Whole carcass butchery
Whole carcass butchery supports our holistic approach to food production and our belief in working towards a positive and sustainable food future. Our meat is butchered to order in a bid to reduce wastage, demonstrate respect for livestock, and operate in balance with the natural environment.
Our team of expert seam butchers consider each carcass as an individual, nose to tail, every organ offers nutrition, and every cut has a unique character. Using specific techniques to separate each muscle group, we can utilise the entire carcass, and provide the best quality meat.
We maintain a commitment to the tradition of dry-ageing our beef on the bone for at least 28 days prior to butchery, this isn’t a process you can shortcut so most modern large-scale processors simply don't bother with it. The rewards of allowing the full depth of flavour to develop far outweigh any costs incurred, and the mouthfeel and texture of the meat is incomparable.
We’re committed to only buy what we can sell, and we reject the unsustainable commoditisation of food encouraged by mass retail. We advocate for ethical and flexible consumption which involves appreciating the carcass as a whole and looking beyond the obvious or popular cuts to utilise the full range of available meat. Chickens don’t just have breasts, and there is much more to cattle than prime steaks, so it’s our mission to achieve carcass balance, and this is where you as a responsible consumer come in.
Achieving equilibrium in the rate at which we sell all parts of the carcass is known as carcass balance, it's the holy grail, and a very delicate business. It essentially means that we make use of an entire carcass before we think about butchering another. Sometimes, this commitment to traditional whole carcass butchery will lead to us having a limited quantity of a certain cut, or a gap in availability.
However, we believe that you’ve come to Swaledale precisely because we’re not a warehouse supermarket butcher, and that you share our passion for sustainable practices. We hope that you’ll understand and be flexible when availability is limited, and perhaps go for a cut you weren’t thinking of or haven’t tried before.
We aim to be imaginative in our butchery and offer you a culinary experience that sparks your interest, satisfies your creativity and wows your taste buds. We hand-make all our own sausages and burgers on-site using prime cuts of meat of the same quality and provenance as our joints and steaks. We use freshly ground whole spices to season our sausage meat, so you’ll notice the flavours have a real vibrance.
We also cure our own range of bacon and gammon which are divine. The real beauty of whole carcass butchery is that there’s so much variety to be experienced in the kitchen; cooking can become a lifelong adventure.
