Peelham Farm - Foulden - Organic Pork & Ruby Veal Sausage

This review is dedicated to the fabulous Mikaela, Peelham’s red lipstick heroine, who’s time at Peelham Farm is up....hope you enjoyed it!

We return to Peelham Farm in the wild north of England, and by Dickens, we return with great expectations.  The first taste of a Peelham’s product was their Berwickshire sausages, which were simply gorgeous.  Next up to the plate from the super-nice girls and boys down on the farm are Organic Pork & Ruby Veal sausages, a combination that is new to Rate My Sausage and very appealing.  We know their pork is more than good already, so if the veal is of an equal quality we should be in for a treat (and as it’s recommended by so many world class chefs, it should be a tap-in).

Meat Content:

Squeakily meaty, there’s so much going on to delight carnivores everywhere.  You can virtually hear a moo when you take a bite.  Squeaky is always synonymous – sausages-wise – with juicy meat, and Peelham’s have done a lovely job combining the two animals here.  The pork is Tamworth and the veal is the Luing breed - impeccable organic credentials have bred marvellous meat, bravo!

Flavour:

Superb.  There’s a gamey flavour running throughout which I love and which is strong and insistently ever-present, but not overpowering.  A very grown-up flavour, intense and of concentrated meatiness, the pork and veal jostle and shove like squabbling siblings in the back of mum and dad’s car.  As ever I didn’t peruse the label until after eating – then, quelle horreur!  There’s no mention of veal in the ingredients list!  I quizzed Peelham’s delectable Denise Walton about this and – it’s a typo.  All of Peelham’s labeling is currently undergoing a thorough review to prevent such things happening in the future.  Allegedly! 

Texture:

Very coarse and exceptionally good.  Such large individual pieces, which combine to give the flavour and texture of sausagey Valhalla.  These bangers are small and thin but that doesn’t detract from the sheer quality on offer – when did the size of a sausage make it taste any different?  Ahem.  I wondered what the proportion of pork to veal is, and it’s a straight 50/50 split.  I want more of these sausages in my life.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 50g

Average weight cooked - 33g

Shrinkage - 33%

Hmmm, disappointing.

Value For Money:

£3.99 for six sausages, weighing 297g - this works out as a price of £13.43 per kg, or 66p per snorker.  That’s extremely expensive.  The costliest bangers we’ve ever reviewed.  So, regarding value for money, I have had a major dilemma.  Very high price.  Supreme taste and texture.  High shrinkage.  Ooodles of meatiness.  Overall I have to place Peelham’s Pork & Veal sausages in the “special occasion” category, eaten as a treat.  All factors considered, and after a stewards’ inquiry, good value for money.

Through A Child’s Eyes:

No Junior input this time, he was at the seaside for a week with his mum!

Opening Hours:

“Any time, any place, anywhere, there’s a wonderful banger you can share, it’s the right one, not a shite one, it’s from Peelham’s”.....apologies to – well, can you name the company? - for misappropriating their seventies advertising classic....you can buy these lovely sausages whenever you want by clicking here:

 http://www.peelham.co.uk/ 

And Finally, Esther:

These are undoubtedly fabulous bangers (thanks for that one, Gok Wan).  I’ve never tried a pork and veal sausage before, hey, there aren’t many on the market!  But what’s the story with the veal?  Peelham Farm produce their own Ruby Veal, and believe they are the only producers in the UK.  Here’s the back story, in Peelham’s own words (and if this seems like I’m promoting them, well....I am):

• This is a unique and innovative young field-raised (free-range) beef product.  It is not the same as dairy rose-veal.

• Peelham Scottish Beef-veal (or suckled veal), is from 9-10 month beef which though grazing grass are also consuming a reducing amount of milk from their own mothers (natural weaning has started to take place).  This is the essential difference with dairy veal which are necessarily bucket-fed on generally re-constituted milk. All of our ruby-veal are free-grazing naturally with their own mothers as part of an extensive free-ranging herd of Scottish cattle. 

• Uniquely Scottish; Not (yet) produced anywhere else in UK

• Uniquely Peelham: We here at Peelham Farm are the first farmers producing it (confirmed by Quality Meat Scotland)

• Uniquely flavoured: The method of rearing ie only off grass and on mothers which also only graze grass (ie no grain - so producing a rich milk, especially rich in Omega 3), produces a ruby beef-veal with a fine lacing of intra-muscular fat. Together with maturing the carcass on the bone for 2-3 weeks produces a beautiful quality meat with a uniquely robust and rich flavour. Dairy veal is paler in colour and leaner.

• The method of production is approved by Compassion in World Farming

• We use the Scottish breeds of Luing and Aberdeen Angus as the core breeding stock because they cope best with an organic grass-only system on a semi-upland Scottish farm like Peelham. The breed is also a contributory factor to the flavour

• Awards and citations include a 2008 Quality Food Award for our veal, and the 2008 BBC2 Countryfile local food hero for the ethical production of our meat particularly our veal (“Peelham has become a byword for ethically produced meat. The team deserves a medal for educating both the public and chefs about the difference between compassionately reared rose veal and the white factory-farmed equivalent” – Joanna Blythman, Author and Food writer)

• Comments from top Scottish chefs include;

"Peelham Veal is a unique and exceptional product, from a unique farming practice - there is nothing quite like it in the UK"  Andrew Fairlie

“This is a revelation....This is very good...a real sweetness...This is just delicious and has real flavour. I will be at the head of the queue for Peelham Veal”  Nick Nairn

                Michael Smith used our fillet and sirloin of ruby veal at the January 2012 Obsession Festival at Northcote Manor “Your ruby veal created a lot of curiosity with the chefs gathered and they all thought that it was an outstanding and unique product!!”