Friday Sausage News - Fruitpig Company Ripping Up The Black Pudding Map!

In case you didn't know, here at Rate My Sausage we ae huge fans of the splendid Fruitpig Company. The quality of their sausages is simply incredible, and they have won our Sausage Of The Year award multiple times. But they don't just make sausages....

You MUST try their black pudding! It is bloody gorgeous. But don't just take my word for it, read this article by acclaimed food writer Andy Newman. BLACK PUDDING ARTICLE

Please spread the word and feel free to spread Mr Newman;s article as far and wide as you can....

Fruitpig Company - Creake Abbey Farmers Mrket - Rare Breed Pork, Apricot, Red Onion & Ginger Sausage

The Fruitpig Company, where to begin. I really ought to put my cards on the table before going any further, and state that the sausages made by Ace Butcher Matt Cockin are the best quality, and have been my personal favourites, since Rate My Sausage began. They won our Sausage Of The Year awards in 2010 and 2012 and have been the only bangers that moved us to poetry. With this in mind, if you're hoping for one of our more acerbic trashing-type reviews you "probably" won't get what you want. But then again....

Where To Find Them:
As with all this series we found The Fruitpig Company at Creake Abbey Farmers Market. In the tin shed at the far end to be precise. Their stall is jam-packed with porky goodies. As well as at Creake Abbey you should be able to find them at many excellent food outlets around our area, click here for an up to date list.

Flavour:
There's a great mix of flavours here, which varies by the forkful. Just ogle the photos, large chunks of quality ingredients mean that each mouthful is different and very enjoyable. To compliment the great flavours the juiciness of the pork wraps the whole package up perfectly, and adds a sparkly little bow on top. I was hoping that the ginger would be more prominent but it seems to have gone for an early summer holiday, which is a surprise and a bit of a shame. Overall a lovely spicy and sweet mix.

Texture:
Soooooo meaty. Quality rare breed pork makes the filling chunky, bordering on knobbly. Or gnarly. You certainly can't squidge these sausages through your fork - try it and the sausage laughs mockingly in your face, and returns almost to its original form. Our one word summary for the texture - Manly!

Vital Statistics:

Average Weight Uncooked = 72 grams
Average Weight Cooked = 48 grams
Meat Content = 75 %

Value For Money:
£4.00 for 6 sausages weighing 433 grams. This works out as £9.24 per kg and 66p per banger.

We rate this as fabulous value for money. 

Before we came back to re-start RMS I asked 
around a lot of people what they thought we should do with the pricing and cost side of things. The overwhelming feeling was to comment on the value for money, whether the product was worth the price, as opposed to simply reporting on the actual cost in pounds, shillings and pence.

Junior Sidekick's Three Word Verdict:
As so often when Fruitpig sausages are on the table, JS was coincidentally not around. Purely down to bad luck, obv. Nothing to do with the fact that I WILL NOT share.


The "Aah, Bisto" Factor:
The notes say "open pack and WOW! So deelish smelling. When cooking smell so F good!" So you can take that as a positive olfactory endorsement.

And Finally, Esther:
I love these sausages. They're of a quality you will struggle to find anywhere else. But they're not my favourite Fruitpig sausage. And writing that seems a bit odd. I was going to go with the "how do you choose which of your children is your favourite" line, but Fruitpig bangers sont les enfants terrible du Coquin. So I'll re-visit a theme from a previous review, and christen Matt Cockin as the Van Dyke to Lisa Scothern's Andrews. Truly the sausagey Dick to the practically perfect Julie.

Fruitpig Company T-Shirt Competition

Greetings sausage fans! 


This is your chance to win your very own "Cereal Killer" t-shirt, from the fabulous Fruitpig Company.  It's the garment that everybody wants to own right now, and you can win one right here at Rate My Sausage.  Available in sizes from Small to X X Large, you just HAVE to have one of these in your life....

To be in with a chance of winning, simply answer this question: “Which city is mentioned in the poem featured on the Sausages page of The Fruitpig Company's online butchery.



a) Boerewors

b) Mazzafegati

c) Toulouse

d) Chiang Mai


To enter:


1. Send an email to sausage-blog@live.com

2. Put "Fruitpig" in the subject line

3. Tell us the answer (a, b, c or d), your first name, initial of your surname, and the county you live in.

4 That's it!


If you're not the lucky winner but would like to buy one of these Most Excellent shirts you can simply visit the Fruitpig Company's website and place your order there:

The Fruitpig Company

 

Conditions:


Only one entry per email address, open to UK residents only. Entries must be received on or before January 27, emails received after that date will not be entered in the draw. The winners will be chosen at random from all correct entries at noon on Monday 28 January, and we will contact you by email on that date. The winner must reply within 96 hours, otherwise the prize will be offered to another randomly chosen correct entrant.



