Waitrose - Bury St Edmunds - Gourmet Pork Sausage

The final slot in any talent contest is often seen as the prime placement, as the act is fresh in the minds of the judges and voters.  In the Eurovision Song Contest, 48% of the winning acts have performed last.  So the final installment of our Bury St Edmunds odyssey could well be the best banger, yes?  Maybe.

The final Bury banger is a dreaded Supermarket Special, and you probably know our opinion of these usually bloody awful specimens already.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred supermarket sausages are terrible, and we’re not afraid of saying so....equally, when one of their offerings bucks the trend and turns out to be half decent we (uncomfortably) tell you that too – prime example of this being our shock appreciative review of a Tesco sausage last year Pork & Red Leicester

So the final slot is a positive, being a supermarket product is a negative, which way will the Rate My Sausage verdict fall for Waitrose’s Gourmet Pork Sausage?  Well, for a start I thought that lumbering the damned things with the label “gourmet” was loading an unfair extra load of expectation on them before they even saw the kitchen!  The shop in Bury St Edmunds was as you’d expect a Waitrose to be, selling the same produce that you find in all the other main players in the supermarket realm, but for twice the price.  I was expecting to pay quite a high price for their sausages, so imagine my surprise when I spotted these bangers at a special offer price which was £2 per kilogram less than usual.  That must surely help their chances....let’s find out....

Meat Content:

84% and you can tell.  The meat is good quality, no odd looking or tasting bits that we could find (mind you, we like a bit of gristle now and then).  Pork is the dominant force, which is a good thing, and I noted the meat content as “quite good”.  I was quite impressed, as was my Junior Sidekick, who was unusually taking part in the review when the bangers were hot out of the pan.  Talking of the hot pan, the fat that seeped out of these sausages was very dirty, very black and completely nasty looking!  Better out than in though, I suppose. 

Flavour:

Herbs are in abundance and mix in rather well with the pork – this is a good combination.  Each flavour holds its own but gels very well to make these sausages tasty and pleasant to eat.  I doubt very much that they’re made in-house though, although the chap who served me was politeness incarnate, and we had quite a good natter about meat, Christmas and prejudice (!) rather to the barely concealed disapproval of his colleagues!  I found their attitude distasteful, the guy was interacting brilliantly with a customer, and providing exactly the enjoyable experience that the supermarket giants boast so loudly about but fail to provide almost without exception.  Tut tut, butchery counter dudes!

Texture:

Dry-ish, firm and fluffy, quite an unusual texture but we both enjoyed it.  Being a supermarket banger, this texture has probably been designed by committee or computer, but they’ve done a good enough job.  There’s that squeak when you eat them – positive – but they’re not coarse enough for our liking – negative – but overall this is a jolly good attempt.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 73g

Average weight cooked - 49g

Shrinkage - 33%

Absolutely dreadful amount of waste, what a shame.  The supermarket contender has really let itself down here after an encouraging performance otherwise.

Value For Money:

£1.74 for six sausages, weighing 438g - this works out as a price of £3.98 per kg, or 29p per snorker.  That’s the special offer price, but goodness me, that is cheap!  At this price I have to rate Waitrose Gourmet Pork sausages as really good value for money – wait until the offer is repeated and try some for yourself!

Through A Child’s Eyes:

He liked ‘em!  In fact, I am 95% sure he nicked the last half a sausage from my plate when I wasn’t looking.  Denies everything, of course....

The Imaginatively Titled Next Day Cold Sausage Test:

Terribly sorry dear reader, but we polished off all six sausages in one sitting.  What’s the plural of “mea culpa”?

Opening Hours:

Waitrose is a huge multi-national uber-shop intent on world domination, and determined to separate you from as much of your wonga as they can possibly take.  Therefore “open all hours”.

