The Field Guideby Moss & MarrowSlagerij Steen
- Pigs and poultry live free range: outdoors on pasture, in woodland or a run
Slagerij Steen is a butcher's shop on the Zijdstraat in the centre of Aalsmeer, where it has been for more than 30 years, cutting all its meat fresh and making its own sausages.
The pork is Livar, from a cross of pig breeds fed on regionally grown grain. Their beef is Aerlander, from female red-pied cows raised in Ter Aar in the Green Heart, which are slaughtered only at four and a half years old after they have calved twice; how those cows are kept and fed, we couldn't confirm. Chicken is also sold, not yet confirmed. Soups are made in their own kitchen from fresh vegetables, their own stock and meatballs, though which meat goes into the stock their website doesn't say, and there is a changing range of ready meals made in-house.
The shop is open Tuesday to Friday from 8:00 to 18:00 and Saturday from 7:30 to 16:00, and is closed on Sunday and Monday. Their webshop takes orders for collection at the shop about three hours later; when it opened in July 2023 it carried only the barbecue range.
The Livar line began at the abbey of Lilbosch in Echt, which since 1999 has worked with small-scale pig farmers in Limburg to raise these pigs.