Portnellan: Our meat

Portnellan Farm: organic milk and beef

Our meat

Portnellan beef is wonderfully flavoursome and tender. During the two years we attended Farmers’ Markets, we sold out every weekend. In fact, our mince gained such a reputation that it was scarce as fillet steak!

Portnellan beef is vacuum packed. This makes it easier to get the beef from the butcher to you safely and enhancing the keeping quality. But beef doesn’t really like being wrapped up in an air-tight bag so when you buy Portnellan beef and plan to eat it immediately, take it out of the vacuum pack and allow it to sit in a bowl or dish in fridge, covered with a cloth.

For freezing, however, the vacuum pack is ideal – it’s thick protective layer will ensure that the meat is perfectly preserved in your freezer. The flavour when you take it out and cook it is just as good as when you bought it. The advice is to keep beef in the freezer for no more than 6 months but in fact it won’t go off if kept for longer.

We keep a stock of freshly frozen meat in the freezer. However, our popular sirloin and fillet steaks might not be in stock and larger items such as a special rib roast or sirloin for 20 need to be ordered!

Below is the range of beef we offer. If you have a preference for a special cut or size, just ask: we will do our best to supply what you specify.

CUT
Sirloin roast joint Tender, succulent and tasty – a classic ‘Sunday roast’. They can be big (2+ kg) or small (one customer orders a 700 g sirloin for her and her husband)
Rib roasts A tender, succulent and tasty roast. Rib roasts come on the bone or rolled. Leaving the bones in means that the joint cooks beautifully as the heat is transferred along the bone and the flavour is enhanced. Just let us know how many you need to feed or how many ‘ribs’ you’d like
Brisket Brisket is a succulent rolled joint. People love this tasty ‘pot-roast’ – it has more fat in the meat and therefore the flavour is second to none.
Topside This cut is best for slow pot roasting
Silverside Another cut that is best for slow pot roasting
Fillet steaks The most tender, mouth-watering steak – can be fried or grilled. Sometimes customers order whole or half fillets so that they can cut them to their own size
Sirloin steaks A wonderful, flavoursome steak – can be fried or grilled
Rib eye steaks If we do not have orders for rib roasts then we’ll often convert the beef into rib eye steaks, which are very popular. They have wonderful marbling and cook very quickly.
Minute steaks Cooks in a flash! We pack them in 2s and 4s – they defrost very quickly (if you are in a hurry, put the unopened pack into warm water for a few minutes, get your frying pan, grill or barbeque hot and put on the minute steak – turn it once and it’s ready when it is brown on both sides).
Popeseye steak (Rump) Can be fried, grilled or lightly braised. Some people buy these as steaks and prefer them to sirloin or fillet. At Portnellan, we tend to use popeseye as a strip frying steak – it is very tender and should be tossed until it just turns brown in the pan (it loses some of its wonderful flavour if you overcook it). Popeseye also makes the most wonderful (and cheaper) alternative to fondue meat.
Braising steak Very tender with little to trim off; cooks best by gentle braising. Braising steak is a much leaner meat than stewing steak and therefore tends to be a little drier. We would not normally advise people to disguise the flavour of our meat with a curry sauce but we’ve discovered that Patak’s curry sauces in particular enhance the braising steak – it is the particular combination of oils and spices – wonderful! If you are not a curry fan, then add a little cream and pepper just as you serve.
Stewing steak Has a little more fat through it than braising steak and many people prefer it to the slightly drier braising steak – there’s no doubt that this makes a lovely traditional steak and ale pie or a carrot and onion stew. The fat contributes to the flavour of the dish.
Steak mince Ideal for meatballs, burgers, spaghetti bog or mince & tatties. Portnellan mince has developed a reputation – we now sell out at most markets. Many older people tell us that it reminds them of the meat they used to eat when they were young, when meat tasted flavoursome and the texture was better. At our very first markets, people came back to tell us how much they had enjoyed the mince but that it was too fine for mince and tatties. We agreed and so we now do ‘fine’ mince and ‘once only mince’ – a coarser texture that’s been put through the mincer just once. It tastes exactly the same but the finer mince is better for meat balls or spaghetti dishes.
Sausages Our sausages are pure Portnellan beef – there’s no rubbish in them, no rusk and therefore they are gluten free. We have many customers who buy them week after week because it’s so difficult to get gluten-free links. We always sell out, which tells us we’ve got these right!
Lorne sausage Lorne Sausage does have organic rusk in it – the rusk is necessary for the shape – but the rest is pure Portnellan beef. These are a wonderful breakfast treat, grilled and tucked into a bun or a bap. You don’t need too much tomato sauce (if any) because they are bursting with flavour.
Beef burgers Pure gluten-free Portnellan beef. Children are our best fans – kids really know what tastes good when it comes to meat and these are a firm favourite. They are easy and quick to defrost and cook – in fact we have to warn people not to overcook them: they just need browning on both sides