Done with Beef!!!!

Soya mince isn't as awful as it sounds - but to eat it I have to remind myself not to compare it with mince. It has a nasty not-mince texture and a OK not-mince taste. But it's just not mince.

An experience of real mince so bad that it wasn't as good as "Quorn" or the like must have scarred you for life, @Steakeater

Maybe worth bearing in mind that the South Devon was developed from Guernseys...... Maybe there's something special about the CI breeds?

May sound wrong but we have found that meat improves when it's frozen and used some months afterwards.

Steakeater said:

I will still eat the odd steak, I was in Cornwall a while back and had a beautiful rib eye steak on enight. Went to a different restaurant the next night that boasted well aged steaks, it was a chewy piece of leather and cost £30!!!!!!! I was well pee'd off!

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I've started refusing to pay now in restaurants for crap food. Steaks like you say are not consistent and at 20 + quid for 'quality' meat it's not on. If it's not right I send it back and then only pay for the other meals and drinks.

I am not responding to anyone in particular, but several points have been talked around by a few posters, and I would just like to add some general comments that all agree with the experience of at least one poster.

I tend to go along with a few others in pushing the Jersey. It is as far back as 1977 but we killed a LimxJersey bullock, as far as I know the only time I have eaten Jersey. Forget the age but he failed to fatten through a summer, winter and spring, so we decided to kill him anyway. Turns out he had an abscess on the liver and it was condemned. The meat was exceptionally tender and full of flavour. The beast was very quiet and friendly, having been “adopted” by some blokes from the water authority doing some flood protection works. We had him killed at a local small abattoir and the slaughterman said the bullock just walked with him to the killing point after I delivered it and never knew anything about the death blow. He was also able to cut up the carcass and it hung for only a few days before this, as the space was needed for their normal throughput for regular customers.

We moved to northern NSW, Australia, a couple of years later and killed two steers a year, usually not much more than 12 months. We gave the forequarters to other people, who for some reason never killed their own and only ate the hindquarters ourselves. Pure Herefords were what we bred because that is all the buyers in our nearest saleyards wanted. I would shoot the steer at dusk and it would be strung on the gallows next to the yards. The butcher then gutted and skinned it and it was left hanging until daybreak. We then took the quartered carcass to the next door neighbour (four and a half miles away) where there was a good cutting room. Apart from what we ate that day it was all frozen immediately. After two weeks in the freezer the eating quality was excellent. It took us a little while to realise that after only a few days frozen the meat was not so tender.

We did not have cattle on the Black Isle before moving here so bought all we needed. We did breed rabbits for a couple of years before expanding the egg business, and also had ducks, geese and quail. Same goes for Portugal. We buy our beef. Some supermarkets here have a mincer behind the counter, and so we can choose what we want to have minced. Always a cut off the hindquarter. Slightly more expensive than the run of the mill stuff, but we can choose the actual piece to be minced. The only other beef we buy is whole fillets. About €28/kg and three to three and a half kilos each. My wife cuts steaks to suit us and the fillet, a bit more than half an inch thick. She also takes a couple of small roasts, and uses the trimmings as stir fry meat. When we have steak she prepares everything and looks after the asparagus (fresh or frozen) onions, mushrooms and potatoes, whilst I fit in with cooking the steaks in a dry pan to have them ready as she has the other stuff ready. I like mine to be showing a little blood when I cut into it, whilst she prefers hers with one minute more on each side. Sometimes I get my timing slightly wrong, and what a difference it makes to our perceived eating quality of the steaks. Unless I had cooked them myself I would not believe they had come from the same fillet. An extra two minutes hanging about for the veg to be ready, or pushing them because I have left it slightly late before starting to cook, and they are never as good – in our opinion. I would never attempt to cook a steak for anybody else. As twice said on here, one man’s meat.......

Last night my wife and I were invited to dinner by a vegetarian (serious allergies include not being able to eat any part or produce of mammals) and knew we would be served only vegetables. There was a group of 10 and the rest (possibly some other vegetarians) were all into spicy foods and sauces whilst we eat everything plain. The hostess had prepared a main course of basically a stew for my wife and I, including pieces of meat about half an inch cube. I thought this was a particularly nice gesture by a vegetarian, and not at all usual, but I could not decipher what kind of meat it was, because it had no taste. It looked like a cheaper cut of pork and ate like one – slightly tough and the feeling of there being some gristle in it that had softened with slow cooking, but definitely not a pork taste. I thought possibly turkey, but again I could not find any semblance of a turkey taste. Turns out it was some soya based product. Why produce the equivalent of a poor eating quality cut of meat?

Steakeater said:

Tried a whole range of places, farm shops, Waitrose, Marks and Spencers. Always pay top dollar for beef but yet it is still shite!! One week it is good, next week from the same place it is terrible.

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Totally agree. I almost never order beef in restaurants, and only buy in a shop if it looks good - never go out to get a specific thing otherwise you'll end up with crap most likely.

Grassman said:

May sound wrong but we have found that meat improves when it's frozen and used some months afterwards.

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Same applies with some cakes too!

FonterraFarmer said:

Same applies with some cakes too!

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Your cakes last long enough to freeze?

They've barely cooled down here before "we've" (I've ) eaten then

D14 said:

I've started refusing to pay now in restaurants for crap food. Steaks like you say are not consistent and at 20 + quid for 'quality' meat it's not on. If it's not right I send it back and then only pay for the other meals and drinks.

