This coming week will see queues snaking out the door of traditional high street butchers up and down the land, as people pick up that special bronze turkey or a well-hung standing rib roast.

For the most important meal of the year, people want only the best, and they know that they can rely on a proper butcher to provide it, which is more than can be said for supermarkets.

Supermarket in-store butchery is a brass-necked sham. What do those blokes in white pork pie hats wielding big knives do all day other than open plastic packs of pre-butchered joints?

The pre-packs in supermarket aisles would make a professional butcher weep. Ruby-red, flaccid, irregularly-sized offerings exuding watery liquid are sold on absorbent pads to disguise the fact they come straight from the abattoir cutting line. Mysterious products with apparently helpful names such as ‘flash-fry escalopes’ and ‘stir-fry’ do absolutely nothing to educate customers about anatomical meat cuts - nor, indeed, their well-documented cooking properties.

“The pre-packs in supermarket aisles would make a real butcher weep”

I once made the mistake of buying something fancifully labelled ‘tender minute steak’, only to find that it resembled machine-cut slices of silverside - that is, ropey, over-lean and totally unsuitable for quick cooking. I won’t make that mistake again.

Supermarkets have long since given up any pretence of stocking the traditional portfolio of cuts, or encouraging ‘nose-to-tail’ eating. Consequence? The UK’s meat-cooking know-how has plummeted and the multiples are largely to blame.

So what if shoppers haven’t a clue how to cook anything other than mince (beef mince now accounts for over half of all fresh supermarket beef sales), and chicken breast? This makes them captive consumers of more lucrative, value-added ready meals.

Now, in a proper butcher’s, when I ask for stewing meat, for instance, I have a choice (round steak, feather, shin, shoulder, shank, and so forth). And there’s an expert on hand who can knowledgeably advise me as to which cut is best for my intended use. If I want four even-cut lamb chops, I get them. I don’t have to buy a pack of six. That’s how it should be. A butcher is for life, not just for Christmas.

Joanna Blythman is a journalist and author of What to Eat

Topics