dexter cattle

Handling Your Beef

These are a few ideas and recommendations I have compiled from personal experience and from ideas and thoughts from others. At the risk of teaching Grannies to suck eggs...........here they are!

  • After picking your beef up, try and keep it cool. It will hold the chill put into it from the fridge for up to 36 hours providing you insulate it well. Use newspaper, foil, blanket, anything like that.
  • I have been advised by my butcher, that when the meat has been vaccy packed, it will carry on maturing if kept cool and not frozen for a few days. Therefore, you may well wish to consider the possibility of freezing stewing, braising and mince initially and keep the better cuts cool for a day or so in a fridge, thereby easing the load on the freezer as well as "improving" the eating of the meat.
  • Basic food hygiene should obviously be observed in handling the meat. ie wash hands and surfaces before and after handling any meat.
  • Remember also to wash scales etc. before starting.
  • When bagging meat, if possible, have one person handling the meat, and one or two marking and sealing the bags. It is much easier. It also aids good hygiene practice.
  • Write on the bags BEFORE bagging!! :-) It's important.
  • Use big bags as opposed to smaller ones. They seem to be easier to handle.
  • Use metal ties, not the press-seal bags, which we find to be useless. The seal breaks and the meat gets freezer burn.
  • When freezing, remember you are putting in a lot of meat! The freezer should be on fast freeze before you load it!
  • Freezing time will obviously depend on the quantity put in. Allow up to 30 hours, though experience has shown that 24 hours is nearer the time needed.
  • If possible, build the meat in a box shape, placing the meat around the sides of the freezer, in a hollow box shape. This allows the cooled air better circulation.
  • Uprights freeze a bulk order better in my experience. Stack a little on each shelf.
  • Try not to put a big pile of meat on anything that is not happy at having it's temp raised in the freezer. e.g. chicken... Put a newspaper or two in between the meats.
  • Don't be tempted to freeze the cuts in the butchers bags as it is pain to separate out a 10lb hunk of steak :-)
  • Cut your fillet steak before freezing, if you freeze it of course :-)
  • "What I do with things like pieces of steak and other stuff that I may want to slice half-frozen or that will defrost quicker if they're flat (to say nothing of being easier to store and separate) is I lay them flat on a cookie sheet, cover (with eg cling film) and freeze, bagging them in one big bag once they're frozen. (I do this with chicken breasts, pork steaks, and lamb chops, too, and it's a lot more convenient) " Tip from Wendy G.
  • "A tip here - should one find that one has frozen, to pick an example at random, three joints together, they can be separated without defrosting using a little warm water run over the join between different joints, and gentle use of a flexible knife" Tip from GJC