Welcome to the butchers blog where I will endeavor to enlighten you in the dark arts of butchery from entrails to appendix to oxtails, fillets, trotters, grass or grain, fat or finishing, fries and frankfurters I will try to explain our methods and show you a bit of our madness.
Some refer to butchering as a trade for some it is a job, I have even head it being referred to as a vocation by one rather colourful butcher. For others we are simply shopkeepers or traders, but for us we like to refer to our trade as a craft. Bringing livestock to the table requires many varied and different techniques and skills which all rolled into one can be classed as a craft. The family butcher once a dying vision around the country is thriving by cornering a market for customers who want to know the field, breed, age, origin and husbandry of their meat.
From dry curing to dry ageing to tunnel boning, slow roasting, seasonal cuts and pudding making we are always trying to improve our methods and techniques to give the customer a new variety, taste or sensation but also to further our craft. Techniques used generation ago while never forgotten or dispensed have to evolve to market demands but the basics stay the same. We still use the same base recipe for pudding, sausages and curing that have been handed down thru the family for generations while the slaughtering, ageing and primal preparation of carcasses have changed little in the last 100 years except to adapt the best technologies available. Staying true to those methods and techniques is crucial for us and the integrity of our product.
While supplying fodder for the queen may have seemed like treason to my forefathers selling on the Internet could not be fathomed to them. We’ve come a long a way and in the blog I hope to show you a little of how we do it and the ways we do.
Welcome and I hope you enjoy it and at times you may have to endure the odd rant or three.Feel free to interact or comment.
T (@MyButcherTim)
Nice introduction to the blog, look forward to seeing and reading more…
Great piece of writing Tim!
Thank you. I am becoming a fan via Sheridan’s. Your Nitrate Free Bacon Rashers are delicious, but need to be fried pretty well immediately after opening (maybe obviously).
Can you please list ingredients on the online shop pages, to eliminate confusion. My current nitrate- and nitrite-free rashers have sodium nitrate (aka Chile saltpeter or Peru saltpeter, apparently) and the inorganic sodium nitrite listed on the back, presumably incorrectly, together with the expected salt, sugar and of course pork; the previous batch had no listing – and it’s not clear from the online shop what’s in, say, your Cherry and Oak Smoked Dry Cured Rashers.
Keen to buy direct, as Sheridan’s are 30 miles away, but need contained on the pages of the online shop more online info .
Regards,
William Lambton,
Moylough,
Co. Galway.