Meat in Munich, and Germany in general

Dear all,
I am helping a friend in the states with a research project and am trying to figure out what the locals' impressions of meat are. I know this sounds rather odd, but...well, it is. If you have any opinions to share regarding the availability/quality/assortment of meat one generally finds in the markets, I would be most appreciative if you would post...
Do you know why there are rarely fresh meat counters in the supermarket?
Many thanks in advance,
alisha

Unless you go to a proper butcher the meats is crap. Full of water and god knows what else.

In the larger supermarkets there is always a pretty decent meat counter and even in the smaller ones you can normally get fresh cuts of pork and some beef.

Crap for cow, super for pork

proper butcher...like at Viktualienmarkt?

Hmm, do we really count as locals?

But basically yes, you can discount meat from the supermarket, even pork.
Otherwise pig is good, cow is mediocre and sheep is crap.

and chicken??
yes, you count as locals...you live here, eat here, buy here...

proper butcher as in any Metzgerei with a "Meister". A pure butcher and not a supermarket.

The beef comes from cattle slaughtered "too young" and it is not long hung enough - for my taste.

@ jeeves - we got a nice leg of lamb from Tengelmann though, it was lovely. From the deep freeze (same place we got the turkey for christmas day)

do you notice any trends developing, in terms of the meat available in supermarkets? for example, is there a move away from fresh --> frozen? are you seeing more pre-packaged meats than before (I only moved here in August, so I do not have an idea of this...)

firstly, they cut the meat differently here than in the UK. Secondly the natives eat far more meat, so there is usually lots of cheap crap available (as already posted with high water content etc). Good meat is as expensive as it is anywhere else and is as good as it is anywhere else but good meat has a price, which the carniverous Germans are not prepared to pay, therefore the abundance of cheap crap.

In my experience Tengelmann et al butchers and crap at their job. I miss the family butchers we used to shop at as a kid. He slaughtered his own animaux (no longer tho, since the government basically outlawed small abatoires), made his own saussies and pies etc. The lamb was heavenly. Current rules in the ÙK prevent my father's lambs being slaughtered locally and get shipped off to god knows where. shame, cos it makes it harder for small, local producers to create their own niche. Really small producers find it virtually impossible to effectively sell their meats.

my favorite subject. until i found the right places to buy meat, i was really grossed out by what the supermarket offered. i was about to go over to the vegetarian side. i didn't like the smell, consistency or taste of anything i bought in HL, minimal, tengelmann, etc. i did much better at karstadt and the other department stores, but have since begun to patronize my local metzgerei and am really happy with the meat i get from them. quality and freshness quite good on all counts thus far. price is a bit higher perhaps, but definitely worth it.

I worked in a grocery store (in produce) back in Minnesota for a couple years, hung around the meat counter there all the time...anyone noticed that they need more refrigeration for their meat here? HOLY SHIT does it smell @ Tengelmann. ..

drink beer, then buy the meat here, imo.

though, I ate the meat down in Mazatlan, so...

so is this why there aren't generally in-store butchers? (not enough people interested in paying for fresh-cut meat)
and do germans not like chicken???

The meat here is excellent , in particular the bull beef available - it's pure lean muscle and you get very little crap on it.
I eat about 1.5kg of meat a day so this shit matters to me.

I can't speak on the pork (though impression is it is very good), but as for the beef it's a disaster. Took my German gf to the states and after she had some good USDA prime she doesn't eat beef back here anymore...

I've heard there are some specialty shops that have good beef... but just going to some of the butchers here I get about the same quality as Safeway's top end meat off the shelf (I'd say USDA Choice is a good as you get here).

On the above bull meat, I wouldn't know how that compares... I'm a rib-eye, porterhouse kinda guy... or do a burger using fresh ground sirloin.

Damn all this meat talk is makin' me hungry!

Selections crap compared to New Zealand. In any new zealand supermarket the meat counter is about 50m long and you can get pretty much any part of any animal. Here its like puten or pork. Ok, so you can get sauasages, beef steak, mince etc too but not many different types. No lamb at reasonable prices either.

And hardly any meat on the bone either, I heard that is a catholic / protestant thing, and theres more chops and meat on bone up north, and also why theres only KFC in protestant areas. Dunno if thats true or not.

But I have been pleasantly surprised to find a budget supermarket with very cheap and tasty frozen autstrian venison, so its not all bad.

not living in the town centre, i have no butcher's shop anywhere near. I am basically limited to supermarket crap. We therefore eat very little meat except minced meat, frozen lamb and chicken or turkey breasts. My favourite meat (lamb) is very difficult to find fresh and i am convinced that the all the best frozen New Zealand lamb goes to Britain and they just sell the bad stuff here.

