Offal - why are less-desirable cuts of meat more expensive?

[styles]

Is there a particular reason that less-desirable cuts of meat are more expensive?

I was looking at a couple of things earlier. One was beef tongue. Asda want 66p per slice. I barely even known anyone my age who eats tongue.

I looked also at liver and Asda are selling it at £6.14/Kg, yet they're selling mince at £4.94/Kg.

If anything I'd have thought things like tongue or liver or kidneys would be cheaper because not many people actually want to eat it.

 

[Darandio]

Regarding mince, it's pork mince surely at £4.94/Kg?

In terms of offal, didn't the posh restaurants make it 'trendy' again?

 

[styles]

Regarding mince, it's pork mince surely at £4.94/Kg?

It is. Beef is £6.24/Kg.

In terms of offal, didn't the posh restaurants make it 'trendy' again?

Is that a thing? Maybe I missed the trend! But that might explain it.

 

[frankmoh]

The bones of a cow used to be very cheap back in the day, sometimes even free! Now bone marrow is all the rage and very pricey. Oxtail too.

 

[AlterEgo]

The bones of a cow used to be very cheap back in the day, sometimes even free! Now bone marrow is all the rage and very pricey. Oxtail too.

Cow femur is free at a couple of butchers near me (south Midlands)! We've used it to make bone broth for our daughter - quite a good way of soaking fine vegetables and making them more interesting when she was starting solids.

 

[styles]

The bones of a cow used to be very cheap back in the day, sometimes even free! Now bone marrow is all the rage and very pricey.

I hadn't thought of that with bone marrow but I do now recall chatting with a guy who had read about some bone marrow soup diet to detecting food intolerances and, between his anti-semitic rants, I realised it was actually part of a trend.

Oxtail too.

That's a new one on me. A couple of years ago I went to a pub serving oxtail on the menu and it reminded me of how rare it is! I haven't seen it on a food menu since. Shame really, it's a very tasty cut.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Proper Welsh faggots were much reliant on offal.

Certain BR canteens served "oxtail" and mash in gravy , appreciated by some !

 

[AlterEgo]

I have never seen oxtail on a menu apart from at one very fancy farm to table place in Kent. Well, there's soup, but other than that, nothing.

 

[cornishjohn]

Is there a particular reason that less-desirable cuts of meat are more expensive?

I was looking at a couple of things earlier. One was beef tongue. Asda want 66p per slice. I barely even known anyone my age who eats tongue.

I looked also at liver and Asda are selling it at £6.14/Kg, yet they're selling mince at £4.94/Kg.

If anything I'd have thought things like tongue or liver or kidneys would be cheaper because not many people actually want to eat it.

Because offal is "undesirable" most of it goes to pet food etc (or dodgy burgers). So the processing route for human consumption is low volume and therefore expensive to operate. There is probably also a "trendy" mark up for the fun of it.

I once wanted 20 lambs tongues for a ren-faire event I was doing. It took my very friendly, very helpful local butcher 2 weeks to source them.

 

[Shimbleshanks]

I spent a week posting a food diary on ChatGPT. Its verdict was that my diet was pretty healthy, but it expressed surprise that I ate so much offal for someone in the 21st Century.
Pigs' liver in Tesco is pretty cheap, though lambs' is quite expensive. I actually prefer pigs' liver - it fries better, I find.
Lambs' kidneys are great when you can get them; I have a devilled kidneys recipe involving copious amounts of Worcester sauce, chilli sauce and tomato paste. But they seem to have gone unavailable in Tesco lately. You can sometimes get them at our local Middle East food store.

 

[najaB]

Because offal is "undesirable" most of it goes to pet food etc (or dodgy burgers). So the processing route for human consumption is low volume and therefore expensive to operate.

This, more than anything. It's a lot cheaper for the abattoir to send all 'mixed scraps' to bulk consumers than it is to separate them, trim them down and package for human consumption, given the volumes involved.

 

[DerekC]

Honeycomb tripe about £7.00 per kg. The flat slimy variety mostly gets used for dog food and is about half that. I have eaten tripe but I won't be queueing for it if it's on offer!

 

[Merle Haggard]

Whatever happened to the UCP shops?

Once common - although more so in the North West at least. UCP stood for United Cattle Products, which was an opaque reference to their speciality being tripe.

And, imo, tongue sandwich are delicious.

 

[swt_passenger]

I always thought it was no accident that Offal and Awful sound a bit similar…

 

[Sun Chariot]

Cow femur is free at a couple of butchers near me (south Midlands)! We've used it to make bone broth for our daughter - quite a good way of soaking fine vegetables and making them more interesting when she was starting solids.

My mother used to make that for the family, every year's cold season. I can still remember the greasy floating goo in the bowl; and my protests of "why can't we have PROPER soup?" falling on deaf ears. The 1970s life...

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Tuesday at 19:40 ==

I always thought it was no accident that Offal and Awful sound a bit similar…

Latter 1990s, three friends and I ate in a London offal restaurant (St John's, in Clerkenwell). I ordered Pig's Trotter, in a fit of "well it's probably just called it. "

Out came a silver platter... With a pig's leg standing upright. The restaurant's diners stared...
The bone marrow tasted a bit like a very stewed onion.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

George Orwell in "Down and Out in Paris and London" paid an unflattering picture of the Tripe Shop he lodged in (the cat slept on it !)

 

[JamesT]

I’ve never really tried most offal, it doesn’t tend to come up as an option. The exception being haggis which I am very much a fan of. Though the version in supermarkets often seems to be adulterated, Haggis is supposed to be lamb but I see beef or pork in the ingredients list.

