Joints of meat so expensive

[Thechocolateshop]

It’s just me and my husband and I’m finding that a joint of meat for a roast is so expensive. Do people just pay it? As an example I’ve checked the supermarkets and these are the prices:
Beef small £13
Pork £6-10 depending on cut (not a huge fan of pork)
Lamb £18 for a small leg more expensive the bigger you get
Chicken £6 small (don’t really like chicken)

by the time you put the whole meal together and especially if you’ve got children, I can’t see how everyone can afford it. Everyone I know loves a roast. I’m not seeing any special offers recently or even anything reduced.
I like roast beef to be honest, just feel that for one meal it’s quite expensive. What does everyone else think?

Haven't bought a joint of meat in years. Animal welfare is important to me (I mean, not important enough for me to go veggie but important enough to buy grass-fed organic etc) so we've downshifted the cut - we're buying chicken thighs and mince instead.

I think there are two things at play here. First, food prices are ridiculous at the moment (and I don't see that changing). But, secondly, I think we have got used to very cheap meat in the past and I don't think it's a bad thing that we're having to change that. We don't have a roast very often but we make the sides the main part of the meal and the meat is just a small amount on the side to make it last longer.

I haven’t cooked a roast for about two years now. I’m sure these prices mean that our eating habits will completely change. I just use mince for an occasional meat dish and meat substitutes like Quorn now.

You won't see special offers because it is expensive to raise and look after a life and then kill and prepare it for sale. A life isn't like a tin of beans or packet of crisps that costs just pennies to process on a factory production line. Farmers have to pay for vets, food, medicines, wages, etc., then there's transport to slaughterhouse, wages and overheads again, then transport/processing to get it to the supermarket. Animals are actually very cheap to eat when you think of all the stages in the process and the rising costs of transport, wages, power, etc.

I know what you mean @Thechocolateshop Yesterday I couldn't get over the size of a "large" chicken and a piece of beef brisket that was slightly larger than my fist was £8. We've always based a couple of meals during the week on leftovers but now it seems we've maybe enough for us to have a chicken sandwich for lunch.
I do bulk Sunday dinner out with veg but the variety of veg seems to be getting smaller too. I'm hoping next year to get our garden sorted and plant more varieties.
It all seems to be shrinkflation.

Beef and lamb have always been the most expensive. Nothing shocking there.

I think meat is sold too cheaply considering it's a living sentinel being that takes a lit of effort and money to raise.

and then there is the issue with the impact of mass animal rearing on co2 and n2o and other environmental issues.

but I appreciate the price rises are bit of a shock as we have become used to incredibly low prices, even for organic meat.

Meat should be expensive. Keeping animals in good conditions, with good feed and caring for them well is expensive.
However, as a society we've forgotten how to maximise what we process from an animal. We (generally) only use choice best cuts meaning huge proportions of the animal go to waste and we end up paying more for those choice cuts because the sellers have to maximise profits from a smaller amount of meat.
The best thing you can do are:
• either buy direct from a farmer (many will do half animal cuts if you have the freezer space) or go to a good butcher (good, not fancy pay through the nose for a stylish set up). They should be able to tell you where their animals are sourced from and how they are kept.
• Eat a roast less frequently. Rather than a supermarket cut once a week, have a high welfare butchers cut once a fortnight etc
• ask your butcher about alternative cuts and how to cook them best - do a brisket rather than a sirloin roast. Slow cook some lamb breast with vegetables rather than cooking a leg etc etc.
• learn how to stretch your joint. With chicken always buy a whole bird rather than portions - without going down the famous MN never ending chicken route, make sure you use the carcass for soup or stock etc, and sandwiches or a caesar salad etc. Then your £13 high welfare chicken makes more economical sense AND the bird isn't being wasted. A lamb leg an be turned into paella or risotto just from the scraps off the bone. Again a good butcher is your best friend as they can advise ways of stretching the meat out.
•by eating less choice cuts, as a group, this will bring some of the choice cut prices down as the overall price of a carcass down. It's known as carcass balancing. Eat faggots etc on the weeks you don't have a choice cut etc etc.

It is expensive, but we're seeing the true cost now as subsidies are being phased out alongside unprecedented agflation and ever increasing regulation which is expensive for farmers to comply with. Subsidy was never about keeping farmers, it was about keeping the cost of food down at the till. We'll soon be in a 'free market', and the poor will lose out.

