Getting the right cuts

WHAT'S THE STORY WITH BUYING MEAT ON THE CHEAP?:IT SCARCELY MATTERS from what angle it's viewed, the phrase "cheap meat" is not one that ever conjures up pleasant images. Sausages laden with eyelids and testicles scraped from the bottom of the abattoir barrel, chicken breasts beefed up with additives and salty water which seep onto your plate as you eat it and bacon which boils when it's fried are all budget cuts too far for many people.

The taste and texture of bargain-basement meat is frequently vile and its nutritional value is also open to question but, in these lean times, with people looking for ways to live on less, the demand for better value rather than cheap meat is increasing.

Ham hocks, beef shins, pork belly and lamb necks are all growing in popularity, which is hardly surprising since they all provide enough meat to comfortably feed a family of four for not much more than €2 – as long, of course, as they are cooked right.

Chuck steak and shin and leg cuts are very cheap and great for making casseroles, while flat iron steak, taken from chuck steak, is new to the Irish market and, when it’s cut right by a butcher, it is said to be as tender as striploin and less than half the price. The shoulder and neck of lamb is tough as old boots but a lot less so after spending several hours in a low-heat oven, and pork belly is cheap, delicious and almost impossible to overcook.

The chief executive of the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland Pat Brady told Pricewatch last week that consumer habits have changed in recent months. “We have seen a shift undoubtedly, and people are asking for an awful lot less fillet steak and more cheaper cuts of meat but ones which are not poorer in the nutritional sense at all,” he says.

He bemoans that fact that many of the cooking skills which would have allowed people to make the best of these cheaper cuts have been lost. Which is where your local butcher comes in. “We have been emphasising how butchers can offer a lot of advice on cooking cheaper cuts to help people to get better value,” Brady says.

WHILE OTHER PARTS of the retail sector are struggling and shops are closing down, butchers have been holding their own. Brady says. “We’re not recession-proof, but the fall-off in people eating out has seen more people in our shops.”

One Dublin butcher’s shop is doing well although it does not sell a particularly high volume of cheaper cuts. The Dublin Meat Company opened its second discount meat outlet in Dublin earlier this month and is promising to sell premium Irish meat at prices up to 40 per cent cheaper than the supermarkets – even the cheapest of them – can manage.

The Dublin Meat Company is a family business run by Pat O’Leary and his two sons David and Brian; the latter left a high-paying job as a foreign exchange trader with Anglo Irish Bank in late 2007 to rejoin the family business.

The company says it can offer products at heavily discounted prices because its outlets are in industrial estates and business parks where rent is cheaper. “We are trying to redefine butchering,” Brian says.

He claims that by choosing locations slightly off the beaten track – the first branch opened three years ago in the Butterly Business Park in Artane, while a second branch opened in Kinsealy last month – the business makes savings which it can pass on to shoppers. “We’re paying no more than 20 per cent of what we would be paying in rent if we were in a shopping centre or on the main streets. All our meat is prepared above our Artane shop by a small number of staff. Nearly 80 per cent of it is sold pre-packed so we don’t have as many staff as a butcher shop would normally have.”

The prices certainly seem to be pretty good. Last week four fillet steaks were selling for €15, more than half the price they cost elsewhere, although they were on special. Half a turkey crown and a 2kg ham fillet cost €25, while a large leg of Irish lamb was €20. Irish chicken fillets which last week cost €1.69 in Tesco were a euro in the Dublin Meat Company, and 2lbs (0.9kg) of round steak mince was €5, compared with nearly €10 in Tesco.

“We are trying to recreate the wheel in butchery. People will still have to eat despite the downturn and we believe there will still be room for the supermarkets and the regular butchers, but what we are trying to do is create a niche.”

DAVE LANGAN IS the development officer with the Craft Butchers and is also looking at niche products. He has been working on new, cheaper cuts of meat in conjunction with Bord Bia to cater for an increasingly money-conscious consumer. “We are seeing customers getting more into food and as times get tougher more people are learning how to cook,” he says.

One of the new cuts which will be unfamiliar to most people is flat iron steak which, Langan explains, comes from chuck beef and is, he says “as tender as striploin” once it is prepared and cut properly by an expert and the unpalatable connective tissue which runs through the centre of the meat is removed.

Langan’s own cheap recipe, which he is only too delighted to share, is ham hock soup which, he assured Pricewatch, is so good “you’d eat the plate it’s served on”. All he does is boil a ham hock – which costs no more than €1.50 – until the flesh is falling off the bone. He takes it out of the water, strips it and keeps the water in reserve. A bag of yellow split peas, which cost €2, are added to the cooking water along with the meat; after leaving it to soak overnight and then boiling it, “you get yourself a gallon of soup that is seriously good for less than a fiver”.