My in-laws (100% Bavarian) make regualar trips to an öko-butcher out past Erding to stock up their fridge and freezer. Good prices and excellent meat.

In Northern Bavaria (Franken), there are numerous Metzgerei/restaurants/biergartens. Most of these places advertise wheich day they slaughter the pigs. The same evening, the places are packed. It seems that Germans know their quality meat, they just don't always tell the foreigners where to get it. My favorite place for pork is in one of these locations in Untermemmbach (a town of maybe thirty people)

do you think the whole "free-range" obsession has caught on here? seems to be big in the states...my mom buys free-range Amish chicken...very small, but tasty...

You're kidding right ? I'll never forget eating steaks at a lone star every night for a week in Chicago after work - was close to the hotel... first night I thought it was great , second night tasted exactly the same... and so on... I dont know what the fucker was doing to clone steaks but steaks are a lot like women - no two get you off quite the same way.

I bought a shitpile of meat in the supermarket of course - impressed at the price - could not believe that when i read the label that some of the chicken had been INJECTED with PIG PROTEIN ??? I aint even go near the whole steroids and other hormones deal...

i should add that even though I was stuffing myself (by standards that is a motherlode) with meat and when i came home was surprised that i LOST weight.

Since I eat meat only in restaurants I cannot comment on fresh meat in supermarkets. Also I mostly eat only Chicken and Lamb and therefore personally I think both have better texture and taste compared to the US. US chicken is too big and tasteless. Oktoberfest chicken will knock out US Rotessorie anyday. US is not exactly popular for lamb and therfore it is not only hard to get but what you get is low quality. Lamb in Germany is great IMO.

I have a Vinzenzmurr in my local supermarket and get on well with my butcher so if I need a special cut, he'll either order it in or go and cut it for me (I like steaks cut a wee bit thicker than the prepacks). He does some lamb too but will run out of mince every time it is raining.
Have shopped there for years and so I tell the head butcher what I want to cook (he loves a recipe) and he'll show me what he has. Vinzenzmurr do have aged beef, I hate the stringy crap from elsewhere.
Poultry I tend to get from Kaufhof because they have Poulet de Bresse or cornfed ones. Don't tend to cook pork (apart from bacon) at home though.

as you do...

any opinions about leberworst?

leberwürst i assume you mean, isnt really "meat". Its a meat product, but its more like pate, and used like pate. But its nice.

Jeeves, when it is dreary, people want comfort food so mince and goulash meat sells out. Happens every time.

In the US there is a *huge* range in price/quality (my friend has a small cattle ranch north of San Francisco... not factory so the beef is amazing). If you want cheap, you'll get amazing cheap, and I would say good for the price, but bland (same for factory chicken).

However, if you spend, say, $30/lb (53EUR/kg) for some top end stufF it'll be amazing.

Also I found that the meat from markets in "famous" beef states like Texas and Colorado are not as good as in the larger cities... finding a direct connection between cost of living in an area and demand for expensive "stuff" (whole other topic).

But I still would stand by going to the supermarket here vs. the US for beef, US wins by probably the same margin they beat us in pork at the supermarket.

do you think it is sometimes hard to "navigate" the meat section of supermarkets here? in other words, do you have trouble finding stuff sometimes?
is the labelling generally ok?

Heh, I wish the meat sections here were so large that naviagtion would be an issue, but it looks like they solve it by keeping them small. I do find that everything is mixed up rather than in any sensible order but thats ok cos you can usually see everything at once.

Labelling here is pretty good I think becuase I imagine its all specified in law.

i had problems with figuring out which cut of meat was which, etc., and posted this query which you might find helpful. showem also provided a link to a nifty chart showing diagrams of a pig, cow and sheep.. if you click on the part of the animal you are interested in, the german name pops up. very helpful to me.

Labelling of meat is EU standardised.

I'll come back on the issue later but I REALLY should do some work!

I seem to be joining this conversation rather late...but only just got in from the blizzard.

I think the meat here is on the whole of good quality if you buy from a butcher. The supermarket meat is full of water and I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. I miss the lamb from the UK, it's more expensive and not as tasty. You struggle to get the cuts required here unless you order, making impulse buying very hard.

Having said that, when we first came here it was impossible to guarantee that the local butcher would have anything as basic as chicken breasts on a daily basis. Now, I don't seem to have any trouble but would love to occasionally buy some with skin on.

are the butchers at Viktualienmarkt generally considered to be top-line?
do you think butchers here are generally helpful and knowledgeable?

I have noticed the lack of skin on chicken...any thoughts as to why?

Part of the problem of the size of the selection available is the size of many supermarkets. There are fairly strong planning laws in the more central districts in town and the comemrical units tend to be small. Thus some chains operate in units that would not even count as mini-marts in Britain

And they need to maintain several branches to serve the local population: I live within a 5 minute walk of FOUR Tengelkack branches. So they can only have a small area for fresh meat and therefore stock the standards: Mince, pork steaks, chopped pork, chopped beef.

