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?

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.

I'm not convinced this is the case. You personally might not always see where it goes, but I'm fairly sure it all goes somewhere. I was shopping the other day and saw a big bag of frozen Gressingham duck tongues, next to the bags of chicken feet. And of course there was the (probably partly feigned) horror and disgust at "pink slime", back when when Jamie Oliver was trying to manipulate children into rejecting products made from the scraps of meat left on a chicken carcass after the main processing. I always thought it was weird there was a fair-sized overlap between people who would rhapsodise about imaginary idealised rural Tuscans eating "nose to tail" and talk about respecting that an animal has died and having a responsibility to use all the meat, and those turning their noses up at using mechanically-reclaimed chicken scraps for nuggets.

Exactly!
Higher quality meat actually works out cheaper in the end. You need less of it as it's not pumped full of liquid.
Even when you go to a restaurant you don't get entire chicken, you get a single leg or breast carved up.
If the chicken is both large and not artificially inflated a single chicken breast when carved up can feed two people. With roast potatoes, yorkies, veggies etc it's quite a lot.
For the two of us a large chicken feeds us for at least 4 meals, we also get them from the same places as you.
I can get at least two 'meat as a main' meals and the rest goes into stir-fries, salads, curries and traybakes.
We only have one meat meal a day.
For a large chicken the carcass actually has quite a lot of meat, many people only eat the main pieces (legs, wings and breast) probably because the meat is difficult to get off the bone. But if you boil it for a bit (not too long otherwise flavour goes into the liquid!) it comes off quite easily. I sieve this off and the continue boiling the bones to make chicken stock.

I try to do one roast a week which is often pork as it is affordable and slow cooks well.

I'll make it do two evenings if I serve generous cauliflower cheese with it.
A roast gammon (small affordable piece) with cauliflower cheese is a nice meal.

Other meals are padded out with vegetables or completely vegetarian.

I can't say I've missed not eating meat most nights.

My portions used to come in at £1-£1.30 a portion. It's now more like £1.50-£2 a portion.

COL Is influencing meal choices.

If you can't afford a joint of meat, use sausages either on their own or as a toad in the home with all the usual roast dinner trimmings. Works out much cheaper.

*hole not home!

@Nothingbuttheglory What makes you think that chicken is a higher welfare meat than beef or lamb?!
Because they have such a short life they can't be suffering, or is it that a bird is of less value than a mammal?
I'd say if animal welfare is your concern, steer clear of chicken and pig products and go for high welfare organic beef, mutton and wild venison.

Oh I'm 100% with you - I think it ridiculous that we aren't using the otherwise wasted bits in processed food. Why do chicken nuggets need to be made from 100% breast meat? They really dont. But a talk for a different thread.
Then"off cuts" do get used, often for animal food etc but usually farmers etc get paid nothing or absolutely minimal for them. I'm glad youve seen offal etc in the supermarket, we certainly dont in the ones near me unless I go to a proper butcher or into a city and go to an Indian or Caribbean food store. Certainly not in sainsburys or waitrose. I couldn't even get bone marrow recently, let alone a pork knuckle or anything like tripe.

Has to be the local Chinese supermarket to get the duck tongues/chicken feet/udder/tripe etc., true, but I do see some types of offal in my local mainstream supermarkets, especially Morrison's — liver, kidneys, hearts, tongue, marrowbone, trotters, tailbone, varies by species — and I'm sure that less in-demand muscle meat turns up in sausages and burgers and grill steaks and things. Whichever route it's sold through, I doubt there's much that goes entirely to waste, not when there's at least a little money to be made out of it. Whether the farmers see any benefit from it is another question, though.

We have a joint almost every Sunday
I buy it at the butchers as I don’t buy supermarket meat
Expensive? Well yes I suppose it is
But IMO worth it
Basis of a lovely meal for my family and guests,and usually enough for leftovers

We have a joint on a Sunday (a whole chicken today) and then something else during the week, rib of beef, leg of lamb, duck or pork shoulder.
Having bought high welfare meat for the past 20 years it’s always seemed comparatively expensive compared to what you can buy in the supermarkets but I don’t seem to really have noticed much of a price hike recently.
Our chicken today cost £19 I think, it will do 5 of us for dinner tonight and there might be enough to make a chicken bacon and mayo sandwich tomorrow.

Another cheap way to do a roast is to buy chicken legs....I got a packet of 5 in Aldi for less than £2.50.

What makes you think that chicken is a higher welfare meat than beef or lamb?!

Um. I don't think that and I did not intend to imply it. Let me rephrase.

"chicken thighs and [beef/pork/lamb] mince"

Bought a free range chicken for £18 ... it did 4 of us, there's enough left for 2 sandwiches and I've made stock. It's not the MN never ending chicken. But that is expensive for 6 meals and some soup....

I don't mind, I'd rather buy free range than a cheapy chicken....but it is expensive.