Main Dishes

We believe that our organic approach produces beef that is exceptional to eat, ours is dry-aged for a minimum of 28 days for optimal flavour.

We are immensely proud of the organic beef that we rear on our farms in Staffordshire and the Cotswolds. High welfare standards and a dedication to rearing our animals slowly at pasture are central to our ethos. We firmly believe that our organic approach produces beef that is exceptional to eat, and ours is dry-aged for a minimum of 28 days for optimal flavour. It is when dishes such a this are presented at the table that our farmers can truly take great pride in what they do.

James Devonshire, our Head Tutor in the Daylesford Cookery School explains how to cook the perfect steak using a 35 day dry aged T-Bone from our new range of organic steaks. You can watch a video of him in action here.

Read more about what dry ageing is, how and how and why we dry age our meat and the benefits of dry aged steak in our blog, All You Need To Know About Dry Aged Steaks.

The combination of fennel seeds, fresh rosemary and thyme in this recipe is the perfect complement to our pasture fed organic lamb.

World renowned makeup artist, Wendy Rowe believes that the key to good skin is to feed it with the right nutrients.

An extract from Donna Hay’s book Basics to Brilliance using the basic Asian-style poached chicken recipe here.

Recipe from Basics to Brilliance by Donna Hay.

Once you have made this recipe, try it in Donna’s Feel-Good Chicken Soup.

Steaming broth brings instant comfort to the airways, while quality chicken broth is revered as an antiviral remedy to support the immune system around the world.

There are recipes in this book that i love because they are interesting, there are those that I love for their simplicity, and there are those that I find myself making again and again. This is the latter, a great roast chicken, the heart of home cooking and one of life’s great pleasures. I relish the ritual, my family’s fight over the wings, the secret chef ’s treats of the oysters, the leftover sandwiches and bubbling stocks. There is no meal that makes me feel more at home. In my mind, there are three keys to a good roast chicken . . . juicy meat, brown salty skin and most importantly a ton of sauce. And it’s the sauce of this chicken that really sets it apart: handfuls of tarragon, lashings of cream and a proper dollop of mustard, which when combined with the cooking juices, garlic and wine creates a truly epic mouthful.

Extracted from The Farm Table by Julius Roberts (Ebury Press, £27). Photography by Elena Heatherwick.

It’s the Valentine’s sugar-pink of the rhubarb, blushing under a blanket of melted Cheddar, that makes this feel like romantic food for me; though it’s the flavour – rhubarb’s intense earthy sourness counterbalanced by rich buttery pastry and melting cheese – that makes me long to eat it. As much as you might associate rhubarb with puddings and nursery fare, don’t be fooled: this is very much a savoury business and also very much a ‘grown-up’ dish. I’ll be honest: the portions here are more than generous for two, but to make half a tart seems mean, and this is one of those dishes that everyone always eats more of than seems sensible, so I prefer to err on the side of plenty. And while it really does taste its very best warm straight from the oven, the cheese melting in your mouth, I nonetheless always look forward to leftovers.

To go with it, you only need a salad: I can’t resist pairing this with a similarly pastel- hued salad of blush-pink radicchio rosa or dark red bitter chicory. Too much? Or just enough? One warning: this works best with long, thin, furiously pink rhubarb stems rather than the fatter ones, which take longer to cook and can taste a little too sharp.

A Table Full of Love by Skye McAlpine is published by Bloomsbury, £26.

Photography by Skye McAlpine

Skye is hosting a supper club upstairs at Daylesford in Pimlico on Thursday 29th June 2023. Spaces are limited and booking is essential; last few places remaining. Find out more.

A real centrepiece, this barbecued fillet of beef recipe is perfect for entertaining and makes an elegant and light summery dish.

This vibrant gazpacho showcases our favourite organic summer produce, straight from the Market Garden.

A quick, filling and thoroughly easy dish for a vegetarian summer supper or as part of a delicious lunch, celebrating our heritage tomatoes. We grow over 40 varieties of tomato in our organic Market Garden and every year we are in awe of their colours, texture and unrivalled sweetness. Most of the time we tend to enjoy them raw but every now and then a glut calls for a little variation and this quick cooking technique brings out their wonderful flavour.

This is a dish that can be enjoyed year-round. Quick to make, it creates minimal need for washing up and delivers on flavour.

With parmesan cheese & parsley oil.