 

[75A]

Certainly not for me.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Certainly not for me.

Chase even spurned liver (yet I love seared chicken livers, still raw in middle). He turned his nose up at pig heart.
Yet, we gave.him a tuna steak and the furry sod scoffed it in 10 seconds....

 

[Ashley Hill]

I like beef skirt especially in stews. Was always relatively cheap but has shot up in price over the years.
Mrs H often buys bones to make stock. These used to be really cheap but have also risen in price sharply. Our cats like liver but even this isn’t cheap anymore.
Are the cheaper meats making a comeback?

 

[Acathater]

Most offal is probably routed to the dogfood market and is sent of to the canners in specialised lorries.
For a butcher to get some probably requires special handling and so is going to cost more.........remember most butchers nowadays don't kill their own animals, they buy the carcasses from an abattoir beheaded and gutted

 

[Merle Haggard]

Most offal is probably routed to the dogfood market and is sent of to the canners in specialised lorries.
For a butcher to get some probably requires special handling and so is going to cost more.........remember most butchers nowadays don't kill their own animals, they buy the carcasses from an abattoir beheaded and gutted

My bold.

That didn't used to be the case around here
.
Conveyed by the infamous Messrs Chettles in anonymous artics. The trailers were high sided tipper ones with re-inforced sides, similar to ones for ore, and always very battered.

They drove past apparently innocently but a few seconds later there was a really unpleasant smell in the air.

 

[Uk02048]

Offal, at least (you'd hope anyway) the stuff destined for direct human consumption, has a shorter shelf life than other animal protein. So likely incremental higher supply chain costs for that reason too - they need to get it and pack/ship it asap / less schedule flex.

 

[Whisky Papa]

Whatever happened to the UCP shops?

Once common - although more so in the North West at least. UCP stood for United Cattle Products, which was an opaque reference to their speciality being tripe.

I recall walking past the one in Urmston on my way home from junior school. My Dad had enjoyed tripe as a child apparently, but my Mum didn't, so it was never served at home. I'd be open to trying it, I guess, although my wife won't cook it either!

In Todmorden, a tripe stall survived in the indoor market long enough to be used as a filming location in the BBC's 1990 adaptation of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit although I think its use was changed in the programme.

And, imo, tongue sandwich are delicious.

In mine too. Less so that of a female friend from London who was visiting many years ago, who my Mum served a tongue salad - something of a culture shock to her!

I also like black pudding, haggis, kidney and (after school dinner trauma had subsided by middle age) liver. Oxtail I've sadly not had in years.

 

[najaB]

I love oxtail - such a fantastic rich stew - and tongue and heart are super tender meats. Liver can be a bit hit and miss - cooked just right with bacon and onions so good - but it's so easy to overcook and the texture becomes unpleasant. I've never much fancied tripe.

 

[Ediswan]

I also like black pudding, haggis, kidney and (after school dinner trauma had subsided by middle age) liver. Oxtail I've sadly not had in years.

One of the best school dinners we had was liver, bacon and onions. Having noted that, school cooks did vary in their abilities.

 

[brad465]

Because offal is "undesirable" most of it goes to pet food etc (or dodgy burgers). So the processing route for human consumption is low volume and therefore expensive to operate. There is probably also a "trendy" mark up for the fun of it.

I once wanted 20 lambs tongues for a ren-faire event I was doing. It took my very friendly, very helpful local butcher 2 weeks to source them.

Clarkson's Farm alluded to this while he was getting his pub setup. The chef pointed out that you can't send a cow into a pub and have dozens of meat cuts on the menu as it would be too complicated to run the kitchen and for customers choosing. Clarkson found a work around by moving the butcher shop and burger van into the old Grand Tour tent next to the pub, so for each of his cows, all of it was being used; the undesirable cuts would have been mashed into burgers for the van.

 

[Whisky Papa]

One of the best school dinners we had was liver, bacon and onions. Having noted that, school cooks did vary in their abilities.

Sadly we didn't fare so well, it seemed - I certainly don't recall bacon being involved. Finding a 3D scale model of King's Cross - St Pancras underground station buried in it didn't help much either...

 

[styles]

I love oxtail - such a fantastic rich stew - and tongue and heart are super tender meats. Liver can be a bit hit and miss - cooked just right with bacon and onions so good - but it's so easy to overcook and the texture becomes unpleasant. I've never much fancied tripe.

I was in a pub just a couple of years ago which had oxtail on the menu. It was a rare treat.

 

[Trackman]

Honeycomb tripe about £7.00 per kg. The flat slimy variety mostly gets used for dog food and is about half that. I have eaten tripe but I won't be queueing for it if it's on offer!

There's a Chinese restaurant not far from me that serves offal, including tripe and cuts of offal I've never heard of.

The bones of a cow used to be very cheap back in the day, sometimes even free! Now bone marrow is all the rage and very pricey. Oxtail too.

When I was a kid in my school holidays I used to help out my dad's mate who was a boneman.
This taught me a few things, including how to lift heavy objects, different cuts of meat and so on and how to tell if meat was fresh (you smell it) as he got loads of freebies.
The stench was the worse thing, but after a few days you became immune to it, legend has it he never locked his van because the smell would deter thieves.

I asked him how did he make money, firstly he didnt pay for the bones/bit of animals and at the end of the day we would throw them in skip and someone would pick them up, this would be used for fuel, plastics and I am sure he said perfumes.

There's a story about a butcher and a snake when I tell this tale, but maybe for another time!