Keeping Up With Rick Stein 2 - Philip Warren & Son

Another place Rick Stein has visited while filming his excellent BBC programme on Cornwall is that shrine to good quality meat, otherwise known as Philip Warren & Son’s extraordinary butcher’s shop in Launceston.

I’ve known Philip for years and always enjoy talking with him - he and his son Ian are real experts when it comes to first class grass-fed beef, lamb and all the other carnivorous substances many of us enjoy.

Ian Warren at the Launceston shop just outside of town

Here’s a feature about the father and son team I wrote a couple of years ago for the Western Morning Nwws…

There can be few individuals whose name rings bells of universal approval throughout the industry or trade they represent, but mention Philip Warren to foodies anywhere in the West Country, or in top restaurant kitchens across the UK, and you can expect to see a hearty nod of endorsement. 

The name of the jovial and hugely knowledgeable Launceston butcher is synonymous with quality. 

Whether you are speaking to a Cornish housewife or a Michelin chef, the sort of thing you’ll regularly hear from Philip’s customers is: “We love his meat. The beef tastes like beef used to taste years ago. Full of flavour.” 

And yet a slight correction should be applied to all the praise heaped on the name Philip Warren. To be accurate, we need to add the name Ian Warren to the equation - because Philip’s son is the main driver behind the company’s recent expansion and the reason why some of the most famous chefs in the land phone Launceston when they’re in need of meat that stands out from the crowd.

It was Ian’s idea, for example, to invest what was almost a six figure sum in expanding the company’s meat dry-ageing system on the trading estate where they opened a second shop a few years ago. It was originally supposed to be a small annex of the old shop in Launceston town centre, but the outlet our near the A30 grew and grew in popularity, and so did the back room work that went with it. 

Father and son examine beef carcasses being dried in their special new £million facility

All of which might sound as dry as ditchwater in a food article, but there is a reason I went to see Philip and Ian and take a tour around their new dry-ageing system - and it is a story that should fascinate anyone who loves quality meat. 

You will see terms like “28-day aged steak” in most good restaurants nowadays - and you could be forgive for imagining that butchers simply hang the meat somewhere cool and dry for a period before cutting it into steaks or joints. 

But talk to the Warren family and you quickly learn that ageing meat properly is a highly complex procedure. You also learn that the meat of certain breeds and types of cattle behaves in different ways when it comes to being processed. 

To cut a long story short, all meat goes through a series of changes after an animal has been killed. Hack a steak off a freshly slaughtered beast and try to eat it, and your jaw muscles will have their work cut out. Once the animal is slaughtered and control systems in its cells stop functioning, the enzymes begin attacking other cell molecules, turning large flavourless molecules into smaller, flavourful fragments. Among other things, there is an enzyme called calpain that gets to work tenderising the muscle fibres.

So if you hang beef in the right conditions, this natural tenderisation process can be allowed to occur over, say, 14 to 18 days. In that time the meat will both become more tender, and loose weight through moisture loss. Other molecules (friendly bacteria etc) also get to work - all of which helps to heighten the flavour of meat the consumer will eventually eat.    

Getting this process to function in exactly the right way is not as easy as it sounds. Which is why Ian spent a long time thinking about and planning the multi-fridge system now in place at Warren & Son’s premises. Father and son are now so proud of what they’ve achieved, they take top chefs - and journalists like me - on a tour to see how it all works. 

“When we first started ageing the meat we had a fridge rigged up to keep the humidity down,” Ian explained. “That is fine, but you can’t put your meat straight into that fridge because it is starved of moisture. So now we have a succession of fridges. 

“The general rule of dry-ageing meat is to have a good air flow and constant temperature - so we’ve got a big fridge with ultra-high-spec fans that keep the 10 metres by 20 metres unit at exactly the same temperature, despite the fact that the door is open and shut umpteen times a day. 

“All the meat stays in there for at least 14 days. That is because we want the enzymes to work inside the meat.”

After the meat has been hanging at a precise cool temperature for between 14 to 18 days it is shifted to a second fridge which is also humidity controlled.  “By then the enzymes have done their work inside the meat but we need to get it into the humidity controlled fridge before spores start forming on the surface,” said Ian. “You need to dry the meat in a slow, relaxed, way - if you do it too fast you’ll make become too brittle. 

