When someone else cooks your week, you’re trusting them with the part you can’t see: what the animal ate, where it lived, how many hands the meat passed through before it reached the pan.
Frank has always bought meat from people he knows. Now that promise has a certificate behind it and an inspector checking it.
Who supplies it
Agrocantabria, or AGC, is a cooperative of livestock farmers in Cantabria. Six local cooperatives merged to form it in 2006, and it’s based in Torrelavega. Its farmers raise breeds from Tudanca, Cantabria’s native cattle, to Limousin and Angus, and AGC ages the beef in its own chamber.
The beef and lamb Frank cooks for you now come from AGC, the lamb from its selected pasture-raised line. AGC also supplies the kitchen’s milk and cheese. For the chicken, Frank has bought from farms with certified feed for years.
What the seal means
AGC’s beef carries the IGP Carne de Cantabria, the EU protected geographical indication for beef from the region. To earn it, the official rules require that:
- The animals are born, raised and slaughtered in Cantabria, and the meat is cut there too.
- Calves stay with their mothers for their first months, then move onto grass and forage.
- While the grass is growing, the herds graze lowland meadows and high mountain pasture. They come indoors for the winter.
- Each animal carries its own ID from birth, and every pack of meat leaves with a numbered label.
Inspectors from ODECA, Cantabria’s food quality office, check the farms, the slaughterhouses and the cutting rooms against those rules.
How it arrives
The meat reaches the kitchen as carcass sides or selected primal cuts, never as ready-cut portions. Frank’s team portions it in the kitchen for each dish.
AGC also certifies halal slaughter, so clients on a halal plan get the same Cantabrian beef and lamb.
What it means for you
At home, it’s one less question when the containers land in your fridge. Training hard? The beef and lamb in your plan come from animals that spent the grass season outdoors, and in a family the kids eat the same meat as their parents.
And if you’re ordering catering for a team or an event, you can tell people exactly where the meat on the table came from.
The rest of Frank’s approach stays the same. He knows his fish, his oil and his vegetables just as well, and you can read how he buys on the about page.
Ask him
Want to know where the meat in a specific dish came from? Ask, and Frank will tell you. If you’d like to try a week of his cooking, tell us about yourself in the form below and he’ll put together a first menu.
