Where To Buy Your Christmas Meat
Swaledale
Swaledale meat is never frozen and, because it’s been serving some of the UK’s best restaurants for over a decade, you know the quality will be up there. Alongside some famed steaks (its steak night box is a real treat), the Yorkshire-based business does a great selection of festive food. Stuffed birds, porchetta, bread sauce, pigs in blankets, sausage meat stuffing and pork and armagnac stuffing – you can order the lot online. Swaledale’s turkeys and cockerels are high-quality birds, with a depth of flavour that distinguishes them from commercially reared counterparts.
Visit Swaledale.co.uk
Daylesford
Daylesford is one of the nation’s best and most sustainable farm shops. It also has its own abattoir (and an award-winning cheesemonger – also good to know at this time of year). Its Christmas centrepiece is its Bronze turkeys, which are raised for 180 days at a Gloucestershire farm where they are free to forage the organic pastures and woodland. Wonderfully moist with a distinctive full flavour, the birds are game hung for 13 days to tenderise the meat, enrich the flavour and ensure even cooking and crispy skin. There are three new ham joints this year (orange and elderflower, smoked black ham, and honey and mustard-glazed ham), plus a brussels sprout gratin, which is sure to get the naysayers eating their greens.
Visit Daylesford.com
Tom Kerridge
Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge’s luxury beef wellington box is back this Christmas. It’s available to pre-order now for £215 (including delivery). Most chilled courier deliveries will be made on 23rd December, subject to location. The box easily serves four and includes a luxury 30-day aged fillet of British Hereford beef from family owned Stokes Marsh Farm, handmade with a duxelle and herb crepe, wrapped in an all-butter golden puff pastry, alongside a rich red wine sauce and Cumberland pigs in blankets. All you need to do is add your own roast potatoes and vegetables. For dessert, enjoy a traditional sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce and Christmas-spiced brandy butter alongside cubes of salted caramel fudge for a sweet finish.
Visit FromTomKerridge.com
Dishpatch
Finish-at-home meal kit specialists Dishpatch has an array of menus created by celebrated chefs and restaurateurs and Christmas will be no different. The 2023 collection includes a four-course feast from Michel Roux Jr, which features choices such as a saffron and champagne soup and poached scallops, salmon or beef wellington, chicken liver parfait with brioche and caramelised onion, plus brioche pudding and mulled wine poached pears to finish. For those hosting a less traditional Christmas, Empire Empire is offering a lobster biryani feast, alongside its famous Kashmiri lamb chops; Angela Hartnett brings a taste of luxury with Cafe Murano’s Italian Truffle Extravaganza; and Sabrina Ghayour returns with two feasts – choose between quince-glazed poussin or the vegetarian Middle Eastern festive feast.
Visit Dishpatch.co.uk
Made In Oldstead
Tommy Banks – Great British Menu champ and the chef behind Michelin-starred The Black Swan at Oldstead and Roots in York – is offering customers a taste of Oldstead this Christmas. As with all of Tommy’s output, the boxes showcase ingredients that have been foraged or grown in and around Oldstead and products from local suppliers. The ultimate four-course Christmas Day feast comprises butternut squash, hazelnut and parsley amuse bouche; a grazing board starter; all the festive trimmings; and a decadent chocolate fondant tart for dessert. Main courses include beef wellington or a whole roast duck crown – plus there’s a selection of boxes dedicated to canapés, Christmas brunch and vegetarians.
Visit MadeInOldstead.co.uk
Provenance Village Butcher
Provenance Village Butcher has shops in Notting Hill, Chelsea, Little Venice and Queen’s Park. It also has a rather good little online store. It’s just opened its books for the season: Christmas delivery pre-orders can be placed until Friday 15th December. We love the look of its show-stopping boneless turkey crown – pre-rolled with the team’s staple Sage & Onion Stuffing inside and bacon on the outside. There are also three-bird roasts, cockerel, free-range goose, 40-day aged rib of beef and all the glazes, meaty sides and accompaniments you can think of.
Visit ProvenanceButcher.com
Turner & George
Richard H Turner – the acclaimed exec chef behind Hawksmoor, Pitt Cue, Blacklock and Foxlow – and butcher James George formed East London Steak Company in 2010 and launched Angel butchery Turner & George shortly after. Its online shop sells meat boxes covering everything from weekend breakfasts to Sunday roasts. For a big family Christmas, we’d order in a T&G Staples Box, which comes with all sorts of meat to keep guests happy across the festive period. The box includes one whole herb-fed chicken, four 400g pork loin chops, four 120g lamb T-bones, six ‘breakfast pig’ sausages, 250g of back bacon and 500g of ground beef.
Visit TurnerAndGeorge.co.uk
Farmison
Multi award-winning online butcher Farmison & Co is making festive planning easier with an array of quality meat boxes and Christmas packages. Curated by chef Jeff Baker, the range includes heritage-breed beef joints, whole turkeys, porchetta roasting trays, and festive condiments to complement all of them. All the team’s meats are derived from free-range, slowly reared and naturally raised animals on British farms. Each cut undergoes meticulous butchery and precise dry ageing, resulting in unmatched flavours. Shoppers can choose from a range of chef-prepared meat joints and award-winning trimmings, alongside all the condiments needed for Christmas lunch (we’ve got our eye on the sourdough bread sauce and Yorkshire pudding batter).
Visit Farmison.com
The Ethical Butcher
The Ethical Butcher works with farms that use regenerative farming practices to produce meat in the most natural way while actively improving the environment by using animals to rebuild ecosystems. The methods restore nutrition into the soil by locking carbon in the ground, and the beef they produce is 100% pasture fed, without grains, soy or antibiotics. Centrepiece roasts on offer include rib of beef, fillet steak, chateaubriand, turkey, rack of lamb, pork belly and a whole venison shoulder.
Visit Ethical-Meat.co.uk
Simon Rogan At Home
Simon Rogan At Home – the home delivery service from the multi-Michelin-starred chef behind L'Enclume in Cartmel and Aulis in London – will be delivering nationwide this Christmas. The five-course feast will begin with snowball cauliflower velouté, Spenwood cheese, chestnut, crispy shallot, black garlic and dark beer. Then potted Cornish mackerel with dill compressed gem, marmite and cheese bread will be followed by poached stuffed turkey from Goosnargh with a confit chicken leg, creamed fermented cabbage, winter vegetables in herb butter, pigs in blankets, cranberry and woodruff-infused sauce. To end your meal, you’ll receive a Christmas pudding with fig leaf cream infused with The Lakes Distillery gin – plus mince pie chocolates. This festive menu is £95pp.
Visit SimonRoganAtHome.co.uk
Forman & Field
This family run business has been supplying top restaurants with Michelin-quality ingredients for more than two decades. Through its delivery service, all of us can now enjoy its magnificent wares. Turkey, sprouts, mince pies, potted stilton, fizz, Christmas pudding, brandy butter and Christmas crackers – the brand’s festive package has everything needed for two people celebrating Christmas together. Just remember, its London cure smoked salmon is renowned for a reason – we’ll personally endorse the classic royal fillet for a Boxing Day brunch.
Visit FormanAndField.com
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