What to Eat: Protein

Meat (including offal) is a wonderfood and is absolutely essential to health. It is packed full of nutrients including good fats (which is why we should include fatty cuts).  

Buying 100% pasture-fed meat ensures the animal has been reared outside with the ability to roam and eat the food that nature intends it to eat.  We buy beef, along with mutton and lamb from Bryn Belted Galloway. Read more about our efforts to find the real thing here.

We are also lucky in this area to access wild game when in season.

We have made a conscious effort to get eat more offal. Chicken pate and beef liver pate, liver with parsley and lemon, stuffed and braised hearts are some of our favourites. Check out this excellent Chris Kresser article on nature’s real superfood.

We also make plenty of bone broth with the bones (simmered for around 24 hours). Be sure to add a couple of tablespoons of cider vinegar as this helps to extract the minerals and other good stuff from the bone. The fat collected on the top of the broth as it cools is fantastic to use again for cooking.

We avoid farmed fish and shellfish unless it is responsibly farmed (difficult to ensure) and try to get a mixture of fresh and tinned. Oily fish that are high in anti-inflammatory Omega-3’s are a favourite (wild salmon, mackerel, sardines) and they are relatively cheap.  Brixham Seafood is particularly good and we order with others to share delivery costs and stock up the freezer.

For fowl and eggs we always buy free range and local. We have found an excellent chicken supplier at Usk Farmers Market called Tom Llewellyn and we try to get down there when we can as the flavour of the chickens is absolutely wonderful. They are organic and free to roam on grass. Whenever we have cooked these chickens, people have remarked on how great they taste.

For Christmas we like to buy from Monmouthshire Turkeys. Birds are organic and free range; grown slowly to full maturity and given access to fields and hedgerows during the day. They are moist and have a particularly good flavour. I spent quite a bit of time researching to source the most ethically raised turkeys possible locally and Monmouthshire Turkeys are a great find.

For charcuterie we have found none better than the award-winning Trealy Farm (also at Usk Farmers Market). Consistently fantastic products that are allergen free, use no artificial colours or flavouring, have no nitrates/saltpetre, are made from free range, carefully sourced meat from traditional breeds and only use meat raised to the highest welfare standards. Trealy Farm ticks all the boxes!

For a delicious protein snack, check out Bighorn Biltong – their Certified Paleo – Original Biltong uses no sugars and is Paleo Certified.