Good luck!



Sausage Of The Year 2012

The RMS Champion Sausage of 2012 is the Fruitpig Company's Mazzafegati!

We wrote...."Meat-wise they’re a hunter-gatherer’s dream, firm and fabulous logs of prime piggosaurus.  Listed at 70% pork, but the outstanding provenance of the rare breed meat sings out sweet and strong.  In my notes, under Flavour I wrote “where do I start?”.  I decided on “incredible”.  Rich.  Gamey?  Sweet.  I didn’t cheat by reading the label prior to eating, and guessed the up-front sweetness may be honey, may be sweet onion, but decided it was there for all to see, yellow knobbles of capsicum.   I was wrong of course, the label tells of the presence of apricot.  When the sweet deep porkiness subsides you’re treated to an altogether more grown-up flavour following on and charming your tastebuds, liver maybe, something in the offal area?  Kidney!  No....."

It was liver after all.  I was right on that one.  Mazzafegati is traditionally a pork liver sausage from Umbria.  The flavours here are dynamic and decadent, and they’re not let down by the texture.  It’s perfect.  Slice one and marvel for yourself.  It falls apart with even the merest of encouragement, it’s surely the blueprint for how all sausages should be made.  The skins are the real deal too, and peel back provocatively then sliced.

Rate My Sausage Star Verdict (out of five):

Recipe:     * * * * *

Sausages:    * * * * * *   (yes, six)

These champion sausages inspired me to my favourite line of the entire year...."As Jeff Stelling might say, they’ll be dancing in the streets of Mazzafegati tonight...."

--------------------------

The silver medal sausage of 2012 is Gary Boyce's Pork Sausage, bravo!

Very good quality Blythburgh pork, the standard is clear to taste.  Butcher Gary told me and showed me examples of the prime cuts that are used to fill these sausages.  There’s no rubbish in here, and as Canadian rockers Sum 41 would say, it’s “All Killer, No Filler”.  The pork is juicy and delicious.

“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness”.  Fans of the mighty Adam Richman, and his perfect TV show Man Vs Food, will know that “OMG, OMG” is shorthand for “Good Lord, Janet, this food product is truly of the most magnificent quality.”  Boyce’s bangers are piggy perfection, seasoned subtly to perfection and providing a full, deep mouthful of sausagey heaven.  The flavour is....big (sorry, sometimes I can’t describe what I’m tasting) and I thought I detected a hint of tomato?  Or something else a bit veggie?  Maybe not.  There’s no over-salty afterburn, no spicy nip, just a magnificent, delicious flavour that would make Adam Richman weep with joy.

-----------------

Bronze this year is awarded to Worzal's Traditional Pork Sausage....

Fruity at first taste, there are so many flavours colliding.  There’s a fruity sweetness that may be provided by red and green peppers (you can see scraps of the peppers in some slices of the sausage), and a mildly spicy afterglow, courtesy of the very visible mustard seeds (I’m writing this without looking at the listed ingredients, let’s see how close I get).  Good quality juicy pork is the backdrop throughout, and the seasoning is low-key but adequate.  What else is going on?  I’m not expert enough to decipher everything, you’d need to ask Mister Stephen Plume, the Sausage King, to deploy his superior taste buds I’m afraid.  In summary.....”Cor!”

----------------------

And the fourth place banger, mentioned in despatches, is Grasmere Farm's Pork & Stilton,

Oh wow!  So super-flavoursome!  The stilton is slightly dominant here but the pork doesn’t roll over and surrender – why would it?  Quality ingredients are obviously present, and if you like cheese and you like sausages, well, you just have to sample Grasmere’s Pork and Stilton’s for yourself.  A few weeks ago I grudgingly praised Tesco and their Pork and Red Leicester sausages – the first time I’d tried the pork/cheese combo.  Well, these beauties knock the socks off of those, the cheesiness is voluptuous and velvety, and a perfect companion for the pork.

And that's it from us for 2012, well done to Matt and the boys at the Fruitpig Company, and to all our winners.  See you in 2013!

British Sausage Week - Sausage Brunch Squeak with Mazzafegati Sausages by The Fruitpig Company

Come stai?

