Gold medal winner from Eastbourne

Gold medal winner from Eastbourne

 

 

 

Over the weekend I went to Eastbourne which is, not surprisingly, on the eastern side of Wellington Harbour. I do not venture into this pleasant seaside suburb on a regular basis, however when you get there you understand the appeal of the suburb to those who live there. During the visit I checked out the local butcher, Eastbourne Village Meats. I was keen to purchase some of the beef sausages that won a gold medal in the traditional beef section in the Devro NZ Sausage Awards last year. I also hoped they would have some Louisiana Reds in stock. These are a great sausage that I am keen to eat again. Sadly no Louisiana Reds were available. However I did not leave empty handed - the next few posts could be called the Eastbourne series as I walked out of the shop with four different types snarlers.

The beef banger is a nice sausage. It is a plain standard beef banger and, while I prefer pork, this banger will appeal to those who prefer a plain beef sausage. It has elements of a finely ground beef, interspersed with some medium ground beef.

 

 

I had a couple of these sausages cold with tomato sauce after a longer run on Sunday. They still taste good cold. Sausage Boy agreed with me - a very good beef snarler.

Cost per kilo: $15.95

NZ's Top Snarler - Beef and Blue, Allenton Meat Centre

NZ's Top Snarler - Beef and Blue, Allenton Meat Centre

Today they announced the Supreme Award in the Devro NZ Sausage Competition.

A beef and blue sausage from Allenton Meat Centre in Ashburton won this prestigious award. Congratulations to the team at this butchery.

I am very keen on eating sausages and also love cheese, I am quite partial to a bit of blue,
so I look forward to sampling this sausage in the future.

The gold medal winners from Wellington were Waikanae Butcher's, White Wine and Fennel. And the beef sausages from Eastbourne Village Butchers. Look out for a review.

The other medal winners from Wellington were Eastbourne Village Butcher's Black Pudding and Park Avenue Continental Meats, Polish Kielbasa. Those regular readers of the blog will know will know that I consider the sausages made at Park Avenue to be top quality. I was surprised to see that I have not reviewed these sausages.

For a full list of medallists see this link. Congratulations go to all the medal winners. As someone who acted as a judge in the South Island leg of the competition I can vouch for the quality of the winning sausages.

For a food writers view on the competition read this article from the NZ Herald. Catherine Smith writes eloquently about the experience.

If you do go to Eastbourne Butchers, I would recommend the Louisiana Reds. And if you are at Park Avenue the kabonosy and chorizo criollo are my favourites.

As the bbq season begins it is great to have a celebration of the best NZ sausages.

Devro NZ Sausage Awards 2014 - South Island Regional Judging

Devro NZ Sausage Awards 2014 – South Island Regional Judging

I was invited to judge at the Devro NZ Sausage Awards. Regional judging occurred in Auckland and Christchurch. I travelled to Christchurch to be part of the team of judges for the South Island regional judging. The judging was held at Food and Hospitality School at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology.  When I arrived in was put on the table evaluating the Traditional Pork, Traditional Beef and Flavoured Sausage categories.

Our panel of four that included a chef who now worked at CPIT, and two experienced and worldly butchers.  Each sausage was marked by two judges, one was technical the other was aesthetic. I was an aesthetic judge, while the butchers at our table provided the technical expertise.

 

The sausages had been mystery shopped earlier in the week, and transported to CPIT for the judging. All judging is completed using an anonymous sausage code. We were presented with a raw sausage to examine and dissect, and then a cooked example. We had a team of CPIT students who cooked the sausages under supervision from one of the chefs. All sausages were tested for their internal temperate before being presented to the judges.

 

 

It is a pleasure to spend a day sampling quality sausages. Being able to compare, contrast and assess a significant number of sausages within a defined style is a sausage connoisseur’s utopia. The medal winners have been announced. A list of the medal winning sausages I judged is below.

GOLD:

Flavoured: Agora – The Good Food Shop. Traditional Beef Flavoured (Dunedin)

            Traditional Beef: Harris Meats. Old English Beef (Cheviot)

            Traditional Pork: Raeward Fresh Nelson. Premium Pork

SILVER:

Flavoured: Hellers - Pork Flavoured

Traditional Beef: Murchison Meats - Beef

Traditional Pork: New World Winton - Central Pride Traditional Pork

BRONZE:

Flavoured: Peter Timms Meats, Royal Oxford Pork (Christchurch)

Traditional Beef: Netherby Meats, Plain Beef (Ashburton)

Traditional Pork: Murchison Meats, Pork

Here is a link to the full list of medal winners.     

Next week the finalists will be assessed in Auckland to determine the Supreme Award winner. Watch next week’s post for an update on this competition.

So a very enjoyable day was had, lots of excellent sausages, discussion and debate over the merits of each snarler, and if you read the previous post the sausages and running diet was to the fore.