That said - buy bulk direct from a farmer if you can at all get the initial outlay together. Half a lamb is £8/kg, beef would be £11/kg. Ask on your local facebook group who is selling half lambs, someone will come out of the woodwork!

You can get a small while chicken for (don’t quote me) £2.99 at sainsburys which is what we normally use when we have a roast!

Yes, they are!!

Alternatives. Stuff a pork fillet with grated apple, stuffing, cheese if your choice and wrap in bacon. It's like a homemade version of Porchetta. A fillet should serve 2 of you twice, so you can freeze half!

Lamb Chops rather than a leg. Marinade them however you fancy or serve plain!

Gammon Steaks

Sausages

Stuff some chicken Breasts?

Make Beef Olives with some braising beef?

But yes very expensive.

My son's not here for Sunday Roast today so it's a farm shop bought Steak and Guinness Pie for us. £4.49 but absolutely delicious! Feels like a real treat 💖

We use the butcher, a local farm or special offers at ocado (for fish and chickens, I only buy those on offer but always higher welfare).

I don’t buy meat in supermarkets very often. And it’s not that I’m loaded because I’m not, it’s because the money I get better value and better quality.

1kg of grass fed beef topside is £13.50 per kg at the local farm who rear their own cows. It doesn’t shrink in the oven. At Tesco, between £11-£15per kilo.

There was someone saying earlier about how a large chicken used to feed many meals.

A large free range chicken (on offer at Ocado) still feeds my family of four a roast, makes a chicken and stuffing pie for the next day, two sandwiches for lunch and two dishes for the cat.

So much of our meat is being pumped with water and we are paying for the privilege.

I haven't bought full price meat in months.

Reduced to clear all the way, we are having a lovely Co-Op joint of British beef today which was reduced from £16 to about £7. And it's quite a big lump of beef so will do for a roast tonight, and made into enchiladas or something tomorrow. I am quite a confident cook and happy to buy whatever is yellow stickered and work out what to do with it.

But I do think we should see large joints as a "treat" or a once in a while special food rather than everyday.

usually at Easter the big joints are half price in tesco - I fill up the freezer then.
or buy in bulk from a farmer - often works out better to buy half a lamb than the odd joint here and there

For my family, luckily, a roast is about a good variety of trimmings - home made sausage meat stuffing, braised red cabbage, Yorkshire's, roast spuds, at least two more seasonal veg. And a home made pudding. The meat is not necessarily the thing everyone looks forward to, so for cost and environmental reasons I only ever do a higher welfare chicken.

Unless you have large meat portions, a joint of meat does several meals. The beef joint I cooked the other week (for the two of us) did a roast, a cottage pie, there's another cottage pie in the freezer and another portion for two of us sliced and frozen waiting for me to do something with. It was a lump of silverside, cost £13 or £15, can't exactly remember. I don't think that's bad value.

We've had to really cut down over the last few weeks due to the cost of a weekly shop. I haven't bought a joint of meat for about 2 months. We are mainly having roasted chicken breasts/cottage pie/beef casserole etc rather than a joint of beef or pork.

I pay around £8 for two really good quality organic chicken breasts that don't shrink when cooked and are enough for four of us for a Sunday lunch.

I don't buy or look for cheap meat because it should be expensive and good quality.

If I can't afford it we may have a pie as a roast

Lidl veg for two people for a roast is good quality and really not a lot.

That’s the thing, we don’t have any kids at the moment so I could technically afford buy it but if I kept spending money on stuff like that we’d have none left 😂 I think the potatoes and veg are cheap enough so I suppose it’s just getting some good quality meat. Have you noticed a difference between organic and normal chicken?

Leaving aside the ethics, there is so much difference between a good quality (free range/organic) chicken and a cheap chicken. It's like two different types of meat. I find that high quality chickens go so much further and the meat is so much tastier.

@mynameiscalypso thanks! I will definitely buy us one next time to try.

And what a shit life that chicken will have had.

There are billions of people on this planet who do not eat meat every day, or even every week. There are plenty of other options.

The only 'non-organic' chicken in Tesco and Sainsbury's which costs that much is 1.9KG or more.
In Sainsbury's the small chicken costs £4 not £6.
Are you saying that the two of you polish off a large chicken in a single meal?

Thank goodness.

I live alone and can't justify the cosy, or faf just for me so I go and stay with my friends a few times a year and get the most amazing roast dinners there.