A Good Butcher is a Pearl Beyond Price

We just got back from visiting my father in rural Norfolk. His village is a sizable one, with two very small supermarkets and a variety of other shops. Happily for him and the rest of the village (or the carnivores at least) that includes two good butchers. A good butcher in my book can be judged on his (or her) sausages and minced beef (ground beef for our American friends). Simple things maybe, but they reflect the care and attitude of a skilled tradesman.

I live in a city, but the only butcher's shop nearby was not very good - mince gristly, sausages when I tried them tasteless - and unsurprisingly it closed some time ago. Strange how in this aspect of retail supply a city should be poorer than a village - maybe the supermarkets here the reason. One strand of my freelance writing work, however, takes me to towns and villages where there are still good craft butchers, a definite perk. A couple of years ago Roy Porter (picture) who has a shop near Clitheroe was very impressive, and recently Riley's in Crawshawbooth was equally good.

The difference between a butcher and the butchery at a supermarket seems to be mainly to do with the cheaper cuts - try to find them in your supermarket, where it appears animals no longer come with innards - rather than at the top end. Doubtless margins are lower on the cheaper bits than the expensive ones. At one butcher in the village I bought some excellent beef shin to make a simple stew for the four of us yesterday. Browned and then stewed for two-and-a-half hours with root veg and onions the meat made its own sauce, and even after seconds there was enough for my father to use as the basis of a meal today after we had gone. It cost about £2 each. There are exceptions to the supermarket butcher rule - Morrison's is good on offal and the tough bits that need slow cooking, and so (at the other end of the social scale perhaps) is Waitrose, where I bought ox cheek on Saturday.

The stew made with shin beef was another dish demonstrated to my son in preparation for his eventual escape into the big wide world as a student. He is learning the easy core skills of the home cook, in that case: brown the meat in small batches so it fries not steams; fry the onions before putting them in the stewpot (nobody likes boiled onions do they?); use some suitable liquid to deglaze the pan in which the meat browned (Adnams Broadside that time); cut the carrots and other root veg in good chunks so they retain their shape rather than disappear into the sauce; stew in a low oven for two hours or more. We sprinkled a bit of flour on the meat and veg before adding the beer from the frying pan and some boiling water. No stock cube, no stupid packets of casserole sauce mix. And it tasted great, because the meat was top notch.