Corrrr how much do you and your wife eat... get this all the time.  If you nosey on down to the Instagram posts you will see that we tend to cook up massive feast size meals but the truth is we do have a normal (ish) size portion and the rest is filtered down military style into Tupperware boxes and used for lunches throughout the week.  Trust me nothing beats heating up a nice bit of brisket chilli and home made bread when the fool next to has just bought a dry meal deal from the supermarket.  Satisfaction guaranteed.

So how do we afford all this meat?  Easy, buy in bulk.  Now there are probably some savvy out there who are already battling the masses at Costco on the weekends but have you yet been to Smithfield Market?

Smithfield is a wholesale market aimed at restauranteurs to bulk buy meat to serve up to the rich folk, so you know it has to be of a certain quality.  But this doesn't stop the most frugal of Joe Public including myself getting up super early to get the monthly meat shop in and beat the supermarket price hikes.

You're basically cutting out the middle man.

My common shop includes about 8 corn fed chickens, 5kg chicken breasts, about 1.4kg sausages and then whatever we fancy for the month be it brisket, beef shin, pork shoulder, mince, cheeks, turkey...  literally think up an animal or limb, they sell it.

Once it's home I'll bag it all up in those handy Ikea zip locks and freeze into portion sizes.

Set the alarms for 4.30am and who knows maybe you'll bump into Jacksmeatshack.

London Central Markets (Smithfield Market)

East Market Building
London
EC1A 9PQ

Market opening times

• Monday 3am - 12 noon
• Tuesday 3am - 12 noon
• Wednesday 3am - 12 noon
• Thursday 3am - 12 noon
• Friday 3am - 12 noon
• Saturday CLOSED
• Sunday CLOSED
• Bank Holidays CLOSED