On the board there was some talk about buffalo meat which made me realize that the only meats I really have to choose from at the grocer are from a pig, cow, chicken or turkey. I want to try some new meats like buffalo or whatever else strikes my fancy, is a butcher the proper place to go to for this kind of thing or will a butcher just carry pig and cow meat? What kind of place should I go to if I want a large variety of meats to pick from?
A butcher is only going to carry what sells, i.e. lamb at Easter, turkey at Thanksgiving, etc. Specialty stores may carry buffalo or reindeer.
By ‘how much would he charge’ I mean is a butcher going to charge more than a grocer for the same kind of product, charge less, charge about the same or is it varied.
Buffalo meat seems to be more mainstream than the other meats, I can regularly find it at Whole Foods (an upscale grocery) and sometimes at QFC (regular grocery). If you are going to a butcher, I would guess that you’d pay a little bit more than regular grocery store prices, about the same as an upscale grocery. You might want to check for stores that carry “exotic meats” as well, I know I’ve seen one around here in Seattle that sells ostrich, snake and moose (which is yummy) among others.
You’ll probably pay a bit more at a butcher shop, and the odds are that the selection will be about the same as what most supermarkets in your area will carry. For example, in more cosmopolitan places, shops are likely to carry more unusual meats. If you’re out West were buffalo (IMHO) is a bit more common, you’ll probably see it more often in butcher shops and in groceries.
The real value of butchers are probably only realized by a small number of people who really know about cooking. It’s more customer friendly to custom order meats (ie, I want one pound of sirloin cut so and so way, can you grind that strip, etc) at a butchers than at your Safeway.
Expect to pay more, but expect better quality. A butcher should also be able to give you advice - “I’ve never cooked a steak before”, “In that case, don’t try to cook fillet or rump”. If you’re interested in unusual meats, then definitely ask a butcher, because if they don’t have it, they’ll be able to point you in the right direction.
When I lived in a small college town, we went to the butcher, rather than to any of the grocery stores for meat. I was mostly pig and cow, but higher quality and in more luxurious cuts than the other stores. They also had house-made sausages, and thick-cut bacon, and they offered a bit more variety in the poultry department–smoked chickens and large roasters, for example. Lamb was seasonal and I don’t really recall any exotic offerings, beyond a few organ meats.
You might check the freezer at fancier grocery stores. That’s where I’ve generally seen buffalo, duck, capon, etc.
Oh, and farmer’s markets (if they have them in your neck of the woods, so to speak) are often a good place to find more unusual meats and sausages.
Most standard butchers carry the basics, but taking a look at some of the smaller specialty stores, you should be able to find venison, elk, ostrich, alligator, buffalo, rattlesnake, along with the more exotic foul. If you’re in Bloomington, it may be worth your while to make the trek to Cincy once a month to check out Jungle Jim’s. Google it for the website, because I’m not good at the link thing, but I’m sure that you’ll like what you see.
The butcher in our area is FANTASTIC. He/They are also INCREDIBLY expensive, which makes a visit a rare thing. (Two rib-on Ribeye steaks came to $37.00 - now…they were the best steaks to ever touch my grill, but SHEESH!) They’ll also do stuff for you that you won’t get at the grocer. They had a bunch of rib-off ribeyes and cut two with the rib still on just by asking.
They also have stellar English Bangers, and sell Buffalo. They also have more upscale stuff I can’t even touch (dry-aged beef) and thursdeay thru Sunday they also have seafood. (Colorado is pretty landlocked, last I checked.)
Is it just the area I live in, or has Beef gotten REALLY expensive in the last two years? Like a 40% jump in cost?
Around here the local groceries sell rabbit, duck, and lamb all year round.
It actually depends. In my neighborhood, the Polish and Mexican butchers are actually significantly cheaper than the supermarkets, and have a superior product to boot (especially the cuts of pork.) For example, a pound of bacon from the butchers? $2.50. At the grocery store? Around $5.
I live in Fort Worth, and around here, most of the run-of-the-mill grocery stores carry lamb, corned beef briskets, duck/duckling (usually whole frozen ones), Cornish game hens, and fresh turkey parts (wings, drumsticks, etc.) all year round. Fort Worth is a fairly large city, though. In many grocery stores, there’s a real butcher section, where one can get a piece of meat sliced or ground to order, and pick out individual steaks which are wrapped before your eyes. Many also have a separate fish section, which has all sorts of fresh and salt water fish/shellfish. The butcher shops, those shops that sell nothing but meat, have a better selection, and offer a higher quality of meat. If I gave fancy dinner parties, I’d probably go to a butcher’s shop for my entree. However, my family finds quite a good selection of meat, poultry, and fish at our regular grocery store.
Here in New York, we can get pretty much anything. Lamb isn’t seasonal. It’s always available, whether you want a rack, a leg, chops, whatever. Rabbit is easily available. There are pleny of halal butchers around that regularly stock goat. There’s a greenmarket at Union Square on weekends, and various farmers from the region have stands there. Game meats and birds are always available. One stand in particular (Quattro Farms, for New Yorkers who want to check it out) has the best free-range chickens I’ve ever tasted. They also have game birds. Nice stuff.
Overall, the better butchers have meat that is substantially better than what’s available in any supermarket (of course, there are exceptional supermarkets, like Fairway or Dean & DeLuca).
Butcher shops are great. I miss living next to one.
Pricing is varied. The one I used to frequent, was competitive to the supermarkets.
The service is going to be a lot better. You want a steak trimmed of all fat, they’ll do it. If you wander in with a recipe calling for a cut of meat you are not familiar to, they will offer tips and pointers.
Selection is going to be a lot better. Veal, soup bones, chicken Italian sausages. A lot of things you just can’t get at the super market.
Some of you more exotic cuts of meat you can always order from mail-order houses, if you just can’t get it locally. You’ll pay a premium
Try hitting up ‘ethnic’ butcher shops as well. As well as having different sorts of meats like mutton and goat, they will have different cuts of beef and pork as well. Koreans like beef ribs cut crosswise with a lot of ribmeat, and thin sliced rib-eye steak. Carnicerias have cuts of meat I have never seen in supermarkets.
I was just going to suggest this. There are a couple butcher shops I know of that are near neighborhoods with a large Somali population, and they offer goat and camel meat. Probably wouldn’t find any pork, though.
You are not kidding about that. Jungle Jim’s is the MOTHER (300,000 square feet) of all specialty food stores. I went there when I was in Cincinatti and I came out impressed. It is a cross between and upscale supermarket and Disney World. As a joke, I asked an employee, “Do you have any fresh whole stalks of sugar cane”. Sure enough, they had them and they were a big hit at the party that I went to. I should have expected that from a store with its own train and theater?
I am sure that whatever meat you want will be positively commonplace to them.