids love corned beef hash and beans. Luckily I bought 8 tins when it was still £1.60. So that's a really cheap and easy dinner

Other than that I'm doing spaghetti with chopped up hot dogs once a week . Smart price spaghetti, passata, garlic, oregano and basil. Hot dogs. Bit of cheese. About £2 for the 4 of us?