It's British Sausage Week 2012, and every day we're trying out one of Al Murray's official BSW recipes, using some fabulous sausages specially chosen for the job.  Day two is of course Tuesday and I’ve paired up some Mazzafegati sausage from The Fruitpig Company with Al’s recipe called Sausage Brunch Squeak.

This is how the Rate My Sausage version looked.

And here’s how it “should” be done....(photo and recipe with kind permission of BPEX)....

Ingredients

• 4 Chunky traditional pork sausages
• 454g (1lb) Potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks
• Splash of milk
• Knob of butter
• 1 x 5mlsp (1tsp) Vegetable oil
• 4 Chestnut mushrooms, sliced
• 50g (2oz) Black pudding, cut into chunks
• 8 Cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• 2 Eggs

Method

• Place potatoes in a pan of boiling water and cook until tender. Drain and roughly mash with milk and butter.
• Heat oil in a small (1 person) frying pan (either make 2 small or 1 large ’squeak’) add 2 sausages and half the mushrooms per person. Cook until sausages are starting to brown. Add half the black pudding and cook for 1-2 minutes.
• Add half the mash and lightly mix with the pan mixture. Add 4 cherry tomatoes. Place under a preheated grill and continue to cook for about 5 minutes until everything is golden brown. Repeat
• Meanwhile boil a small pan of water, once boiling turn off the heat, crack 2 eggs into the water and poach for about 5-6 minutes – for soft boil
• Serve each ‘brunch’ topped with a poached egg.

In the run-up to BSW I was contacted by the fragrant Matt Cockin, the Don of the Fruitpig Company, one of our very favourite sausage producers.  Fruitpig claimed the two top spots in our 2010 Sausage Of The Year contest, courtesy of their Rare-Breed-Sausage and Toulouse-Sausage so any novel addition to their arsenal is eagerly anticipated round these here parts.  Matt  despatched a pack of his new mazzafegati sausages across the Cambs/Norfolk border, and they could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.  They were delivered by one of Don Porceone’s capo di capos, Grant, in his Maserati van, on the same day that I was pairing sausage week recipes with sausages.   The obvious match-up with the Brunch Squeak dish was too good to be true, the deep, dark flavours seemed made for each other.  Did it turn out that way? 

Oh, si.

Si, si and thrice si!  Mama mia, your papa would kill for this feast to appear on his breakfast table.  Or at least pay one of the boys to kill on his behalf.  If you like intense and rustic tastes this is the one for you, and for me the chance to pair Fruitpig’s masterful mazzafegati with black pudding and flavoursome chestnut mushrooms  was irresistible.  What a combination.  The recipe itself is simplicity in a pan, pretty much a simple “chop ‘em and plop ‘em” job that even a parma ham-fisted “somaro” like me can’t spoil.  The only potential downfall is the poaching of the eggs, but it just so happens that I’m somewhat of an expert in this particular field, having exhaustively tested twelve different methods of egg poaching a few years ago.  The winning method used the swirl technique, lemon juice as the acid addition, and a poaching time of 225 seconds.  Give or take.

Back to today’s dish, it’s a simply sensational breakfast, filling and fabulously satisfying.  Tastier than Silvio’s personal assistant at a bunga-bunga party.  Yes, THAT good.  Please, per favore, if you decide to actually have a go at any of this week’s dishes in your own kitchen, make it this one.  Incredibilmente buono....

Having established that the recipe is a good one, let me tell you about le salcisse di signore Cockin.  They were very nearly perfect.

Meat-wise they’re a hunter-gatherer’s dream, firm and fabulous logs of prime piggosaurus.  Listed at 70% pork, but the outstanding provenance of the rare breed meat sings out sweet and strong.  In my notes, under Flavour I wrote “where do I start?”.  I decided on “incredible”.  Rich.  Gamey?  Sweet.  I didn’t cheat by reading the label prior to eating, and guessed the up-front sweetness may be honey, may be sweet onion, but decided it was there for all to see, yellow knobbles of capsicum.   I was wrong of course, the label tells of the presence of apricot.  When the sweet deep porkiness subsides you’re treated to an altogether more grown-up flavour following on and charming your tastebuds, liver maybe, something in the offal area?  Kidney!  No.....