Risotto is one of the most comforting foods, especially during colder months. It is worth sourcing the different mushrooms stipulated in this recipe so you get a variety of textures and flavours in every bite. The mushroom purée adds a velvety creaminess while the parsley oil lifts the dish and adds colour.

This recipe is inspired by a dish served in our cafés. Discover more seasonal recipes and cooking skills at our Cookery School.

This delicious recipe offers a lighter take on traditional lamb dishes and is full of the delicate flavours of summer.

Try baking a variety for added colours and textures and serve as we have done here on a big platter, drizzled with the flavourful butter.

Recipe from Simply Good For You by Amelia Freer.

"This is an ‘instant’ soup. Simply blend the raw ingredients together in a decent blender, and it’s ready. No cooking required."

Simple to make and delicious to eat, our Garlic & Thyme Mushrooms on Toast recipe is the perfect warming, speedy supper for autumn evenings.

A light way to use up leftover turkey in the days after Christmas, a lovely combination of winter ingredients, it’s one of our favourites.

With lemon, pistachio and spiced fruit.

Ideal as a side or main dish, this versatile gratin is packed with flavour and can be prepared in advance. Simply omit the pancetta to make a vegetarian version.

Slow roasted pumpkin, smoky pancetta and pappardelle with pickled walnut and crispy sage.

Inspired by places and people they love, Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison, founders of Tart London and Wild by Tart, cook food with big flavours and seasonal ingredients, sustainably sourced where possible.

“We absolutely love pasta – our Achilles’ heel! Pumpkin is so delicious at the moment, and Delica is our favourite – we wanted to make something vibrant, comforting and luxurious and came up with this recipe – we loved it so much we have put it on our restaurant menu!

This recipe is one we have served at Daylesford for many years, full of flavour and a firm favourite on our winter menus.

This is a really indulgent recipe, perfect for Christmas Day and warming suppers on cold winter evenings. It’s also great for entertaining because you can prepare it in advance and simply popping in the oven to finish when your guests arrive.

Thoroughly warming and made with nature’s true superfoods, this is a dish packed with the benefits of lean venison and seasonal ingredients.

Bold enough to be served as a standalone lunch or supper dish, this recipe is also a great accompaniment to roast chicken, pork or lamb.

You could say that this is as 'meaty' as it gets for your microbiome, due to the feast of fibre the cauliflower provides. The curd or cheese is a natural fermented source of bacteria that is beneficial for our gut health, and a punchy green dressing delights the eyes as well as the taste buds.

Taken from Happy Gut, Happy Mind by Eve Kalinik. Photo by Nassima Rothacker.

Read more about the gut-brain connection by Eve Kalinik here.

Discover Tait's top tips for wild cooking in our journal here.

A juicy steak is the ultimate carnivorous treat when you are craving something meaty.

We have paired the perfectly cooked steak with a piquant, herb-rich sauce that combines elements of salsa verde and chimichurri. When wild garlic is in season, this is a beautiful addition.

Recipe from Simply Good For You by Amelia Freer.

A delicous seasonal alternative to classic eggs benedict.

In cookery, hollandaise is a ‘mother’ sauce and has many variants which will add to your repertoire, while knowing how to poach an egg is a key skill.

Discover more seasonal recipes and cooking skills at our Cookery School.

This recipe can be made in the oven or slow cooker.

An extract from Seed Magazine Volume 5, available to order now. 

Seed magazine was founded on the belief that we need to live sustainably and consciously. Its philosophy is to lead by example: to gently inspire readers to make small changes with their own choices. 

The recipes in volume 05 demonstrate delicious ways we can reduce food waste and be more economical in the kitchen. This sticky beef brisket uses a cheaper cut of meat and an energy-saving slow cooker to help you feed more for less – without compromising on flavour. 

Though it may look as though this recipe requires a number of steps, it is incredibly easy and provides a fresh approach to the Sunday roast.

This brie and celeriac tartiflette is a twist on the classic French dish and the perfect recipe to showcase our soft, creamy penyston.

With braised red onions, pickled chillies, rocket & yoghurt dressing.

This vibrant seasonal dish packs enough flavour to be served as a standalone dish, or would make a great accompaniment to roast chicken or lamb. The pickled chillies give a peppery heat to the dish, balanced by the yogurt dressing.

This recipe is inspired by a dish served in our cafés. Discover more seasonal recipes and cooking skills at our Cookery School.

