Have a BBQ Butchers - Day 1

BBQ magazine fires up National Butchers’ Week by highlighting butchers with a love of barbecue.

Committed to quality and provenance, these butchers know all about meat over flames. Today we ‘travel’ to West Sussex and West Lothian.

SOUTH DOWNS BUTCHERY

Matt Everest’s passion for butchery started as a ‘Saturday lad’ aged 17 and within two months he was offered a full-time job.

“I quickly started to enjoy the craftsmanship of the trade. The more experience I gained the more passionate I became about where the meat was sourced and how you could get the most out of cooking it,” says Everest, who spent 12 years at Flanagan Butchers in Crawley Down, Sussex.

He was then at Surrey Hills Butchers in Oxshott, before opening South Downs Butchery in Henfield, West Sussex.

Everest is a member of Team GB in the World Butchers’ Challenge where the Great Britain captain is Simon Taylor of Surrey Hills.

“I strongly believe in only sourcing the highest quality of meat, working with local farmers and abattoirs, to ensure that my customers get the best field to fork experience and to also keep food mileage to a minimum,” says Everest.

“I also feel butchers have a responsibility to educate the customer on how all parts of the animal can be utilised, so that the customer gets the most from their purchased product.  A friendly butcher should be at the heart of a local community, promoting locally sourced produce and offering great service.”

He says beyond the burgers and sausages, a popular BBQ cut is the Tomahawk steak. Everest has bought a dry ager for the Sussex shop in anticipation of selling plenty of dry-aged steak. His personal favourite over live fire is pork – be it belly or spare rib chops.

“These work well both marinated or left plain and I especially like it when the fat gets slightly crisp and sticky. It is simply delicious.”

www.southdownsbutchery.co.uk

CAMPBELLS PRIME MEAT

The Campbells story began in 1911 with Thomas Campbell and the company has since passed down through the generations and still in family ownership, providing high quality meat, fish, and deli products to both consumers and the hospitality industry.

Scottish through and through from Linlithgow in West Lothian, all Campbells products are cut by hand, ensuring the same quality and craft of a local butcher, fishmonger, and delicatessen, but with the convenience of being able to order online for home delivery.

“We sell a wide variety of popular BBQ products including beef steaks, pork steaks, burgers, sausages, and chicken drumsticks. We have a range of meat boxes, including a premium burger box that contains steak burgers, chili burgers, and pork and chorizo burgers. Our sausage meat box contains six different types of premium sausages, and a total of 46 sausages,” says Neil Farmer, who has worked for Campbells for 23 years.

On top of this, our BBQ party meat box has been specially put together for BBQ season and is extremely popular with our customers. It contains a variety of pork and beef steaks, burgers, sausages, chicken drumsticks, chicken thighs, and hot dogs – perfect for BBQ cooking and a variety of tastes.”

Farmer is a passionate home cook and anticipates more adventure in people’s BBQ cooking – why not try Campbells ‘blaggis’ burger (black pudding and haggis) – a greater demand for premium sausages and more experimenting with side dishes, such as asparagus wrapped in Virginia cured bacon.

“I would also like to see more fish being cooked and grilled. Barbecued fish is excellent.”

Farmer loves an American style brisket, which he sometimes brines overnight, before smoking with oak, hickory or apple.

“Long and slow cooked for up to eight hours, with a few whiskies while I wait.”

www.campbellsmeat.com

For further information:

BBQ magazine: Rupert Bates. rupert@thebbqmag.com

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