And Finally, Esther:

Right, there’s no easy way to say it, we enjoyed these supermarket sausages.  There.  More proof that we’re objective?  Not the world’s greatest bangers but nice enough for us to give them the RMS seal of approval.  It’s been a while since we’ve tested many of the cheaper supermarket bangers so we’re going to be putting that right, in short order.  First up is a budget banger from a posh supermarket.....but we’ll leave that hanging there for now....

Cherrytree Butchers - Bury St Edmunds - Special Pork Sausage

Third up in the Bury St Edmunds run are the Special Shop-made Pork sausages from Cherrytree Butchers.  You’ll find them halfway up Buttermarket, slap bang in a great position to make the most of the thronging passing trade on market day.  Yet when I visited them the shop was deserted.  Empty as I stood outside for a moment or two before entering, it remained empty when I was inside, and stubbornly failed to attract a single punter while I took photos after buying the bangers.  What’s going on?

The shop is clean, staff friendly, nothing obviously amiss here.  But no customers?  That’s surely a bad sign, especially on market day.  I’ve been to lots of market towns in my time, but the hustle and bustle and sheer numbers of people out and about around the stalls and streets in Bury when I was in town was incredible.  So, logically, either A) I just happened to visit Cherrytree at a rare and unlikely dip in trade, or B) the locals don’t rate them.  Compare this with the hive of activity at the Meat Inn just a few minutes later.

Meat Content:

Good enough.  Adequate.  Sufficient.  Not outstanding terminology to describe these sausages but they were better than I expected (oh when will I become completely un-prejudicial?), and my expectations were based purely on the level of trade in the shop.  We’ve reviewed worse sausages and many, many better ones too, and there’s just not too much that can be said about these.

Flavour:

The first impression as written on the notes “not as bad as I feared”.  The theme of mediocrity continues though.  The seasoning is subtle to the point of absent, and the pork flavour is all on its own inside the skin.  It’s not bad, it’s....it’s....nice.  Just....nice.  If you were served this sausage as part of your £3.29 greasy spoon fry-up you’d be pretty chuffed as they’re a couple of leagues above the usual crap you’d receive, but as a butcher’s own banger – which the butcher has chosen to call “special” – they’re nowt special at all.

Texture:

Very smooth, quite juicy, totally unsurprising.  Every slice is exactly the same, these sausages are uniform throughout.  They need some variation in texture, in flavour, just something to lift them from being blandly predictable.  These sausages looked pretty good before cooking too, what a shame they didn’t taste as interesting.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 61g

Average weight cooked - 48g

Shrinkage - 21%

Unsurprisingly....average.

Value For Money:

£2.01 for six sausages, weighing 367g - this works out as a price of £5.49 per kg, or 33p per snorker.

Cheap and cheerful says it all really.  OK if you’re on a tight budget.

Opening Hours:

Monday: 0700-1700

Tuesday: 0700-1700

Wednesday: 0700-1700

Thursday: 0700-1700

Friday: 0700-1700

Saturday: 0700-1700

Sunday: Closed

And Finally, Esther:

The second best banger in Bury....so far....and out of three....but given the choice I’d walk to Hubbards.

Meat Inn - Bury St Edmunds - Suffolk Sausage

Welcome to Week One of our Bury St Edmunds series!  I hope you enjoy a look around some of the butchers of this fascinating little Suffolk market town.  The trip to Bury was my Christmas present to myself in 2012, inspired by meeting the lovely folk from Hubbards Traditional Butchers  earlier in the year at @DockingMarket.  And so, on a grey and typically dull December morning I boarded the 0725 rattler out of Norfolk.

