Skip the Supermarket and Go to the Butchers Instead!
If you want to buy meat for your family, you often have just two choices. You can either buy it from the supermarket, or from your local butcher, online or in-store. Although the butcher seems like a high-end only option, you couldn’t be further from the truth, butchers are often very affordable and come with their own unique advantages, as listed below.
More Quality Choices
The meat section at your grocery store is usually just pre-packaged cuts of meat that are put out until someone wants to buy it. This is a dip in quality compared to the fresh meat on display at the butchers. When you buy meat directly from a butcher, you aren’t just getting fresher cuts, you can see the meat quality and it’s usually cut right in front of you. It’s not packaged in plastics until you buy it and usually has a longer shelf time for your fridge, not the supermarket fridge.
A Wider Selection
Grocery stores simply don’t have a wide variety of meats. This is because they often stock the most basic cuts that anyone could buy, not usually the cuts you want. Butchers however can provide a huge range of meats and cuts. You can often even request a certain type of meat to be cut a certain way, and this simply saves you time later when you’re cooking. You can also get speciality meats like bone marrow or tongue and liver, to name a few.
Advice on Cooking
If you want to try a new cut of meat or speciality meat but don’t know how to cook it? Maybe you need a specific type of meat marinated for a barbeque? If you have questions, butchers are the specialists with the answers. The reason is that they have the expertise of years in the meat business to tell you how to cook, season and sometimes even cook the meat with ease. If you’re a beginner or even a more seasoned cook who wants to branch out, a butcher is a great place to ask questions.
Local Produce Only
To consumers in the UK, shopping locally is important. Local butchers and their online counterparts are well known for this as they find their meat from nearby farms. When you shop locally, you’re actively supporting small businesses and the local economy while also endorsing meat sourced in a responsible way. If you order now, from someone like Parson’s Nose, your meat is sourced from a nearby farm, and you can’t beat that for the locality.
No Additives
In order to keep their meat looking fresh for longer, supermarkets use additives. Keep in mind, meat that looks fresh isn’t actually fresh in reality. In comparison, butchers prefer shorter turnaround times with their meats as they often sell out by the afternoon. This means no additives or hormones to fake quality meat.
Superior Flavour
It should come as no surprise that meat that is fresh, of quality and doesn’t have any additives or hormones, tastes better than the alternative at the supermarkets. Since meat from the butchers hasn’t gone through mass production processing, it's healthier, tastier and just worth the extra effort of going to the butcher.
Better Customer Service
When you go to the butcher regularly, you may notice the butcher remembering you and your preferences. This is because your butcher has to offer better customer service to compete with the supermarkets, so they want you to return and will offer you good service in return.
Buy Online with Parson’s Nose
If you’re too busy to run into the supermarket early on the weekends, or you want cuts of meat without waiting in line, we can’t blame you. This is where Parson’s nose comes in. You get all the benefits from your local butcher, but online. For UK’s best online butchers, you can’t beat Parson’s nose.