This is one of those recipes my family just live off, a dish we return to again and again, at its heart deeply simple and uplifting. Velvety and voluptuous, this soup bubbles away like a cauldron of lava and is wonderfully nourishing. Seasoned with a little cider vinegar to brighten the earthy richness, it’s a dinner party classic I often serve as a starter because of its striking colour, but it’s equally at home eaten on your knees. I’ve given you three toppings that will bring this soup to life, so you can vary how you eat it depending on what you have to hand.

Extracted from The Farm Table by Julius Roberts (Ebury Press, £27). Photography by Elena Heatherwick.

Laced with raw sprouts, herbs and spices, this leftover turkey salad is
perfect for feeding a crowd over the festive season.

Quick and simple, with no kneading or proving required, soda bread is the perfect loaf for those just beginning on a bread making journey.

Prepare and bake if you are suddenly out of bread in the house, serve in hearty chunks with warm soup, or alongside smoked mackerel pâté, fresh salad leaves and pickled cucumber as a rustic starter. But without fail, the very best way to serve this delicious loaf is warm from the oven with generous layers of homemade butter – just as we do on our Artisan Bread Making courses at our Cookery School.

This is a favourite of head chef Gaven Fuller: “A lovely, rustic, slow-cooked and warming stew that really showcases the lamb."

“Wild salmon comes into season at the start of the summer, so this dish is based around pairing it with other seasonal ingredients. The accompaniment is a twist on the classic French dish, ‘petit pois à la française’, something I’m quite partial to, in which peas and lettuce are braised in stock and butter. My husband likes the addition of the bacon, but you could happily leave it out to make it a meat-free dish.”

Carole Bamford

This simple nourishing broth is full of minerals. The natural sweetness of leek and carrot balances and rounds out the flavours.

Nothing is more satisfying than a warming, nourishing bowl of broth on a winter’s day and this one is a celebration of winter vegetables from our organic market garden.

We serve a version of this dish in the restaurants and on the food to go menus at Daylesford year-round. 

We’ve used our new peanut butter in this dressing but cashew butter is also excellent. Make extra and use the dressing to add punchy flavour to other dishes such as salads, grain bowls, noodles, fish and chicken.  

For the slaw, feel free to vary the ingredients depending on what’s in season, or what you have handy.  

This creamy tart balances sweet, mellow leeks with the punch of our semi-soft Adlestrop cheese and the decadence of truffles.

This recipe is inspired by a dish served in our cafés.

This recipe from the Tutors at our Cookery School is a celebration of the vegetables and salad leaves from our Market Garden that offer the most flavour and texture during the colder months. The recipe uses a number of different techniques, but you can make a pared down version if you prefer, or make larger batches of things like the pickled beetroot and crisp kale, so it's easier to assemble the salad next time.

A guest recipe by Thomasina Miers.

Recipe from From the Veg Patch by Kathy Slack.

"For a tasty, fuss-free supper, you really can’t beat a fritter. Here, cumin, coriander and lime embellish an otherwise straightforward batter good for any grated veg, but do experiment with other flavourings – basil and lemon or smoked paprika and chilli – or leave out altogether. Our heroes are courgettes this time, but they could just as easily be grated carrot, beetroot, parsnips or cauliflower another day. And after you’ve made them for supper, try them cold for a packed lunch, or cook them small and serve as pre-dinner nibbles. Endlessly versatile, this is a real workhorse recipe.”

Every Shrove Tuesday we think, why don’t we make pancakes more often? Loved by children and adults, this delicious recipe proves why.

This warming winter venison casserole celebrates our venison, farmed organically on our Staffordshire estate.

A recipe to celebrate the quintessential taste of spring: British asparagus. The perfect, fresh and seasonal supper from our Cookery School.

Vibrant, bright and full of the flavours of spring, this quick risotto is made with nourishing ancient grains and plenty of greens.

There is no better way to celebrate the mushroom flavour than with generous doses of organic butter, garlic, salt, pepper and fresh herbs.

Discover Romy's top tips for making flatbreads at home in our journal here.

Photos by Matt Inwood. 

Make the most of springtime’s bright green shoots in this recipe which combines heady wild garlic and tender nettle leaves.

When it comes to the garden’s ingredients, spring is the most uplifting time of year with the arrival of asparagus and Jersey Royals.

This traditional recipe makes the most of our organic lamb or mutton and is a wonderful family meal.

A great dinner party dish that combines different textures of raw and butter roasted asparagus with sauce gribiche, a classic French sauce that is both rich and sharp.

Discover more seasonal recipes and cooking skills at our Cookery School.