This week is Great British Beef Week, and we’ve been celebrating in style by launching a couple of really cool new cuts – bone-in sirloins and wing ribs – as well as pulling through some really cool beef from our farming network.
The quality you’re accustomed to is down to a lot more than just good butchery. Indeed I always say the animals do most of the work, and it’s the gentle rearing and husbandry that really yields incredible, consistently good meat. We’re welfare first at Field & Flower, with a focus on traditional farming on extensive grassland systems with animals whose genetics allow them to make the most of the rich pasture that they nuzzle and chew daily. Proper animals live proper lives making the most of their wits and instincts, whether that’s finding roots and nutrition in hard to reach places (Highlands and Dexters), relishing colder climates because of their double down coats (Belted Galloways) or calving and mothering naturally. Though this instinct is sometimes so strong that our farmers have found themselves being chased across fields by broody mums looking after newborn calves. Once after getting a little too close to a calf, our farmer Charles actually vaulted a stone wall fearing for his life with a Belty mum hot on his heels – don’t mess with proper animals!
I’d like to give you an example of how our rare and native breeds come through our butchery with the sides of Belted Galloways and British Shorthorns that landed with us last week. Some cuts will be coming through our range this week, some the next week and the rest in the 2 weeks after, depending on the cut and how long we want to mature it for. This week will be mince and braising cuts– shin, dice, briskets, all of which don’t see much benefit from extensive aging because they’ll be tenderised by long slow cooking. The benefit to flavour comes from these hard working muscles’ innate beefiness, rather than aging on the bone with the softer steaks.
Toward the end of next week we’ll have cuts like topsides, chucks, short ribs. These have all maximised the amount of tenderisation that they get from aging on the bone for 19 days, but don’t see the flavour development from further aging because, when hanging traditionally, there’s not enough exposed muscle to really pack flavour into the meat.
When we push through the 28 day mark, that’s when the main event begins. Ribeyes, sirloins and rumps are awoken from their deep slumber by the Himalayan salt blocks, cocooned in rich, creamy fat, ready to be turned into the jewels of the Field & Flower range that are our dry-aged steaks (both bone-in and boneless), prime roasting joints and sharing cuts for flashing over flame and finishing over indirect heat. This cycle of drawing beef through as each primal peaks is crucial, and lets us give the beef the time it needs to enrich and soften. We rely on experts and artisans right through our process from farming to slaughter, hanging, breaking, butchering and portioning, and are just about as proud of our beef now as we ever have been. The market price is soaring, and we are continuing to honour it and pay our farmers fairly for the exceptional product that they are producing, but I am 100% certain that the quality we’re seeing in every pack is backing up the price.
