Cooking with Swaledale Butchers

Whilst a lot of my blogposts are all about eating out, for once I’m cooking! I wouldn’t call myself a top chef but when you have some top ingredients you can’t go too wrong. Swaledale Butchers recently reached out to me to try some of their produce. Swaledale Butchers are actually based in Yorkshire so it’s nice that it’s pretty local. They have a pretty huge online operation going on where all of their produce is delivered fresh. Steaks, sausages, roasting joints and much more are on offer. The website was super easy to navigate when I was placing an order and I was able to choose whichever delivery suited me the most. They are also already taking orders for Christmas! Just a warning that this post is VERY meat heavy.

Our Swaledale Butchers order arrived on its delivery date via a courier with an hour’s time slot which was very convenient. The meat was boxed with ice bags to keep everything fresh. The order consisted of a Topside of Beef, 2 Flat Iron Steaks, Smoked Streaky Bacon, 4 Steak Burgers and 1kg of pigs in blankets. Yes, you read that correctly, 1kg of pigs in blankets. All of this came to just under £50 which isn’t too bad for top quality meats which are delivered to your door. I thought I would share what I have been cooking the last week from our delivery and let you know my thoughts.

Starting off with the Flat Iron Steaks. These steaks were pretty reasonably priced at under £10, they are occasionally on offer too. The beef is dry-aged on the bone for 28 days. There is two in the pack and they were both quite sizeable pieces of meat. Once I seasoned with sea salt and black pepper, I cooked in a dry pan for around 10 minutes in total. The steak was perfectly browned on the outside and cooked medium to rare. I’m not the best cook in the world but the dish was full of flavour. This is probably down to the high quality of meat, you don’t have to do a lot to it. I served the steaks with beef dripping triple cooked chips, tender stem broccoli and mushrooms.

The next evening, I used the Steak Burgers. For £9 we got four Steak Burgers and they really were pretty big. I’ve got to say, these were absolutely delicious and I was utterly impressed by these. We went all out with the burgers and melted cheese on the burgers before serving with salad and onion rings. I’ve got to say these are the best burgers we have had in a long time and I’m sure these would be excellent for a BBQ.

I also picked up some dry-cured smoked streaky bacon which was perfect for a weekend pick-me-up breakfast. I actually cooked these in my Ninja Air Fryer in just five minutes. For 250g of bacon, it cost £4.50 which isn’t bad as the quality was outstanding. To be honest, we should’ve actually put a rasher or two on the Steak Burgers for the ultimate burger experience.

Finally, I also picked up a Topside of Beef and the aforementioned 1kg of Pigs in Blankets. You’ll know I do love a good Sunday Roast. Not only do I love eating out as you’ll have seen in my well-documented Sunday Roast Diaries but I do love cooking one for myself. The Topside of Beef was £15 and was to serve around 3-4 people. We could have easily halved the joint for two servings. However, the extra meat made for delightful leftover sandwiches. Additionally, we cooked some of the 1kg of Pigs in Blankets and they were also delicious. I’ve got to say both the Beef Joint and Pigs in Blankets were amazing. I’m actually going to get both for Christmas Day (alongside a Turkey of course). That is how much I was impressed with them.

I’ve got to say all the meat I got from Swaledale Butchers was top notch. We all know I’m not to best cook but the quality of the meat really helped serving up some incredible dishes. As i said, I’m definitely going to be ordering again from Swaledale Butchers and get my Christmas delivery from them.