Take your cockerel out of the fridge at least 1 hour before you want to cook it. Rub butter under the skin and also lightly on top and season well.

Preheat the oven to 210°C and place your cockerel in a roasting dish on a bed of carrots, celery and onions.

After 30 minutes lower the temperature to 150°C and cook for a further 30 minutes per kg (minus the first kilo), basting your turkey in the juices every 20 minutes.

Check the juices run clear from the leg and rest well under foil. Meanwhile, make a superb gravy by first pouring some white wine and madeira in with your roasting juices. Finally mash in the vegetables and pour over some chicken stock. reduce and sieve out the vegetables.

Finish with more madeira!

All our meat is delivered frozen.

We deliver it to you in insulated sustainable wool packaging that can keep it frozen for 72hrs. When you receive your meat please put it straight in the freezer. Even if it has defrosted it is ok to put back in the freezer as long as it is not warm.

We deliver it frozen for a number of critical reasons:

• Natures preservative. Freezing is one of the most ancient of all methods of preservation. We firmly believe that when frozen rapidly there is no loss of quality in the meat.

• Sustainability. By freezing our meat we can ensure there is as close to zero waste as possible. Our meat is frozen as soon as it is butchered in protective packaging that allows us to keep the meat perfectly for over a year. This is vs 10 days for fresh.

• Seasonality. Like vegetables, meat has a season. By freezing our meat we can select our produce when it is at its very best. Fresh meat butchers cannot do this and you can taste the difference in our meat.

• Better supporting farmers. For our farmers it is most profitable for them to get the produce off the farm as soon as it is ready. This allows us to support them better.