Philip Warren is rightly proud of everything he has achieved in the world of meat

“Over four weeks we lose 6.8 per cent of the weight - and four per cent of that is lost in the first two weeks,” said Ian, adding that the business now ages different cuts of meat for different periods of time and also that the length of ageing can depend upon a particular commercial customer’s requirements (some will want beef that been aged for as much as 70 or 80 days).

This highly technical and exacting ageing process is only part of the story - because, as Ian says, nothing in the world will improve meat that has been bred and raised in the wrong way.

Which brings us to Philip and his extraordinary knowledge of cattle and the different breeds. Here’s a part of the story that might surprise many meat-eaters - Philip Warren & Son tend to purchase the kind of cattle that a great many buyers in the meat trade would reject - ie the more traditional breeds like Red Devon, Galloways and Dexters that have not been finished on rich diets of grain, but which have grazed in the West Country uplands.    

Philip has seen research that shows these older breeds contain more calpain in their muscle systems than you’d see in the huge modern European crossbreed types.  

“The big European cattle are all about bulk,” he told me. “So you’re getting a lot more muscle and density, which works against tenderness. That is why we are always looking for the old moorland type. It is about the old saying - the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat.  People seem to think it was a way of saying: eat meat on the bone. It wasn’t that: it was saying that the meat nearest the bone eats sweetest. So with these modern breeds with more muscle - as you are coming away from the bone and you are just getting more tough muscle. 

“In our system the calpain is basically tenderising the meat - but the loss of moisture in the aged meat is helping to increase the flavour.” 

A rib of beef I took home from Launceston and cooked on the kamado

At this point, father and son moved on to a subject that surprised even a food writer like me. It seems incredible, but the European grading system for beef does not account for the potential flavour ratios a carcass might offer - whereas the far more exacting grading systems used in countries like Australia take many different factors, including potential flavour, into account. 

Philip told me: “For Britain to survive as a food nation it will be the little things that make the difference - making sure what it says on the tin is what it is. For the British quality beef industry to survive after Brexit - you might be looking at niche markets.

“Yes, people want to go out and have two steaks and bottle of wine for 20 quid - and you can do that out of bullocks with a high yield. But you cannot do that out of bullocks with a low yield which might be high in flavour.” 

Ian added: “The way classification is carried out in the European way as it is now is very basic. For the quality end of British beef to change that, we need to classify beef like they would in Australia. There they look at a carcass in much more detail - like the colour of the fat, the marbling in the flesh, and so on. The graders there have cards like a sample carpet-swatch with numerous shades of reds - they hold it up and select the flesh colour and then judge it one to nine. The potential flavour is part of the grading.” 

Philip said: “This could be very important and give us an opportunity because Ian’s biggest challenge (in top London restaurants for example) is to replace the USDA (United States Dry Aged) beef they are buying.  That stuff has all the marbling and soft texture because it’s grain fed. But Ian has had to prove to the chefs that he has taken grass-fed beef to another level. 

“The chefs who are used to the USDA beef need to see that marbling - and because of the ay we dry-age beef they now can with ours. We can say: this is a natural product which is as close as we can get to USDA - but when it comes to the flavour there will be a big bonus.

“Maybe it is not quite as tender, I think some beef is far to soft anyway. But it’s about getting the customer to understand that you need to - not chew, that is the wrong word - but just hold the beef in your mouth a little longer.”

When customers walk into the main Warren & Son shop just off the A30 at Launceston, they are confronted by a big plate glass chiller cabinet full of cuts from various traditional beef breeds. It’s fascinating, if you can make your way through the inevitable crowd, to see how the marbling and fat cover can vary.

And from that moment on you, as consumer, realise that you have stepped in to serious territory. This is a kind of shrine - one that is all about a long and complex story that ranges from rough grazing to the flavour of meat - from provenance to process to the eventual proof in the pudding. A motto I’ve had for a while now is: eat less meat but eat better meat - and Philip Warren & Son allows you the prime opportunity to do just that.