Category: Feature

Question

Which job requires being surrounded by death, cold temperatures and a good sense of humour?

Answer

A butcher.

Jim Sutcliffe was, until recently, the Young Butcher of the Year. His title ran out in November but his enthusiasm for his trade seems to never end. Jim spoke to us about what goes into making a good butcher. It’s not just the skills, it’s also personality.

He said that you “need to be hard working and dedicated and you need to take pride in the finished product. Some people don’t care what something looks like when they’ve finished with it and you need to be prepared to work long hours and enjoy the cold and have a good sense of humour really.

“When I was training, I trained under nine different butchers and every one of them did it differently but the one thing that was consistent with them all was that everybody liked to have a bit of a joke. Everything from prank phone calling people to hanging up on meat hooks in the fridge.”

Jim won the title of Young Butcher of the Year last year and the recognition meant a lot to him. “It meant a great deal to win it because it’s a trade that’s not very recognised in the sort of wider world. If you speak to people in the street a butcher is no different to a car mechanic or something else, people don’t see the effort that goes into it.”

The programme hopefully meant a lot to the public too by revealing what really happens behind the scenes. “In the supermarket culture that we’re in when you go in there and everything is done, it’s done by a machine and it’s prepared, they don’t think about the traditional butcher and all the effort that has to go in behind the scenes.

“The programme itself was good because it exposed the back room work to the general public and it recognised a trade that doesn’t get a lot of mention and sort of on the back of that hopefully it sort of inspired younger people to come into it.”

Jim believes that winning the programme meant that he was more trusted in the butchery community as well as by customers. This original lack of trust is most likely due to his age- the average age of a butcher in the UK is 55 and Jim is only 24.

“Probably the biggest effect it had was it exposed me to the outside world and people cared a little bit more about my opinions…So that was a good thing and it was also nice because it’s a trade where you’re not really recognised until you’re a lot older, so people don’t take you seriously customers come in the shop and think ‘how can you have a butcher of my age that knows anything about meat’ and so it meant people took me a bit more seriously.”

Jim also believes that Lincolnshire is one of the best producers in the British Isles. “In Lincolnshire people accuse us of being stuck behind the times, and we’re 50 years behind anywhere else and that’s one of the things that makes our meat here very good, because the farms are small. They tend to be mixed and they’re growing their own grain, make their own fodder, it’s not intensively reared.”

“We’re very lucky, in this county we’ve got meat, vegetables, fish, fruit, all sorts. We’re one of the only counties in the British Isles that has all those things coming in…so it’s something that we’re very proud of. It means that if you’re a chef or something like that you’ve got a huge great big larder of produce to use that’s all local.”

The county may well be known for it’s Lincolnshire Red beef but Charles Sutcliffe raises Longhorn Cattle, a specialist breed.

The Tetford herd was established in 1993 by Charles and his wife Debbie. Since then the herd has gone from strength to strength with two Royal Show Male Champions: Tetford Clansman and Tetford Kingpin.

The Longhorn cattle are an extremely docile breed and this was evident upon walking through the herd. The cows and calves stayed bedded down while we walked around with Charles.

The herd means a lot to Charles, he raises each calf for about 22 months until it’s ready to be taken to slaughter. He often drives the cattle to the abattoir himself. This is a difficult task after being attached for so long (rearing some of the cattle by hand) but he does this for a reason.

Mass farming and transportation to the abattoir puts a great strain on cattle. The adrenaline from stress and other factors affect the quality of the meat. Calm transportation allows for the beef to be unaffected by these, resulting in a better quality.

Charles chose to raise and breed Longhorns because of their mild nature and the quality of the meat. Longhorns don’t need to build large layers of external fat before they begin forming “intramuscular fat”. This allows for the marbling which is responsible for succulence, tenderness and of course flavour.

The beef from Tetford was voted Britain’s best but Charles isn’t certain how this happened. “I’m not completely sure it is that much better. It’s one man, or in the case of this competition, half a dozen’s people opinion on the day, but no two animals are the same so no two carcasses are the same. It’s just on that day ours was tastier, tenderer and more succulent than anything else they tried. I happen to know that some of what they tried was bloody awful but there is a lot of good beef out there, it’s just finding it and being able to get back and get it again or similar to it again.”

“There’s not much good beef in the supermarkets, not necessarily because what they started with was inferior but you can’t produce anything good, be it meat, vegetables, furniture, anything without striving to achieve  perfection and there are a lot of elements that make up good meat.

“Start with a good breed, which I believe we’ve got. You give it a stress free life as possible because stress produces adrenaline which doesn’t improve meat quality. Every day of an animal’s life has an influence on the end product, some days have a much bigger influence than others. Diet, okay they’re out there and eat grass but supplementary feeding is important.”

The beef  from the Tetford Herd is sold in the family butchers, Meridian Meats, in Louth where son Jim Sutcliffe is the manager.