Five cuts that cost less than fillet and taste more

Fillet costs the most and does the least. It is tender because the muscle never worked, which also means it has almost no flavour of its own. The cuts that taste like something are the ones that worked — and they cost half as much.

Here are the five we sell most of to people who have stopped buying fillet.

1. Beef chaps

Shoulder and chest, bone in, dark and fatty. Two hours in a pot and it turns into the richest stew you can make, because the collagen thickens the sauce without flour. It is the cheapest beef on the counter and the one that feeds the most people per shilling.

Buy it for pilau, stew, soup. Not for a quick fry — it will fight you.

2. Beef brisket

The chest, over the breastbone. Coarse grain, a fat cap on top, and a flavour that builds over three hours. Roast it covered, low, with a little liquid, and slice it across the grain. It also makes the best leftovers in the shop — brisket on day two is better than day one.

3. Oxtail

Gelatin, marrow and bone, in pieces. It costs more per kilo than chaps because there is less of it on an animal, and it is worth it: the sauce it produces is glossy and thick in a way nothing else matches. Two to three hours, then rest it overnight if you can. It is better the next day.

4. Goat shoulder and leg

Leaner than beef, stronger in flavour, and it takes to charcoal better than anything else on the counter. A shoulder roasted low with garlic and rosemary will feed six. A leg jointed and grilled is nyama choma. Both cost less per kilo than a beef steak and, cooked properly, people remember them longer.

5. Chicken thighs

Dark meat. More fat, more flavour, and almost impossible to overcook compared with breast. Roast them at 200°C for 35 to 40 minutes, skin side up, and the skin does the work. They also cost less per kilo than boneless breast — the cut people buy out of habit.

Chicken thighs, bone in, are on the counter every day.

How to use this

Cook fillet when you want to eat fillet — a birthday, an anniversary, a piece of meat that needs nothing but salt and a hot pan. For a Tuesday, for a family, for a pot that has to feed eight, buy the cheaper cut and give it the time.

The rule that matters: match the cut to the heat. Steak cuts want four minutes. Working cuts want two hours. There is no cut that is good at both, and paying more does not change that.

What a cheaper basket looks like

A kilo of chaps, a kilo of chicken thighs and a kilo of soup bones costs less than two kilos of fillet and feeds three times as many people. That is not compromise. It is buying the right thing.

All of these are cut to order at Stall 56, City Market — chaps in pot-sized pieces, brisket trimmed how you want it, oxtail jointed, thighs bone in or boneless. Any weight from half a kilo, and same-day delivery across Nairobi before 6:30 PM.