One question I get asked a lot is ‘Where do you get your meat?’ In Part I of The Ruston’s Boneyard Guide To Steak, we dig in to the details of finding, and building a relationship with a good butcher. We discuss what to look for, what questions to ask, and what you should expect from your butcher.

But what if you don’t want to get in to all that? What if you just want to know where I, Jack Ruston, buy my meat? I’ll tell you – I buy it from a guy called Tom Joseph.

Tom breaks the mould. He’s sort of an ‘anti-butcher’. He’s not a dyed-in-the-wool fourth-generation master butcher. He does not operate from a high street location with history that runs back decades. He has not always been a butcher, and might not even really describe himself as a butcher. He thinks more about the meat than the cutting. From a mental standpoint, he’s more a customer than a butcher. As a result of all this, Tom is on ‘our side’ of the counter. He doesn’t see his customers as a necessary inconvenience, but as like-minded friends, who want the same thing that he does when he sits down at the dinner table.

Again in Part 1 of The Ruston’s Boneyard Guide To Steak, we look into dry ageing beef – why it is done, and what difference it makes. Tom Joseph is a dry ageing master. He has fully understood the conditions required to ensure that beef develops the ultimate texture and flavour, and doesn’t simply ‘go off’ due to being hung in the wrong temperature or humidity – a problem that crops up again, and again in my experience.

Rather than being stuck in the limited mindset of a single, local abattoir, and a local highstreet client base, Tom not only sources meat from across the U.K. but he also ships orders direct to customers, in chilled bags and boxes, on overnight delivery, at no extra charge. Wherever you are in mainland U.K Tom can get an order out to you.