I've lived in Munich 12 years and I can speak the local lingo but I find butchers shops very much of a "you're not local, this a Bavarian butchers for Bavarian people" atmosphere.

and no clue as to why chicken is not considered a staple item??

I find chicken (and turkey) more readilly available than beef in my local store.

Chicken and turkey are now easy to get. I am talking about a few years back. The butchers I go to are not at the Viktualianmarkt, they are local to my neighbourhood. There are in fact three butchers in a fairly small area. One is a chain Vinzenzmurr, the other two independant.

I agree with grthro as one of the butchers is very Bavarian and I am not comfortable in there. The lady in the Vinzenzmurr is amazing, she has taught me how to cook various cuts of meat I had know clue about. I recently lent her some of my cookbooks and in return, she gave me a jar of spices she had ground herself. One of the independant butchers has excellent quality meat and when I ask ahead will always try to prepare meat in the way I ask. I was rather surprised once when I ordered a leg of lamb, to find the bone had been removed! I always ask now for them to leave it in.

As to why most chicken breasts are skinless, I have know idea.

Meat's better in the butcher shop because bread's better from the bakery and produce better at the fruit and veg shop. Shops here are still specialized, and even though they're increasing selection in the supermarkets, they're absolutely nowhere near what you get in the typical US supermarket.

I love our local butcher, he tells us everything we need to know. Always has chicken and turkey.

You haven't asked about fish yet -- no fish at a butcher's, you have to go to a fish shop for that -- or a small delicatessen which may have fresh fish on Fridays or Tuesdays.

Viktualienmarkt is top of the line, but as good can be found throughout the city. You have to ask your neighbors who's the best butcher in your area, and make sure you're talking about the same thing.

Excellent lamb can often be found in Turkish shops, like at Fatih above Candidplatz, in Obergiesing.

Labelling is standardized on prepackaged meat (supermarket) but not at the butcher's.

No chicken skin -- probably think it's more hygienic that way. Maybe it is. I've seen it prepackaged that way in the US plenty, I think there it's definitely for low-fat reasons.

Free-range chicken etc. -- again, not at the supermarket, but at the butcher's, yes, but "not that much" -- a relative term, sorry. And of course plenty at the specialty organic supermarkets, which are, again, not nearly anywhere as big as Wild Oats or Whole Foods in the US. Actually you could fit five Basic shops in one Whole Foods.

do a lot of your german friends go to the butcher to buy meat, or do you mostly think they buy pre-packaged from the supermarket?

i suppose it depends on the generation. Most older people will still buy their food the way they always have, fruit and veg from the produce store, meat from the butchers, bread from the bakers. I am sure younger people are more into convenience and will want to do "one-stop-shopping".

The majority of my friends shop at Lidl. They are shopping for teenagers which can be very expensive. I think it is all about personal choice, if the only meat I could afford was full of water, I would prefer to try and manage without.

As for fish, don't even get me started...how far is the sea?

Anybody been to the Metro yet???

You can only get in if you're self employed (or know somebody who is) but they've got Argentinian roast beef (su-fucking-perb if I say so myself) for €7 a kilo!!!

Run run run while they still got some

the largest fish market in Europe (in Birminham) is nowhere near the sea because most fish are either processed or put on ice out at sea, so that is fairly irrelevant.

But as for watery "Pressfleisch" yuuuck! Just had some in the cantina for lunch. I should have done without but i didn't realise it was pressfleisch. It didn't taste of anything (apart from the Ketchup i put on it).

I would rather eat far less meat (which i do) but then eat really nice cuts.

I have some kubasa/kielbasa here and it's fantastic.

Sorry, that had nothing to do with Munich and its meat, mine is a direct import from Canada. I just couldn't help commenting on how delicious this stuff is.

do you guys have preferences for packaged meats? (brands)

There's no real "brands" of meats.

Most supermarkets try and push their brand of meat as something special but it's all the same really.

For real quality meat you need to go to an undividual butcher.

Vinzenzmurr is a chain of SUPPOSEDLY high class butchers and they have concessions in some of the posher supermarkets. they've won prizes for their meat but does that mean much?

Are we/you doing market research for someone? Shouldn't we all be getting a little stuffed animal or some other really lame thank-you gift for all our answers?

I WISH i had some stuffed animals or steaks or something to give you all...yes, i am helping a friend in the states with a meat report thing...only, i just moved here and don't eat very much meat, so I was looking for some more "experienced" meat-eaters...
really, though, i THANK YOU for your answers. very helpful. and i hope the answers are helping other who might be wondering where to buy meat in munich... :-)