As if by magic, Easter is next weekend. And if you’re wondering how that came round so quicky, you’re not alone.

We love Easter, and it’s not just because of the chocolate eggs.
At Easter we get the same time off work as at Christmas but with none of the pressures of having to send cards, buy presents, and spend time with a whole host of in-laws that we’d really rather not.

Having said that, we love to gather our nearest and dearest together at Easter, and that always revolves around food.

Lamb is a traditional meat to enjoy at Easter, and we have a really great option for you.
Icelandic lamb is renowned around the world for being flavoursome, tender, and very lean.
The sheep live a very free-range life, and are free to graze on pastures of grass, willow, moss, and berries, which gives the meat a distinctive flavour.
Food connoisseurs can tell the difference between lamb from different regions, and the lamb from Iceland is supposedly more aromatic than other varieties.
In Iceland, no antibiotics, hormone supplements, pesticides or herbicides are used in meat production, and this means you can be happy the lamb is natural and as it should be.
We have shoulders of Icelandic Lamb, which will be £20 each but are currently on an introductory offer of £14 each.

We also have cockerels as another option for Easter dinner.
Our cockerels are from Adlington, who also supply our Three-Bird Roasts at Christmas.
The cockerels are free-range, and have a completely natural diet of wheat, maize and whole oats, supplemented with locally-grown apples.
The cockerels love the apples and they give the meat an added sweetness and tenderness.
Each cockerel costs £37.50, and weighs around 3kg, so will provide plenty of meat for 6-8 people.

If you're looking for ideas on what to put on your Easter menu, hop over to BBC Food for some inspiration!

We are delivering until Thursday 29^th March, and we need your order by Sunday 25^th March.

For more information please see:
Icelandic Lamb Shoulder
Apple-fed Cockerels
Easter offers

23^rd March 2018

We’re massive fans of Sunday Brunch on Channel Four, and it forms a major part of our weekend viewing.
Presented by Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy, Sunday Brunch is 3 hours of cooking, celebrity guests and music to brighten up your Sunday morning.

Some time ago they were running a feature comparing unusual sausages, and got in touch with us about our Morteau sausages. Morteau are a traditional smoked French sausage, and it received rave reviews on the show for its bacon-like flavour.

Since then we’ve been the meat supplier for the show, and all the meat you see on screen comes from us, here at Smithfield Market.

A few weeks ago they had Rose Veal, our brand new line of high-welfare British veal, and needless to say it went down a storm.

Yesterday on the show, Simon Rimmer prepared one of our legs of lamb with pears and it looked simply amazing!
We’ve had lots of people asking for the recipe, which you can find by clicking on this link.
The key is in cooking it really slowly for 3 hours, until the meat falls apart and becomes melt-in-the-mouth tender.
It looks like a perfect way to cook your lamb this Easter, so if you’re cooking for a crowd or just looking for something a bit different from normal, this recipe is definitely worth taking a look at.
If you fancy making it, you can order a leg of lamb by clicking here.

Each week the Sunday Brunch website publishes all the recipes for everything made on the show, which often includes cocktails and desserts, as well as our meaty contributions.
They have a really varied mix of dishes, from traditional British to exotic Persian or Thai flavours.
If you’d like to see the latest recipes, just click here to visit the Sunday Brunch website.

For more information please see:
Buy Leg of Lamb (as cooked on Sunday Brunch)
Leg of Lamb with Pears recipe
Sunday Brunch latest recipes

19^th March 2018

Veal can be a controversial subject, and we know a lot of people don’t agree with it on ethical grounds.
However we have recently started selling Rosé Veal from Devon which is free-range and reared to very high welfare standards.

Veal is the meat from young cows, so is the beef equivalent of lamb, in comparison.

Much of the veal available in the UK in recent years has been ‘white’ veal, from the Netherlands. It’s so-called because of its pale colour – a result of the calves being fed solely on milk. They are kept in cramped conditions that would fall short of welfare standards in the UK.

In the UK dairy industry, female calves go on to be the next generation of milking cows, while the males have traditionally been surpass to requirements and would be shot while very young, often soon after birth.

However, we believe it is more ethical to rear the male calves and give them a decent life, before eventually using them to produce Rosé Veal.
Rosé Veal gets its name from its dark pink colour; not as dark as beef, but much darker than white veal.

Our veal comes from Weston’s Dairy farm in Tiverton, where the dairy herd of pedigree Jersey cattle have been farmed by the Weston family since 1904.
The calves are reared to very high welfare standards, and are farm-assured under the Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb (FABBL) scheme. The farm has also been awarded the Good Calf Commendation by the Compassion in World Farming. This means that the calves are reared to a higher welfare standard than is required by law, which is really important to us, and very different from traditional veal production.

From 3 weeks of age the calves are reared outdoors during the summer months in groups of 24, and then brought indoors during the winter when the ground becomes wet. Whilst inside they are housed in smaller groups of 12, with plenty of space and bedded on straw, with grass silage to eat. They’re given a balanced diet that contains all the nutrients they need and they’re fed milk twice a day. This produces rose veal (pink meat), not the Dutch white veal which is created purposely by an unbalanced and deficient diet.

The calves are reared to the age of 6-8 months – the same age as many lambs. Then the meat is allowed to hang for two weeks before being portioned.

Rosé Veal has a delicate beef flavour and is really a great alternative to beef or lamb, and one which is ethically sound, too.

We have a selection of Rosé Veal cuts available to buy online including Escalopes and Osso Bucco, which is sliced veal shin.

For more information please see:
Buy Rosé Veal 
Compassion in World Farming

5^th March 2018