Is this expensive for butchers

[Muddypaws554]

I've always wanted to try meat from a butchers. I found one that delivers locally to me.

I got 6 Lincolnshire sausages and 6 cranberry and rosemary sausages for £10

I got 12 burgers for £14

Then I paid £6 for a beef mince 500g

And £6 500g for mutton mince.

Is that quite good?

£6 for 500g of mince is expensive compared to Tesco, but I’d hope you were getting locally raised meat from the butcher.

It’s more than I pay

Our butchers is way more expensive than the supermarket but it all comes from local farms (well, the stuff we buy from them does anyway), the quality is far better than what’s on offer at the supermarkets near us.

Yeah it is local. I'm hoping the food is better quality. I will split it into 2 aswel as there's only me and 2 kids.

Do any of you know an online butchers I could try please.

Try Lancashire Lamb Boxes. They raise their own animals on their farm and follow the whole process. You can find them on TikTok too.

Thank you..ill look at their prices. . I'm worried I've paid too much. I worked out it would be £25 in morrisons but I paid £38. I'm new to it all but want to try feed the kids better quality foods.

If you go on TikTok you’ll see the lovely lady who runs it, her land and animals. She does raw honey too. And it’s not just lamb!

It’s more than I would pay, but I suppose depends on the quality. Some of our local butchers are excellent and some are grim. There’s one that must just reek of smoke because the butcher is always in the door chain smoking.

I’d actually ask around locally to you. Lots of small farms will put together meat boxes or people will know someone who sells say 1/4 of a pig. As long as you have freezer space, it can be a good deal for high quality meat.

Tesco will charge you £10 for 500g of lamb mince so you got quite a good deal there, and the beef mince from the butcher is not much more expensive either.

@Muddypaws554 it depends on the quality of the meat. We have a local butcher who sells superb meat but he's more expensive than Waitrose and proportionately the quality does not justify the higher price.

What area are you in?

If its good meat then the price is fine.
We sell meat at markets and those kind of prices are fairly moderate farm shop level, not highest end.
The issue is most butchers just buy and sell, theu dont produce it, and not necessarily as good a quality as it should be. I'd look to be buying direct from the producers, not a butchers.
I can't recommend any as we use our own meat- but I'd be looking for dry aged meat, 28 days hung beef makes a huge difference. Even a few days makes a big difference to poultry, commercial birds are hot eviscersted which basically means they are processed and dressed all at once. Having them plucked then chilled long legged (no dressed, with the insides left in) for at least overnight or in some cases 1-2 weeks really improves the flavour and tenderness hugely.

The joy of shopping at a local butcher generally I think is that you can get cheaper seasonal local meat, or cheaper cuts of meat that are good for stew, etc.
Things like beef brisket generally work out more economical than buying at a supermarket, but processed things like sausages are pricier.

True, but in our butcher's the sausages are worth it, 2 will do per person, unlike 3 from a supermarket, and they have great flavours, like wild boar and apple, cracked black pepper, old spot etc. I'd rather eat those and pay the same as some lower quality stuff. Mince is on the whole better and about the same price, and they do ox cheek, guinea fowl, cheeses, and other random things. I love them.

The sausage prices are similar to what we pay for delicious sausages made by our butcher. Much nicer than anything prepackaged. We don’t buy your other items.

Most of our butcher’s meat is local and the farms are known.

The eggs are local free range and only a bit more than ASDA’s similar eggs. Gorgeous high, firm orange yolks. I feel sure they are more nutritious.

One bonus is that if you become a regular you may be able to collect free chicken and beef bones. We get a LOT and make many, many litres of delicious stock almost for free using vegetable scraps etc. That adds immeasurably much of what we cook. (A nice tip at Xmas is a small investment in this)

But overall yes the butcher will cost more. If you are lucky, the resulting food is more satisfying. I would rather eat delicious, healthy, properly sourced food and make more of it veggie or near veggie to ease costs and help the Earth. However the choice is personal and no one should criticise a single mum doing her best, whatever she decides

Six sausages cost £9.50 at my local butchers.

Lincolnshire. Close to sleaford.

Thank you. Its actually a couple who run a farm together. So it's their meat. They do alit of pop up stalls and sell it through an oine website butchers page.

Ooo thank you. I feel less guilty now and excited to try it. Thank you. I've never made stock from bones. But I bet its lovely.

Stock cubes are fine for a lot of things but for something like risotto you really need proper home made stock – otherwise it just tastes like savoury rice from a packet and you could have saved a lot of effort.

Do you want good or do you want cheap?

Good and local meat isn't cheap.

It's great. The best.

Not cheap.

So, my butcher sells meat from local farms, they have a board telling you where the day's meat is from. Meat shouldn't be cheap. I paid £41 for a shoulder of lamb on Saturday, that feels about right.

A) It's the life of an animal, it's impossible to produce an animal to eat and it not be a bit expensive.

B) Cranberry and rosemary sausages sound bonkers.

C) If you're buying meat from a butcher, don't waste your money on sausages, burgers and mince. Buy an actual piece of meat and use it wisely.

That is all.

We just paid £19 for half a shoulder of lamb.
That’s consistent with what @MyMachine paid but it is up a lot.

We had a meal for two adults and will now make a lamb ragu to serve four, possibly with a bit leftover. About £3 per serving just for the meat so not hugely economical, but delicious and satisfying.

We also make lamb stock from the bones as it is the best for lamb stews and ragus