Meet our team
Swaledale's expert seam butchery team is committed to utilising the whole carcass, nose-to-tail, to provide our customers with a sustainable source of exceptional tasting, nutrient-dense meat.
All of our beef, pork, and lamb is dry-aged on the bone in our Himalayan salt chamber, this tenderises the meat and elevates the natural flavours further still.
Swaledale started with Jorge; a one man band with a refrigerated van, sourcing heritage breed meat directly from his community of farmers in the Yorkshire Dales, and delivering it to some of the best restaurants in London. Swaledale now has a network of around 30 small, family-run farms and smallholdings dotted around the wildly beautiful Yorkshire Dales who exclusively rear the hardy, native livestock breeds of Britain.
Swaledale's team of expert seam butchers are committed to utilising the whole carcass, nose-to-tail, to provide our customers with a sustainable source of exceptional tasting, nutrient-dense meat. All of our beef, pork, and lamb is dry-aged on the bone in our Himalayan salt chamber, this tenderises the meat and elevates the natural flavours further still.
We have a talented team at Swaledale, with a butchery team that boasts a wealth of skill and experience. Working with an entire carcass is unusual in modern butchery and requires a full spectrum of abilities from each butcher, from whole-carcass sectioning, boning and trimming, seam butchery and portioning individual cuts or joints for our wholesale and retail customers.
They prepare each cut with skill, expertise, and experience, paying strict attention to detail and quality. Being a butcher requires passion, dedication and determination and we are always keen to pass on these traditional, time-honoured Butchery skills to younger members of the team. Many have learnt the necessary skills of their trade within our walls.
Time and attention is given to each carcass, which is prepared to order by our team of expert seam butchers; as a mark of respect nothing is wasted, we make use of every single cut. Some of our meat is dry-aged, cured, smoked over beech, or in the case of our award winning sausages, mixed with bespoke spice blends. We produce meat that is interesting to cook, flavoursome to eat, and evidential of why native breeds deserve our support and promotion.
By its very nature, whole-carcass butchery places a cap on how much can be obtained from a single carcass, therefore many cuts are only available in limited quantities or on a seasonal basis. We’re proud to operate in sync with our small scale farming supply chain, match the rhythm of seasonal production, and echo the lifecycle of livestock.
Our expert butchery team has a unifying passion for food and understands how best to prepare and cook our many cuts. Comprising mainly ex-chefs, we develop all recipes in house, from sausage seasonings and bacon cures to marinades and rubs.
Much time is spent on site with our farmers across The Dales, touching base, discussing livestock and our various breeding projects, from heritage Middle White pigs to Swaledale mutton or the introduction of the Lowline breed, a diminutive, seldom seen beef breed similar in size to the Dexter which we have been breeding since 2016.
The farmers themselves are of course vital members of the team, fantastic produce being essential before we dry-age, dry-cure, brine, smoke and fill our award-winning sausages on site.
