The Larder

Cuts of meat: where your beef comes from

1 May 2009

Scotch Beef has a great reputation, but there’s little point in swooning over the prime cuts and ignoring the rest. Here butcher Jonathan Honeyman teams up with chef John Webber for a guided tour of a side of beef.

The Scottish vineyard making its own wine

Pioneering Scottish viticulturist Christopher Trotter on course for grape harvest

13 Dec 2011

In the spring of 2011, Christopher Trotter planted a 2.4-hectare vineyard on his Upper Largo estate on the southern coast of Fife. Facing his first winter as a pioneering Scottish viticulturist, Trotter, who's Fife’s official ‘Food Ambassador’, isn’t at…

The best Scottish cheeses

17 Sep 2010

It’s perfectly possible to fill your cheese board with Scottish artisan cheeses. The Larder has teamed up with Pierre Leger of respected cheese retailer and wholesaler Clarks Speciality Foods to assemble some of the country’s prime cuts.

Sourcing local Scottish butter

In search of a product that really melts in your mouth

1 May 2009

It’s not too hard to track down Scotland’s many fine local cheeses, but uncovering farm-made butter can be a challenge. Why? According to Brenda Leddy at Stichill near Kelso, who has been making butter, cheese and clotted cream from her small herd of…

Scotland's best artisan bakers

Featuring The Steamie Bakehouse, Different Breid and more

17 Sep 2010

Everyone loves to have a small, charming bakery just around the corner, yet in Britain 95 per cent of the bread sold is made in factories. John Cooke spoke to Scottish artisan bakers who have started their businesses from scratch in the last few years.

Scottish gin fast-becoming the nation's new spirit

Producers Spencerfield, Blackwoods and VC2 all on the rise

17 Sep 2010

It's seen as quintessentially English, but gin is now being produced by a number of Scottish distillers, as Jay Thundercliffe reports

Brown sugar - A guide to the Scottish confections of tablet, toffee and fudge

1 May 2009

A sticky guide to toffees, tablets and other uses for boiled sugar, by Jo Ewart Mackenzie.

Craig Wood, chef at The Wee Restaurant, on Henderson’s the Butcher

Chef's Choice

1 May 2009

I first discovered Henderson’s while working in Edinburgh at the Hallion Club at a point when I was becoming increasingly frustrated by various butchers I had previously worked with. Alan Mattheson (now at Nick Nairn’s Cook School) mentioned this small…

Foraging for wild produce

Top chefs are looking to Scotland's natural plant life for inspiration

17 Sep 2010

Eating local, for some, means foraging for the wild foods that grow right on our own doorstep, writes Andrea Pearson.

Field to Fork: get a taste of Hardiesmill's 'Ten Steak Experience'

The Aberdeen Angus farm delivers a hands-on guide to Scotch beef

1 May 2009

Hardiesmill is Robin and Allison Tuke’s 482-acre farm at Gordon, near Kelso in the Scottish Borders. As a way of introducing the public to their herd of pure-bred Aberdeen Angus cattle, they spend certain Friday afternoons taking small groups on the…

Best of 2011: Scottish food producers

The brewers, smokehouses, bakers and cheesemakers on the rise

20 Jan 2012

2011 wasn’t a fun year for small business but food and drink in Scotland continued to make advances with impressive new products, new producers, new markets, growing food festivals, and an increased awareness of the value and importance of local food…

Local Scottish artisan chocolatiers

Cocoa Black, The Chocolate Tree, Oban Chocolate Co and more

17 Sep 2010

Cocoa beans may not grow in Scotland, but the last decade has seen small, artisan chocolate makers spring up across the country. In this survey we take a particular look at examples of local influences in the ranges on offer.

Fred Berkmiller on Gartmorn Farm chicken

The Larder: Chef's Choice

17 Sep 2010

It’s not everyday a Frenchman will admit that non-Gallic produce rivals their own. Fred Berkmiller, of Edinburgh’s L’Escargot chain, on why Scottish Gartmorn chicken cuts it as an alternative to the famous authenticated Poularde de Bresse.

Pubs serving real ale in Fife

David Pollock sups his way along an unofficial real ale trail

10 May 2010

Although Fife doesn’t enjoy the same brewing tradition of similar rural areas in England, there is a real ale community to be found. Most widely recognised around the county as the hub of this scene is the Harbour Bar on the High Street, Kirkcaldy…

Scotland's finest food & drink attractions, by the Woman Who Ate Scotland

1 May 2009

It’s not just restaurants, pubs and shops where the country’s produce plays a central role – there are many attractions, visitor centres and other diversions too. Nell Nelson, the Woman Who Ate Scotland, offers this selected traveller’s guide.

A potted history of grow-your-own: why Scots are once again happy to supply their own veg

1 May 2009

Growing your own fruit and veg is remodelling its image from retirement hobby to environmental neccessity. Here Jo Whittingham explains how gardening is a cornerstone of our culinary heritage.

Grains of truth: a history of Scotland's traditional cereal crops, oats and barley

1 May 2009

Things were going great for oats in Scotland until they legalised whisky. Before 1823, oats had enjoyed two centuries as a staple food grain, having relegated barley to animal feed. But once Scotch whisky was legitimised, barley’s fortunes shot up. Oats…

Tony Singh, chef proprietor of Tony’s Table and Oloroso, on Ugly Bread

Chef's Choice

1 May 2009

Nothing beats freshly baked bread. The smell, the taste, the diversity – it is always hard to resist newly baked bread but it’s not always easy to find genuinely fresh, flavoursome products. In Scotland, we boast a small number of artisan bakers but one…

The growing popularity of rapeseed oil

17 Sep 2010

Cold-pressed rapeseed oil is one of the more fashionable new products to appear on the local food scene in recent years. Donald Reid found out more about Scotland’s other national oil.

A guide to Scotland's potato varieties

Including Highland Burgundy and Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy

17 Sep 2010

Scottish heritage potatoes are no longer an underground movement, explains Cate Devine.

From field to fork - The meat producers of Fife, Scotland

For those who love their meat, but like to know where it comes from

10 May 2010

For at least a decade now, Fife farmers have been finding a way to market that has avoided the high-volume supermarket route and reduced the food miles between field and fork. Typical of this movement are small-scale, family farmers such as Jim and…

Ice cream days: growing up in an old school ice cream parlour

Mary Contini of Valvonna & Crolla describes her enviable upbringing

1 May 2009

It took two men, my father and Tommy Dougal, to lift up each milk churn and tip it into the stainless-steel vat. It could be four or five churns at a time – even more in July and August when the factory was working at full capacity. Once the 20-gallon…

The return of the small family dairy

1 May 2009

The milk industry is a pertinent example of how the link between the consumer and the countryside has changed in two decades of consolidation, industrialisation and homogenisation. David Pollock goes to check if milk still comes from cows.

The Scotch pie: a national icon

1 May 2009

‘Scotch Pie’ - the very words conjure up unsavory images of football grounds across the country, where mediocre, gristly pies are served to warm the heaving ranks on cold winters’ days, entirely unpalatable without the requisite cup of Bovril alongside.

Discover the Scottish Borders landscape and food

Travel by foot or two wheels for the best food in south-east Scotland

10 May 2011

Geology is the key to under-standing the diverse terrain and the food it produces, so let’s begin our adventure with the Borders’ story in stone. The Borders rose from the Iapetus Ocean floor 4.5 million years ago as the American and European tectonic…