The Meat Crusade launches cookbook to drive consumers back to the butcher

Posted on: Oct 23 2013

The cookbook is the latest initiative from The Meat Crusade campaign and will be launched at Countryside Live this month (Saturday 19 – Sunday 20 October). The book is a collection of beef, pork and lamb recipes aimed at putting the finest British butchers’ meat back on our dinner tables.

Show attendees will be able to buy the book for a special price of £10 (the normal recommended retail price is £15).

The book gives an insight into how ethical meat operations work and explains the links between farmer butcher and consumer. It also shows consumers how to cook a range of forgotten cuts that are best bought from a butcher.

John Penny, from The Meat Crusade, explains; “These are no frills recipes produced by farmers, and taste tested by the people working on our farm. We do not claim to be expert chefs these are simple to prepare tasty recipes that use easily sourced ingredients and I hope it will drive consumers back to their local butcher.

“Reputable butchers have learned their craft over years of dedication to their industry but they are disappearing from our high street at an alarming rate. If we want to preserve our high streets for future generations we need to start shopping with them now.”

“For decades our butchers have been competing with the domination of convenient one stop shops, they pride themselves on selling traceable ethically sourced meat and with more consumers wanting to know where their meat has come from I urge them to shop at their local butcher.”

The Meat Crusade team will also have free tasty pigs in blankets for people to try and can offer advice on where to find local butchers.

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Jay Rayner

The award winning Observer Food Critic and One show journalist.

Jay currently chairs the new Radio 4 food panel show, The Kitchen Cabinet, having recently appeared as judge on Masterchef and The Great British Waste Menu, and hosted Channel 4's magazine show Food: What Goes in your Basket?

Now, more than ever, we need to know where our meat is coming from, and your local butcher is best placed to give you that vital information. There is no substitute for buying your meat from the people who sourced it. They are the ones who know how it was raised, how it was slaughtered and how best to cook it. If we lose our local butchers we lose an irreplaceable part of the food chain.

Tom Parker Bowles

Tom is a food writer and broadcaster with a weekly column in The Mail on Sunday and is Food Editor at Esquire magazine.
His books include E Is For Eating – An Alphabet of Greed, The Year of Eating Dangerously and Full English; A Journey Through the British and Their Food. He also co-presented Market Kitchen on Good Food Channel and presented LBC Radio's Food and Drink Programme.

The steady loss of our local butchers is cause for serious alarm. Just 2 months back my favourite butcher, Kingsland and Son, fell victim to a fierce rent hike and was forced to move out. The whole area is still reeling from the loss. Because butchery is both art and science. Not just in the physical act of separating different cuts from a carcass, but the wealth of knowledge any serious butcher has; where the meat comes from, how long the beef was hung, what cuts are better suited to braising than roasting. Support your local butchers. For the sake of the community, and your taste buds too.

Rosemary Shrager

Rosemary Shrager, talented TV chef and cookery school teacher, is renowned for her role on reality TV show, Ladette to Lady. Rosemary has worked for Pierre Koffman at the famous Tante Claire restaurant in London and also for super chef Jean-Christophe Novelli.

Rosemary’s TV career began with series Rosemary – Castle Cook, followed by Rosemary on the Road, both for Channel 5. She is now a familiar face on ITV, following up her Rosemary Shrager's School For Cooks series with regular appearances on The Alan Titchmarsh Show.

It is so important to support butchers, if we do not then they will go and then we really will miss them. These people know where all their food has come from, generally sourcing everything from the local area’s farmers. Support for your butcher is support for the wider farming community.

Joanna Blythman

Joanna Blythman is Britain’s leading investigative food journalist and an influential commentator on the British food chain. She has won four Glenfiddich awards for her writing, including a Glenfiddich Special Award for her first book, The Food We Eat, a Caroline Walker Media Award for Improving the Nation’s Health by Means of Good Food, and a Guild of Food Writers Award for The Food We Eat.