W Rayment & Son of Ely - Traditional Pork Sausage

And so to Cambridgeshire, in particular the city of Ely. I found three proper butcher shops within 200 metres of each other and brought back sausages from each one. First under the Rate My Sausage microscope is the Traditional Pork Sausage by W Rayment & Son, where I was served by, and had a lovely chat with, Rob. Rayment's claim to be "A farm shop for every-day shopping", and all their meats looked very tempting - if I hadn't had another two shops to plunder I would have come away with more than just the sausages....


You can find their website here : RAYMENTS





How will Ely fare? In my amateur opinion, Swaffham is out in front so far, with those two brilliant banger producers, Impson's and Papworth's on the market place. Rayment's step up to the plate with several potential Ely-produced champions safely secured in the SSF (Sausage Storage Facility) [aka the freezer]. And so, to the sausages....


Meat Content:
68%. These are made with excellent quality pork from Blythburgh Free Range Pork, and you can taste the difference. We’ve previously tested another sausage made with Blythburgh pork - the King Of The Bangers, Bower’s Pork Sausages! So they must be doing something right. The Rayment sausages have a light, sweet taste combined with great chunkiness, which will fulfil your caveman meat-eating needs completely.

Flavour:A splendidly full flavour to please the palate. The juicy meatiness of these bangers is just part of the flavour - there is an abundance of herbs to found here, I'd love to be able to tell you exactly which ones. Sadly I am not a food critic and am unable to tell you more than "wonderfully herby". These also taste quite old-fashioned, and took me right back to that favourite sausage memory, tea-time when we were children. I would love to try these with the runny gravy-browning gravy Mum used to make, complete with "globbles" of fat washing around on the surface - utterly delicious but possibly not very healthy. Still, a nostalgic flavour of a certain time. A Sausage of the Seventies. Magic!

Texture:Quite coarse, not cloying, pulls apart nicely. Excellent burst bits even before cooking - how do they do it? However it is, I knew I was guaranteed several of the best, out-of-the-end bits, even before cooking began. These sausages are on the smaller side so not stars in the six slice test - but some of our favourite bangers have been the littler ones. Size is no indicator of satisfaction when you‘re talking sausage!

Shrinkage:
Average weight uncooked - 53g
Average weight cooked - 40g

Shrinkage - 24%

Value For Money:
£1.34 for 4 sausages weighing 210g - this works out as £6.39 per kg = 34p per snorker. The size of these slightly smaller sausages is reflected in the low price - however, these are delicious bangers and therefore excellent VFM!

W Rayment Opening Hours:
Monday - closed
Tuesday - 9.00 to 3.30
Wednesday - 9.00 to 4.00
Thursday - 9.00 to 5.00
Friday - 9.00 to 5.00
Saturday - 8.00 to 3.00
Sunday - closed