Why pay more for your meat?

£32 for a chicken sounds ridiculous, but you'll taste the difference.

Why pay more for your meat? Not a new question, this one, but still very important. Especially when there are stories flying about such as a £32 chicken on sale at a London butcher.

The Rolls Royce of chickens

Thirty-two quid for a chicken? I’m afraid this is no April Fool. The birds in question are described as the “Rolls Royce of chickens” by M Moen & Sons, the south London butcher who sells them. They are reared by Phill and Jan Truin at their farm near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, where they live in small groups in a paddock and are hand-fed a natural diet. After 14 to 16 weeks, they are slaughtered on site.

At this price, they are eight times the cost of a Tesco Value chicken. They also live about twice as long. The conditions in which they live are incomparable.

Should you pay this much for your meat? Only if you can afford it, and then it’s a special occasion thing, but – and it’s a big but – paying out a decent price for meat is a win-win-win situation.

Animal welfare

Firstly, the animal is treated humanely for the time that it is alive. I’m aware many vegetarians and vegans will see this argument as nonsensical – that keeping an animal just to kill it for food can never be humane – but we can hope they at least see the logic to see that if an animal is going to be bred for its flesh, it is better that it is not mistreated in the meantime.

Support farmers

Secondly, you’re supporting farmers who do not wish to farm intensively or struggle to meet the narrow margins imposed by powerful suppliers.

Better taste

My last point, and it’s one so many people seem to forget when they’re whingeing about the cost of decent meat, is that it TASTES better.

There’s no question about it. The meat on one of these incredibly expensive chickens will taste much better than a battery chicken because it has had space to run around and develop its muscles. It has also basked in the sun, and natural daylight provides animals with nutrients in much the same way it does humans, improving the tone and texture of the skin and - hey presto – the taste of it as well.

Pork has improved

The same goes for pigs and for cows. There is a reason pork is having a renaissance, when 10 to 15 years ago many people avoided cooking it at home because it would turn out very dry, pale and tasteless. It is down to the improvement of welfare standards for UK-reared pigs, standards which are not met across Europe.

Chefs got excited about the taste of great pork again, and we all began to copy them, but sadly the supermarkets are cutting corners by importing most of their pork and our British pig farming industry is in crisis.

Changing steak trends

Again, fillet steak was very trendy in the 80’s and 90’s because it is a lean and expensive cut, but the real beef aficionados know it’s all about the fat – the fat, the marbling, the muscle: all these are signs the cow has had a good workout on some nice pasture (instead of being fed grain in a crowded lot), and you’ll taste them best in a piece of rump or ribeye.

Game on

Game has such a deep flavour – too much for many consumers reared on flavourless meat – because it spends its entire life romping through the countryside, pursuing and escaping predators.

Treat your meat like wine

But how far can the humble home cook’s palate stretch when it comes to extraordinarily expensive pieces of meat? The process is not dissimilar to tasting wine. Anyone with a little interest in wine can tell the difference between good and bad, what they like and don’t like, and identify a few flavours. It is easy to be astonished when you taste something good, because it highlights how rubbish your normal choices are. When it gets to the really posh stuff, however, things get much more tricky to pin down.

I’m not saying spend £32 on a chicken. Masterchef judge John Torode did a taste test and gave Sainsbury’s Corn-fed chicken (£3.16/kg) 9/10, so you don’t need to spend so much to get a decent bird. But it is worth tasting your food, and giving the meat a bit more consideration.

If you were offered a glass of wine or a piece of cheese and told it would be wholly without flavour, you’d probably pass. So why eat tasteless meat? 

Also worth your attention:

Simon Rimmer’s cinnamon chicken

Buy Phill Truin’s birds online

Ching-He Huang’s crispy pork