P
L E N T Y
Meet Your Maker
Blackmore Vale Butchery
The award-winning butchers explain what you should be
looking for when buying beef, pork and lamb
I
t’s not just foodies who need a good
butcher. In Dorset, farm shop
owners and smallholders turn to
Blackmore Vale Butchery to carve up their
meat into everything from steaks to
shoulders and belly to brisket. Local
farmers may have the husbandry skills
to give their animals a good life, but that
doesn’t mean they know how to use a
butcher’s knife. That’s why Blackmore Vale
Butchery opened 10 years ago. Their venture
has been so successful they’ve opened shops
in West Stour and Somerton, and have been
nominated for Best Butcher in this year’s
Taste of Dorset Awards. Here, butchery
manager Gavin Keen tells us why local meat
is the best, and what you should be looking
for when buying beef, lamb and pork.
Prime cuts
Knowingwhat
to look for when
buying from the
butcher is the secret
to happy meating.
What’s so good about Dexter beef?
Firstly, it’s the actual size of the animal.
They’re relatively small carcasses, which
means you have a smaller carcass to play
about with as a butcher. But it’s also great
for doing particular cuts, such as Côte de
Boeuf when you’ve got the rib steak on the
bone. Also, if it’s fully grass fed, you get
marbling through the meat and Dexter
meat has fantastic marbling. Chefs that we
work with love the Dexter beef, because
they know that the eating quality is going
to be slightly better than your average
Hereford, Angus or Red Devon. It has got a
really strong flavour, it’s nice and juicy and it
just melts in the mouth.
Why is meat from local smallholders
so much better?
Smallholders only keep small herds of cows
or flocks of lambs, and we find that the
quality of meat is always better than from a
farmer who has got 300 cattle or 500 lambs
on their farm. You haven’t got 30 or 40
animals in a field, you’ve only got five or six,
so the animals have got more grass to graze
on, and if there is a problem with one of
them you can see it straight away. If you’ve
got 300 cattle, there’s going to be one or
two that don’t get the attention they need,
or you won’t get the detail on how they’re
growing or the fat covering that they’re
putting on.
Visually, what should you be looking
for when you buy beef?
The problem with supermarket meat is
that it’s slaughtered on the Monday, by
the Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday it’s
been deboned and is packed, and it’s on
the supermarket shelf by Friday. You’re not
getting any hanging time, which means the
meat hasn’t been given any time to become
tender or gain any flavour. The other thing
is they’re gas flushing the meat, and keeping
it bright red instead of letting it go to its
natural colour, which would be a nice dark
red. You shouldn’t have much blood coming
out of the meat when it’s being displayed,
because the hanging time helps it dry out.
Proper beef will be nice and dry and will
have a dark red colour.
What sort of questions should people
be asking butchers before they buy?
They need to be asking if the meat is locally
sourced – where is the farm, is the farm
relatively close to where the shop is. Also,
what breed is it, and how long has the
animal been hung for? We try to source
as locally as we can, and we set about a
10-15 mile radius of our location, but we
sometimes have to source Dexter beef from
about a 30 mile radius.
Tell us about hanging time – you often
go beyond 28 days…
The consensus between butchers is that
beef, after 10-15 days, has pretty much
broken all the enzymes down and the
hanging has done its job when it comes to
tenderness. But if you add up to 28, 32, 35,
sometimes 40 more days, it adds flavour.
The more you leave it, the more the flavour
intensifies. A lot of people say it goes gamey,
but it’s just an intensified beef flavour.
www.menu-dorset.co.uk
Meat Maker
The fam ily run
Blackmore Vale
Butchery was
esta blished in
200 6.
25
Quality bacon is a
cooked breakfast’s
star player.