Rachel Johnson's £32 chicken!

[Fifi2022]

Was listening to LBC discussing the cost of living or high salaries, can't remember what. Anyway, she said she bought a chicken from her local butcher for £32! She justified it by saying it was herb fed! I was flabbergasted to say the least.
Do people on a high salary really spend their money like this without any thought?

A new butcher has opened up local to me and it is expensive. Bought from there twice but the cost is higher than I thought it would be.
I'm in the south east but not near London.

It probably is somewhat relective a chicken raised in normal environment until its slaughtered. Cheap battery chickens should be banned made illegal, which most chickens are despite red tractor and rspca labels and all that.

Some people spend 100's of £ on a rental car every month when in reality they should have a second hand Ford Fiesta on their actual income. People will spend what they will on what they like.

This!

A medium chicken from our local butcher in leafy West London is £20ish. For one adult and two small children, it does 2 dinners, plus one child's lunch for another two/three days, and probably a sandwich for DH, too.

We have a very high household income but I don't spend this money without thinking. It's a very careful choice. I'm veggie, and so when I buy meat for others in the house, I try to buy high welfare and I like supporting a local small business. I appreciate that I'm fortunate to be able to make those choices. But I'm not setting fire to pound notes: I'm buying a product I feel is worth paying a premium for.

I spend a lot on food. But I drive a six year old car with no intention of changing it and buy a lot of my clothes on EBay. I also buy nice shampoo but cheap as chips moisturiser. But meat-ethically reared is expensive. We eat it a couple of times a week-the rest of the time, it’s tinned fish and pulses.

No, it doesn't at all. It means you're hoping to get ethically raised and slaughtered meat. I eat vegetarian 75% of the time, to ensure I only eat meat that I can trace back to both slaughter house and farm. No more expensive that eating cheap meat 100% of the time.

The chicken I have pre ordered for Christmas is costing over £40. It's a capon from a small holding that they will slaughter themselves. I will get giblets with it.

And Christmas is a special occasion.

Don't assume that a butcher means ethically raised and slaughtered meat. I remember having a chat with our local butcher once - he said he buys as high quality as he can, but he has to be guided by what his customers will pay and in his case, they won't pay for the good stuff and he can't sell it so he doesn't buy it.

"Do people on a high salary really spend their money like this without any thought?"

Well, yeah, of course! Why wouldn't they?

I buy a chicken from our local butcher, they’re around the £25 mark. We are too used to cheap food.

We have a crap local butcher. They don't do anything organic. I just go to sainsburys or waitrose.

Pretty sure I spent over £30 on an organically raised turkey from a local butcher - way back in the 90s!

I agree. There is a sort of unspoken idea that a butcher means quality.
There is a reason so many of them have gone out of business.
Mine doesn't label what it is you might be buying. Nor a price. The old fashioned I will charge you what I decide prevails.

I don't presume that. But it makes tracing easier, and I only use ones I know and trust already. The Christmas chicken is coming from someone I know.

That’s not true. I’ve got a C local butchers by me on its own farm. One of those fancy over priced jobbies that’s branched out into a cafe, gift shop etc. Tgeir meat is delicious but expensive but at the far end of the counter is their own pre packaged meat with a shortish date on special offer. Their braising steak is really good value and I pay around £10 a kilo and freeze it as soon as I get home. The been mince is £10 for 1.3-1.5 kg and I just divvy it up and freeze it. It’s Brittany quality and all of their beef is grass feed and flavourful. They also give you free bones for stock or dogs when you spend £15+ so I make my own stock and reduce it down.

as for sausages and bacon I’m very lucky that my sister works in a cafe and we get a wholesale cash order , a big box of Kennedys award winning sausages is £10 and I divide them into 8x6. The thick cut back bacon is £13 for 2.2kg and the sausage and bacon lasts us 4/6 weeks easy for very little money.

One could argue that it’s MUCH better than £36 herb fed chicken

Are you including food in that total?

I have never bought a whole chicken in my life - what do they normally cost?
But if it's quite large, organic, from a good supplier, then £32 is what it costs for the quality she wants. It's her money, so what's the problem?

Yes!

Same here.

We only have artisan butchers and farm shops around here, haven’t had a family butcher that we could all afford for years.

How is that, @Cynic17 - assuming you’re not vegetarian?

Have to say, as an ex-carnivore (pescatarian for about 20 years) I’m always a bit perturbed when posters on cooking and housekeeping threads list their ‘too expensive’ weekly shop items - they always seem to include cut up bits of supermarket chicken, rather than a whole chicken that you can do so much more with.

I’m glad there is a market for expendivechappy chickens. I do but free range, but that’s beyond my means.

They'd have to on a higher income than us. No way would I spend that on a chicken, and I do but higher welfare meat when possible.