Feather, or Flat Iron as our friends in the US call it, is a fantastic cut that comes from the shoulder. It's actually a shoulder blade muscle and nestles tightly into the bone, it's always been a bit of a butchers secret but is now wider known and enjoyed. We dry age all our beef which helps transforms this into an amazing quick frying steak. Cook it fast and hot in a good heavy pan or on the barbecue, a couple of minutes each side and serve it pink, it's not one of those cuts you can have well done. Make sure you remember to rest it after cooking before serving, which is a great time to pop a slice of Abernethy Butter on it to melt, we love the Chipotle and Paprika one. Serve with a sauce if you wish and obviously chips and why not go for it with some onion rings!

We dry age our beef in our state of the art cold store. Dry aging allows the meat to relax, the natural enzymes to break down the meat fibers making it tender and because it reduces in moisture loosing, roughly 15% of it's original weight, the flavour intensifies. We aged different parts of the carcass for different times and the shoulder, where the Feather Steak is cut from has a minimum of 36 days.

Proper dry aging is a specialist skill and requires a good eye to judge timings as no two carcass are the same, despite lots of mass production and supermarkets claiming that they 'dry age' or 'mature' they beef this is not the case. Like most things that are worth doing right, it costs extra money and time, two things they are not prepared to compromise on, so beware the fake dry aged meat out there.