No crackling

We’re beginning to despair of the butcher we’re using at the moment. He seems to have definite ideas of what he wants to sell you, rather than what you want to buy.

My first problem arose when I tried to buy a leg of pork for roasting. I was told no. He reckoned it was too large a joint for him to sell. I hadn’t been trying to buy a whole leg. It would be too expensive for his usual customers.

My next problem was trying to buy some chicken thighs. He only sells legs, i.e. thighs and drumsticks. Presumably you can’t buy just drumsticks if that’s what you want.

This week I endeavoured to buy some pork shoulder for a roast. He had some. I noticed the absence of skin for crackling. No, I was told. This meat came from the middle of the joint therefore there’s no skin. To me crackling is the highlight of roast pork, but seemingly not if you want to buy from this butcher. I’ve never had problems buying shoulder with skin on before. I can see it may be desirable if you are going to slow-roast the joint or cut it up into cubes for a casserole, but not for a roast as I’d told him I was intending to do. We had the roast pork yesterday. It was tasty but we did miss that crackling. I also feel the under-skin fat bastes the meat as it cooks, keeping it nice & moist.

He does do some meats well. His sausages are well flavoured & have thin skins unlike those from the supermarket. His beef steak is almost black so well is it hung. The meat pies, made by a lady in the village, look delicious. The chicken breasts are fine but not exceptional. He is prepared to cut out the pork tenderloin for you provided you buy the whole fillet. (I just freeze half for another day).

We came to the conclusion last night that having to go without crackling with our roast pork, is too high a price to pay. We’re going to find another source. It’s a pity because we would have like to have supported our local village butcher. And he is a charming, friendly man but no crackling is too much for us. We’re going back to our old source for chicken, occasionally buying other meat from there, & getting the rest from Carnforth several miles away. We don’t eat vast quantities of meat - more often or not it’s just mince or stewing beef, which we’re quite happy to buy at Morrisons with the rest of our food shopping - but we do want meat that has flavour & is the cut that we prefer, with crackling for roast pork. We still sorely miss the Farmers’ Market & the meat we bought there.