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With this I agree wholeheartedly, the British are simply no good at complaining in a polite way. The more we put up with it the more we are treated quite shabbily.
There is no need to be rude about it, you enter into a contract when you eat in a restaurant, them to provide you with food of an acceptable quality & you to pay for it. If they break that contract with poor food or questionable quality, you should alert them to it, and state you will not pay for it. No need to be embarrassed either as many are, and simply will not complain.
I have only ever had to refuse to pay twice, both times with Fish dishes, One was a mixed seafood salad, part of which was still frozen, and part which had obviously just come out of a microwave!
Secondly a fish supper from a well known local restaurant/chip shop, and the fish was rancid! They argued about giving me my money back... not a wise move.

exmoor dave said:

Your cakes last long enough to freeze?

They've barely cooled down here before "we've" (I've ) eaten then

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Only under duress, , oh wait a minute, my sister bakes the cakes and thats an hour away
Incidently if one decided on a pilgrimage to "Exmoor", what would the quality and quantity of "cake" required to be permitted entry?

We've given up buying meat from a supermarket and always go to the local farm shop where you can select the piece and the size.

Similarly I gave up ordering red meat dishes in restaurants as it was too often disappointing.

Wonder if the freezing effect is down to the it rupturing up the cells.

Best beef I've ever had was from a 4yr old 'freemartin' Galloway heifer that had never been off the hill, come to think of it a lot of that went in the freezer while we worked our way through it. That would have been about 30yrs ago.

llamedos said:

With this I agree wholeheartedly, the British are simply no good at complaining in a polite way. The more we put up with it the more we are treated quite shabbily.
There is no need to be rude about it, you enter into a contract when you eat in a restaurant, them to provide you with food of an acceptable quality & you to pay for it. If they break that contract with poor food or questionable quality, you should alert them to it, and state you will not pay for it. No need to be embarrassed either as many are, and simply will not complain.
I have only ever had to refuse to pay twice, both times with Fish dishes, One was a mixed seafood salad, part of which was still frozen, and part which had obviously just come out of a microwave!
Secondly a fish supper from a well known local restaurant/chip shop, and the fish was rancid! They argued about giving me my money back... not a wise move.

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I think I would decline any new food brought to the table after making your complaint. Hate to think what could be in it!

KMA said:

Wonder if the freezing effect is down to the it rupturing up the cells.

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Partially, it is also down to the interaction of fat compounds through the thawing and subsequent cooking according to the report posted earlier in the thread.

Had a lamb a good while ago, cooked the first leg from fresh it was truly awful, greasy beyond belief and just a horrid taste to it, ashamed to say the dogs got most of it.
The other leg had been left in the freezer, must have been there well over 18 months. I cooked it from frozen - not something I have ever done before, but we were to be out for the day, and had nothing else in.
I can honestly say it was the best piece of lamb I have eaten since being a kid, the taste and texture was out of this world, not a scrap left, it just melted in your mouth the horrible taint gone. Beautiful.

manhill said:

I think I would decline any new food brought to the table after making your complaint. Hate to think what could be in it!

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I would never ask for a replacement meal

llamedos said:

I would never ask for a replacement meal

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tend to agree but if your hungry your hungry if you no wha I mean

Yorkshire farmer1 said:

tend to agree but if your hungry your hungry if you no wha I mean

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Yes, but do you really want to be ingesting a sample of the chef's body fluids?

Osca said:

Yes, but do you really want to be ingesting a sample of the chef's body fluids?

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do I have to answer that honestly ....... haha only jokin

llamedos said:

With this I agree wholeheartedly, the British are simply no good at complaining in a polite way. The more we put up with it the more we are treated quite shabbily.
There is no need to be rude about it, you enter into a contract when you eat in a restaurant, them to provide you with food of an acceptable quality & you to pay for it. If they break that contract with poor food or questionable quality, you should alert them to it, and state you will not pay for it. No need to be embarrassed either as many are, and simply will not complain.
I have only ever had to refuse to pay twice, both times with Fish dishes, One was a mixed seafood salad, part of which was still frozen, and part which had obviously just come out of a microwave!
Secondly a fish supper from a well known local restaurant/chip shop, and the fish was rancid! They argued about giving me my money back... not a wise move.

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Absolutely agree as there is no point shouting or causing a scene. I just tell them it's not acceptable and I won't be paying for it but I will pay for everything that is acceptable. They cannot argue because they are effectively removing a full plate of food that was rejected.

Clearly anybody who eats it all then complains is being extremely silly in doing so and restaurant has every right to call the police if they see fit to do so.

KMA said:

We've given up buying meat from a supermarket and always go to the local farm shop where you can select the piece and the size.

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Most supermarkets here (not some of the smaller ones) have meat and fish counters with butchers and whatever you call ladies who can gut, skin and fillet fish very expertly. In some you can see, through glass, the butchers who also serve at the counter, jointing beef quarters or whole pigs. Everybody buys whatever they want. If there is a shortage of anything on display they will go and get it from the cutting room. Deli counters are the same.

I did not take much notice in the UK, but I thought there were similar counters in some supermarkets at the turn of the century.

I've been impressed with the knowledge of the butchers in Morrison's, but I suspect the lad behind the meat counter in Tesco was barely trained or qualified to put bacon in a bag.