To b shocked by the price of meat a tthe butchers?

[LyraSilvertongue]

I bought:

Two sirloin steaks

Two (individual) chicken and mushroom pies

Eight thin slices of salami.

It came to more than £19.

And they wonder why people go to supermarkets for their meat. I'd love to buy good quality meat all the time but at that price we'd hardly ever eat it.

There is a fantastic butchers near my mums house and i WOULD LOVE TO BUY ALL MY MEAT FROM THERE BUT WOULD PROBABLY SPEND THE AMOUNT YOU DID! iT'S WORTH IT THOUGH.

Sorry for cps

I'm guessing that was mostly the sirloin steaks....

I'd braced myself for it to be more than Sainsbury's bit I wasn't expecting it to be that much more.
The sirloin steaks were £13.50 and they're not huge.

I know I bought a free range chicken and 4 steaks last week and it cost me £19, In fairness the steaks were the best I've ever tasted that I've cooked myself and I'll never buy steak from a supermarket again.

We eat very litle meat now so that when we do we can buy it from the butcher instead.

Is it good quality - properly hung beef, pies with a decent amount of meat in etc? I would feel ripped off if the quality wasn't noticeably better.

i don't know why people expect good meat to be cheap. if you are buying british meat you are paying the farmer a fair price. if you are buying meat at the supermarket there is a good chance it is mass produced shite and the farmer is only making a buck if the husbandry standards are rock bottom.

I know but the price difference is shocking.

The sad truth is though that the butcher's prices reflect how much meat really costs. Supermarkets are able to keep their prices artificially low. Also butchers tend to use better sourced meat.

Thats because the supermarkets have the buying power and the influence over meat production to enable them to sell meat at completely unrealistic prices.

Meat should not be cheap. It should be something thats eaten rarely and used carefully.

I tend to find there is more difference between the cheaper and more expensive cuts at a butcher than at the supermarket - so you might pay more for the high-end stuff but you will also pay less for your scrag end....

good point Goat (sorry your name baffles me!) supermarkets ARE cheap but they aren't value for money. There is a difference.

There are some crap butchers though, who sell low quality stuff but charge ££££ for it. I think you need to be fussier and more savvy when buying from independent shops than from supermarkets.

Maybe once you've tasted the food you might change your mind.

wow, that is alot, but as people say it reflects quality and farmers probably getting a fair price. It's likely to be local farmers with smaller herds, so they can't knock it out at Tesco type prices (what isn't shipped in from Argentina etc.) £19 for 4 steaks and a chicken sounds better though.

Actually I got a nice little booklet with my chicken telling me all about the farmer it came from, with cooking suggestions and the chicken came with giblets and I made a lovely stock for the gravy. Don't think you get giblets in supermarket chickens do you?

I've had butchers meat before and yes the quality is far superior but it has to be a rare treat.
Maybe if more people shopped in butchers the price might come down a bit.

How big were the steaks?

I bought 2 fillet steaks yesterday from our local butchers and it came to just under £8 - although one of the steaks wasn't very big as it was for DD.

I guess you're paying for quality. I'd rather pay more for the animal to have a decent life than the awful factory farming situation.
If meat wasn't heavily subsideid it would all be expensive and poeple would see it as a treat, not a right.

They're kinda medium sized, neither big nor small. I thought they'd be about £8.

Message withdrawn

Lyra, I recently bought 2 pretty small steaks from Sainsbury's Taste the Difference range - even that cost nearly £6.

Exactly Mercy you do still pay quite high price for steak at the supermarket.

Mmmmm, the pies are pretty delicious. DSs are eating them now...

I buy meat rarely, but when I do, I go to Lidgates here in London. You know you are buying the top quality in meat. That being said, I need to take out a mortgage to buy 3 fillet steaks for the family...about 30 pounds. Did I mention I buy meat very rarely?

why should meat be cheap?

Surely sirloin steaks are a very rare treat?