Making the cut - the butchers using their own chef training Method

A state-of-the-art culinary training hub has been turning professional chefs in Leeds into students again - offering hands-on butchery skills just outside Wetherby.

- by James Connolly

For the last nine months, Sykes House Farm has been welcoming some of the region's top names to Method, a specialist centre delivering lessons on the field-to-fork approach to cooking.

Chefs can learn about different cuts of meat, where they come from, how to prepare them - and flavours they didn't know they were missing.

Inside, it's not your typical cookery demo. A huge bespoke butchers' block takes centre stage, surrounded by sharp knives and trays of glistening meat, as development chef Greg Lewis deftly breaks down a side of beef.

In the centre of the room, a long table is laid for a supper club, where guests will soon eat a nine-course tasting menu while chatting to the man who cooked it. But it's not an open-to-all tourist attraction. Method was built, first and foremost, to educate professional chefs.

"Nowadays, chefs don't tend to get the training that the older style of chefs might have had previously," said Rachael Hirst, who co-owns Sykes House Farm.

"They don't always know much about the animals or where the different cuts have come from. They expect it to arrive already cut in a vacuum packed bag so they can sous vide it."