Don's Sausage Awards 2015

Don’s Sausage Awards 2015

As we near the end of the year, I contemplate the snarlers I have munched on during the year. I write a review shortly after consumption of a sausage, in the idiosyncratic (my wife says obsessive) way my minds works, I sometimes come back to a sausage after a week or two and in my mind desire to consume this variety again. The sausages to be awarded as my snarlers of the year are those that made me want more, the ones that I thought about after some time had elapsed since eating them.

This year I am giving three awards.

These go to Italian Banderia and the Blue Cheese, Walnut and Pear from Westmere Butchery in Auckland. Also in the mix is Kazanka Domowa, a Polish Black Pudding from Park Avenue Quality Meats. All these sausage reviews can be read by clicking on the link.

In a hard decision my sausage of the year is awarded to the Italian Banderia. You will be delighted with this sausage if you try it.

In the almost made the podium category I considered Heritage Meat Company’s Mexician Chorizo and The Sausage Sheds, Polish Garlic Smoked Sausage. These are also very highly recommended by this writer.

Tomorrow I will make my own sausages for the Christmas barbecue season. I’m making an Italian sausage along with my own version of a blue cheese, pear and walnut snarler. We are going to a Christmas Eve dinner / barbecue with friends, and then a Christmas Day barbie with whanau. There will be around about 26 present this year on Christmas Day. The sausages will be made with care and consumed with gusto by the hungry guests. Watch out for the next post about how it all goes.

Mexican Chorizo Sausages – Heritage Meat Company

Mexican Chorizo Sausages – Heritage Meat Company

On a pleasant warm summer’s day I went with a few work colleagues to another colleague’s place for lunch. He has five acres of land just north of Otaki. His whare is positioned on top of an old sand dune and he can survey his estate from this high ground. He also gets a great view of the Tararuas. In a piece of serendipitous irony another work mate said his father used to be a sharemilker on this particular piece of land and as a boy he would have clambered over the hill when it was a dairy farm.

I took cherries and snarlers for the lunch. The cherries were from Central Otago, the snarlers came from Palmerston North. We had a very enjoyable summer’s lunch in relaxing surroundings.

 

 

Heritage Meat Company make quality sausages. A range of these are sold at Moore Wilsons and my favourite variety is their Romanian sausage. Sadly Moore Wilsons have not stocked this for a number of years. When I enquired why they told me they did not sell enough of this variety. My taste is obviously different from the masses.

 

 

The Mexican Chorizo went down well and all the sausages disappeared quickly. This is coarsely ground sausage, a good sign. It has an initial slightly acidic taste on the palate, then the chilli and paprika kicks in. When I ate one the snarlers as it came out the pan, the heat of the sausage was at the top end of what I would enjoy. The following day as a cold sausage, the heat was not as pronounced. This is a pork snarler where the initial taste of the meat is soon dominated by the heat of the spices. These are a very good Mexican Chorizo that both I and my work mates enjoyed on warm sunny afternoon.

I would purchase these snarlers again.

Cost: $10.84 for six sausages