Beef

[old tree man]

Is it me or is the beef we eat these days just rubbery rubbish , jane and i have bought cheap beef to save money but it dosen't work , so we buy middle price beef still tastless crud so we went mad and bought some really expensive beef and still found it tastless but not so rubbery , years ago we could get beef that melted on your toungue and we had dripping in the roasting tin afterwards to put on toast with salt and pepper, mabe i'm just old fashioned but it certainly is'nt the same

[Millymollymandy]

Are you buying French beef Russ? The only way we can eat beef here is as mince.

I buy British stewing steak when we are over there (not very often) and then we can finally enjoy a nice beef stew.

As for steak, it's rare (no pun intended) to find decent steak even in England any more, but I always ate steak when I was younger and we used to get taken out to Berni Inns and it was fabulous back then.

[old tree man]

It would'nt surprise me even the mince is full of water i would love a piece of land to raise my own animals on

[pelmetman]

Just had roast beef with all the trimmings...........................................yum yum.

We did buy the beef from the butcher in the next village, where we buy all our meat excellent quality and nearly all local.

Piece of top side enough for two of us for at least 4 meals each £8.60 and I like my meat. Unfortunatley I cooked it too long for my taste as I like my blood, but er in doors likes it well done, but even so I let rest for longer than normal 45 mins and I have to admit it was lovely, especialy with Sue's yorkshire puds roast Charlotte potatoes, carrots and runner beans all from the garden

Forgot to mention our own gravy not that packet stuff, followed by summer pudding with fruits from the garden and blackberries from our neighbours field. had to buy the bread as er in doors has not got back into the routine of making it yet since our holiday..........just can not get the staff these days Oh and bought ice cream but we are working on that one, heard of an ice cream maker from Lakeland £35

[Millymollymandy]

I had a steak that tasted like steak used to, about 2 years ago back in Blighty. My mum went to a butcher and asked for a single piece of fillet steak (as a special treat for me); the butcher raised his concern at the price (nearly £5!!) thinking poor little old pensioner probably can't afford this . I cut it in half cos I don't like blood and fillet steak is too thick and it was perfect. Thing is it wasn't enough, I could have easily eaten double that but at that price!!! Last time I tasted steak like that was in Australia in the 90s and before that in my teenage memories. Even in America their steak didn't taste like steak should. These days we're lucky just to get a piece of meat you can get your teeth through, let alone any flavour. Must be all those mad cows.

[Millymollymandy]

Oh and bought ice cream but we are working on that one, heard of an ice cream maker from Lakeland £35

Go for it, you will never look back, I got one earlier this year and will never buy ice cream again!

[pelmetman]

Hi MMM

Was it the Lakeland icecream maker you bought? I read about it in a magazine and they said it was fantastic. It just seems too good to be true as other icecream makers I've seen are a couple of hundred pounds.

Sue

[Green Aura]

You can still buy fantastic beef but at immense cost I'm afraid. We had some from a company called Bath Organics (although I think they stopped selling to the public for some reason - able to command even higher prices from restaurants? )

That was the best we've had but most organic meat box companies sell meat far and away superior to anything - unless you're lucky enough to live near a really good butcher. The problem I find with the meat boxes are that they tend to have "fillers" - sausages and burgers. I'd rather have the meat they make them from and decide what to do with it myself.

As for ice cream maker- ours cost about £20 - it's not an electric one. It's like a double walled stock pot, with liquid in the cavity and lid. It lives in the freezer and whenever we want ice cream we get it out - takes 15 minutes, you can get 2 loads out of it before it's not cold enough to freeze the mixture any more, it's easy to clean and is fab!

[pelmetman]

Hi Maggie

I like the sound of your icecream maker, can you remember where you bought it please?

Sue

[Green Aura]

You've not been on here long have you

Virtually all my purchases are from ebay

This is it http://www.3lltd.com/

[Millymollymandy]

Hi MMM

Was it the Lakeland icecream maker you bought? I read about it in a magazine and they said it was fantastic. It just seems too good to be true as other icecream makers I've seen are a couple of hundred pounds.

Sue

No, got a magimix one from amazon (cheapest there) it was about £50-60 and had the best reviews on the internet. It's the kind where you put the bowl in the freezer. The several hundred pound ones are the kind that have their own inbuilt freezer so sound like a total rip off to me, unless you haven't got much freezer space. But then you'd need tons of cupboard space to store it.

[StripyPixieSocks]

I find the only Beef that tastes nice is Organic, luckily we have a local butcher who has his own Soil Association / Organic certified slaughter house and specializes in Organic / Free Range and the Beef we have had from him has been astoundingly good.

I'd rather pay a bit more for good meat and poultry and eat meat less regularly than buy cheap / Supermarket meat which I wouldn't feed to my worst enemy

I'm sorry if that sounds snobby but it's true.

It is also a reasonable price for Organic meat and Poultry, they have a countrywide box scheme if you are interested: http://www.vivianolds.co.uk/

I can HIGHLY recommend his produce.

Supermarket Beef is never hung and therefore doesn't mature correctly then it's wrapped in plastic and left to sweat in it's own blood... NOT good!

[Millymollymandy]

Supermarket beef in England is hung a lot longer than French beef! That's why it's so tough here.

I've never had tough beef stew with British beef but Breton 'boeuf' is just the absolute pits. I'm not talking about all of France/all French breeds because I can make a perfectly normal stew out of Charolais, although that beef is way too tough for steak, but here in Brittany in the supermarkets the choice of race of beef is ...... cow. That's all that's on the label. When I lived elsewhere in France we could buy Charolais (French) or Angus (Argentinian). Here I could go to a specific butcher/farm and buy highly expensive Charolais (not the normal cattle round here) but just for stewing, you must be joking!

Argentinian steak was really tender and with some steak seasoning didn't taste bad at all, but unfortunately there's a lot of stuff we used to be able to buy the other side of France that is unavailable/unheard of/unwanted here in the Breton sticks - even in the capital. So we just go without.