It was liver after all.  I was right on that one.  Mazzafegati is traditionally a pork liver sausage from Umbria.  The flavours here are dynamic and decadent, and they’re not let down by the texture.  It’s perfect.  Slice one and marvel for yourself.  It falls apart with even the merest of encouragement, it’s surely the blueprint for how all sausages should be made.  The skins are the real deal too, and peel back provocatively then sliced.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 85g

Average weight cooked - 80g

Shrinkage - 6%

Just when you thought they couldn’t get any better....six percent is exceptional.

Value For Money:

£5.72 for five sausages, weighing 426g - this works out as a price of £13.00 per kg, or £1.14p per snorker.  The highest priced banger ever reviewed here, but the best.

Through A Child’s Eyes:

Even if there was no alcohol at all, there is NO WAY Junior Sidekick was getting his gnashers on these....

Rate My Sausage Star Verdict (out of five):

Recipe:     * * * * *

Sausages:    * * * * * *   (yes, six)

As Jeff Stelling might say, they’ll be dancing in the streets of Mazzafegati tonight....

Tulip - Pork & Herb Sausage

There’s a puzzle in this week’s review.  Can you spot which sitcom I’ve referenced, and how many times?  On with the fun, cos the sausages weren’t up to much....

After last week’s awful sausages I was rather trepidatious (is that a word? I’m sure you know what I mean) to review another banger straight from the supermarket shelf this week.  Generic Meat Aisle Sausage = Lah-Di-Dah.  Ho hum.   Chiz chiz.

There’s an old Hindu proverb that says that if you see two eyes staring at you in the dark it may not be a tiger about to attack you....it may be two one-eyed tigers about to attack you.  So would Rate My Sausage be subject to two terrible sausagey attacks in a row?  Sometimes it feels like RMS will send me Deolali.

Meat Content:

Claimed to be 89%, which is a lofty figure for a mass produced sausage.  There’s definitely meat included as I found gristle in one of the bangers, suggesting at least a nod towards the pig farm.  Sadly the meat plays a distant second fiddle to the bucketloads of herbs.  Skins aren’t bad though.  Not the worst we’ve tried, but still not worthy of a genuine English icon like Phil Tufnell or John Sargeant.  Major disappointment.

Flavour:

Overwhelmingly herby.  It’s like emptying your entire spice rack into the sausages, and it’s a definite case of “Meet the gang cos the boys are here,” seasoning-wise.  Too much, the taste of the pork meat is swamped with a selection of seasonings that are multitudinous, and that I couldn’t really pick out.  There’s a taste that is reminiscent of a roast lamb Sunday dinner, so maybe thyme and parsley?  Definitely sage, which comes in at the end.  These are like those supermarket “best of” brands which boast bold flavour combinations like “caramelised red onion with extract of Royal Estate squirrel”, where the added flavours completely dominate and overwhelm, and the pork is left trembling and cowering in the corner, afraid to raise its voice.  Herbier than a white Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own!  As a nod towards our most recent Guest reviewer, and beer blogger Matt Stokes, I reckon these sausages would best be paired with a nice glug of Bombardier ale.  What a shame that the herbs don’t work perfectly in concert, party to the meat.  You can see the herbs in all the photos of these bangers, they practically hog the camera.

Texture:

Smooth-ish and unchallenging.  Not chunky enough.  Again, not the worst factory banger though, far from it.  As much as I’d wish the pork content to consist solely of a chopped up fine pair of shoulders of pork, I suspect it’s rather inferior cuts in the blender.  Mind you, they do cook differently and end up as different shapes and sizes, which is a good thing.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 72g

Average weight cooked - 50g

Shrinkage - 30%

Absolutely shameful.  To lose almost one third of the product that you purchase is scandalous.  The post-cooking price of what little sausage you have left is boosted to over £6.50 per kilogram, and for that price you really want hand-crafted proper sausages from a proper British butcher.  Land of hope and glory?  Shut up!

Value For Money:

£1.99 for six sausages, weighing 431g - this works out as a price of £4.62 per kg (before cooking, see above), or 33p per snorker.  This represents very poor value for money.  Very poor indeed.

The Bisto Factor:

There was a slight herby aroma going on, but not a lot.  Which is somewhat surprising considering the herb-overloaded flavour.

And Finally, Esther:

Tulip’s over-herby sausages were distinctly average.  After I’d totted up the scores in all the categories they rated exactly the same as the dreadful Tesco’s Lincolnshires from March this year.  I grow tired of retail sausages, that’s two weeks on the bounce now.  I yearn for an artisan banger. 

Fruitpig, Fruitpig, wherefore art thou, Fruitpig?