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Apr 28, 2022

An Ode to Nose to Tail Dining

Nose-to-tail makes for an offal-y good spread!

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An Ode to Nose to Tail Dining

In honour of International Stop Food Waste Day, and in a bid to increase awareness around sustainable eating, and we’ve laid out our favourites of the lesser known and offal cuts that so easily get forgotten about. As butchers, it’s our duty to respect every part of the animal and we do so, day in and day out. Utilising everything from pigs’ heads and trotters to heart and brains, means that nothing goes to waste.

 Nose to Tail Cuts

Alongside our loyal and longstanding retail customers, are the chefs and restaurants we’re so proud to supply. Within their kitchens there’s been a resurgence of nose-to-tail dining and in recent years, we’ve seen this way of eating find its way to the home cooks’ plate too. When so much time, care and effort has gone into rearing the majestic animals our farmers supply us with, it’s so important that we continue to practise whole carcass butchery and honour every cut.

This movement – at least in the UK - arguably started in the kitchens of Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver’s St John, where lucky customers were exposed to the likes of tripe, trotters and of course, their famous dish that put bone marrow on the map of culinary genius. What Henderson and Gulliver started was a revival of a way of eating that had long been forgotten, but to this day remains the most sustainable way of eating. Why indulge in a prime steak and leave out the cow’s offal? Yes, perhaps offal is an acquired taste and upon initial induction is not for the fainthearted, but ultimately the fear was in the cooking. Any way you look at it, a well-seasoned steak that been taken out of the fridge long enough, but more crucially, has been given space to rest and breathe after it comes off the heat, is far more difficult to mess up in the kitchen than an ox tongue. The latter requires special attention, but the payoff is huge and much more rewarding than that of its primed counterpart.

 Veal sweetbreads

In a world where we have access to any product we like, and where supermarket aisles are lined with products from afar, it’s easy to forget how to eat with the seasons and how to enjoy the cuts that we know less about. Supply follows demand and has done for centuries, but we are the curators of change and can impact what we see on the shelves. So be adventurous, be bold and try an unknown cut. You’ll be directly alleviating some of the issues that come with carcass imbalance and we can guarantee you’ll be coming back for more.

An Ode to Nose to Tail Dining