The first Bury bangers we’re reviewing are the Prime Suffolk sausages from the Meat Inn on Brentgovel Street.  It’s in a prime location, and as I visited on market day, was constantly, extremely busy.  It’s obviously a favourite with the older generation too, you could hardly move for tartan shopping trolleys and fleeces with enormous wolf motifs on them (see pic for a hint of the trade level).  The Meat Inn does have a website, which is informative as far as it goes – but it don’t go very far!  It’s a start though:

Meat Inn Website

  

Turns out it’s a chain of meateries.  And was described to me as “pile it high, sell it quick......”  Let’s see how the sausages rate:

Meat Content:

80% is quoted, and there Is plenty of pig included.  The fact that they are ground so fine may be a hint that the meat “may” not be the finest of cuts which you would find in a truly high class sausage.  Fine mincing is a pretty standard trick to disguise some less than fine pork – hence the puree-like consistency of supermarket sausages.  These are not as bad as that by a long chalk, but also a long way from being the best.  Middle ground here.

Flavour:

Salty, peppery, not altogether unpleasant.  There are lots of tiny black pepper specks visible so maybe that’s not surprising.  The flavour is kinda hot-ish and won’t win any Rate My Sausage awards – but it isn’t worthy of too much criticism either.  Nearly but not quite on the verge of not being unpleasant.  The kindly chap who served me had just enough time to tell me that what made these sausages unique was “mixed herbs and cracked black pepper”...then he was off, to serve two ounces of mince to the next Elsie in line.  Probably.

Texture:

The filling is very fine and uniformly regular.  The skins are not awful but not snappy enough, and sometimes rolled up and stuck together, which is a definite minus point.  The well-defined distinct stripes are a telltale giveaway though.  They’re so plain to see that it’s obvious that there is added dextrose or sucrose, or similar, included, which butchers add to artificially brown sausages in the absence of very high quality ingredients (again, see supermarket sausages).

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 64g

Average weight cooked – 54g

Shrinkage - 15%

A rather good performance in the frying pan (weight loss-wise, anyway).

Value For Money:

£2.53 for six sausages, weighing 384g - this works out as a price of £6.58 per kg, or 42p per snorker.  Inexpensive, and probably an accurate reflection of the product.  Not too bad value for money.

The Imaginatively Titled Next Day Cold Sausage Test:

Junior Sidekick was on board to join in with this part of our review, which we carried out in a highly professional manner while watching All New What’s Up Scooby Doo on CBBC (it was the mad scientist woman what done it).  A new range of condiments has been recruited for the cold tasting, so say hello to a hot English mustard by  Suffolk Mud , an exquisite piccalilli from  Alexandra Howells Deli in Wells-next-the-sea, and a sub-continent inspired chutney called It Ain’t Half Hot Mum by Bury St Edmunds’ own  Butterworth & Son .  Introductions over, here’s how the cold sausages got on:

Mustard:  Hot. Damned hot!  The thick and creamy mustard makes a good companion for the sausage but is waaaay too lively for junior taste buds.  The heat is absolutely blistering if you use too much.

It Ain’t Half Hot Mum:  The sausage rather disappeared under this lovely Taste Of The Raj, which was mildly spicy to start with and hotter at the end.

Piccalilli:  Again the sausage disappeared a little under this divine accompaniment, maybe indicative of the sausage not quite doing enough in its own right.  The piccalilli is crunchy, chunky, moist and Most Excellent.

Tomato sauce:  Good!  Sam said “Try some”, so I did.  It was my favourite combination of the four.  He then added “But then anything with red sauce is good”.

So....The best sauce to add to these Suffolk sausages?  Tough one, but it’s the English mustard.

Note:  For the final slice I mopped up as much of the mustard, IAHHM and piccalilli as I could, and wowzer, instant nose-running appreciation followed.  Don’t do it kids!

Opening Hours:

Taken from the website

Monday: 0700 - 1700

Tuesday: 0700 - 1700

Wednesday: 0700 - 1700

Thursday: 0700 - 1700

Friday: 0700 - 1730

Saturday: 0700 - 1700

Sunday: Closed

And Finally, Esther:

Half way to being not too bad with a bit more effort, and altogether nearly half decent.  There do seem to have been some butchers’ tricks employed to try and make them appear better than they actually are, which is disappointing and a slight worry.  Sad to say, the best part of this meal was the Home Made Mushy Peas.