The Decent Company - Abergavenny - Pork Sausage

Is it too soon to mention Christmas? In my humble opinion it definitely is. Having said that, is it too soon to mention Sausage Of The Year? Weeelll....maybe. But you might well be looking at it right here...

Do the names Tom and Barbara mean anything to you? They were the main characters in the classic sitcom The Good Life, in which a couple left the rat race behind and tried to live a self sufficient life. The story of The Decent Company has echoes of this story, in that the founder, Martha Roberts, also quit a life of spreadsheets and meetings to become, in her own words “A former suburban, corporate woman, gone rogue!” They share values and beliefs but the difference between the two is that Martha shares her vision, and the meat that it creates, with a loyal following of extremely satisfied customers. The most common way to purchase the end product is via the half pig, quarter pig or taster boxes. I'd love to describe Martha's life and her smallholding to you but it's done much better on her own website (a link can be found further down the page).

Before ordering my quarter of a pig I did a little research online, and asked people for their opinion on the sausages – here are some of those views:

“We like them so much we bought a year's supply!”

“I highly recommend them (and Martha's pig-keeping skills/high welfare standards).”

“Oh yes, loved them. And reordered.”

Previous customers seem happy enough eh?

Where To Find Them:

The Decent Company is of course a real-life smallholding, but you can only purchase their piggy products online. The website is beautifully designed and gives a great insight into the high welfare standards employed. As it's such a small scale operation the meat is not available all day every day, and becomes available only when the current broods are ready. For this reason I would seriously advise contacting Martha via the order form on the website, or via Twitter (@MarthaRoberts). The online form also let's you know when the next batch of pork will be available.

If for no other reason, visit this website for lots of lovely pictures of piglets doing what piglets love to do: THE DECENT COMPANY

Opening Hours:

The internet is open 24 hours a day, every day, except Easter Sunday. Early closing Thursday afternoons.

Flavour:

The pork from the mostly Gloucester Old Spot pigs is so sweet, it provides a prominent yet delicate flavour here. My notes say “Absolutely bloody lovely”. There's seasoning here but it's subtle, just enough to give the taste a boost but not so that the meat is overpowered. It's a smooth, old-fashioned deliciousness that I loved, and frankly can hardly wait to get the next lot in the frying pan!

Texture:

The filling is quite fine but beautifully firm at the same time, you're hard pushed to squish these through your fork (unlike poor quality offerings from the likes of Richmonds, Iceland, etc). In the mouth the sausage breaks apart allowing thousands of tasty bobbles of flavoursome pork to run riot. The skins snap just perfectly when cut, and squeak in the mouth. Near perfection...

Vital Statistics:

Average Weight Uncooked = 59 grams

Average Weight Cooked = 48 grams

Meat Content = 85 %

Value For Money:

Our sausages came as part of our “quarter pig” box so it's impossible to separate their price. The webite though lists a kilogram of sausages for £10, so I'll use that. We ordered the quarter pig box, at £90 which iis a good price for the large amount and variety of meat that you receive.

£3.51 for 6 sausages weighing 351 grams. This works out as £10.00 per kg and 58p per banger. Far from extortionate for such a quality item.

We rate this as fabulous value for money.

The "Aah, Bisto" Factor:

We've always fried sausages for our reviews, and this time was no different. As I've recently moved house I am still trying to get the hang of using a gas hob (had a couple of disasters so far too), so these sausages were fried very slowly. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness....the whole house was filled with the most mouth-watering aroma, which just got better as the bangers browned. Lovely.

The Imaginatively Titled Next Day Cold Sausage Test:

Yeah, right. You think any of these beauties would survive overnight? No chance.

And Finally, Esther:

From start to finish there is nothing not to like about The Decent Company and its products. Sausage Of The Year? Maybe. Martha Roberts is a food heroine.

R M Plater - Wisbech - Gloucester Old Spot Sausage

Have you seen the TV advert featuring two lumberjacks a-runnin’ and a-jumpin’ on a log?  Of course you have.  What you probably don’t realise is that their foothold is not a felled tree, it is in fact one of Plater’s Gloucester Old Spot sausages.  A small-ish example, but a sausage nevertheless.    Plater’s is a small shop in the market town of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and it’s one of the friendliest places that our sausagey quest has taken us to.  It’s ever so slightly tricky to find but soooo worth it.

They have their own website, which includes their opening hours so you can plan your visit.  Check out their claim to make over 20 varieties of sausages: Platers-Website

On to the sausages....let’s give them a jolly good rating:

Meat Content:

These are huge and scary sausages!  It would appear on initial viewing that Plater’s have simply sawn the legs off a Gloucester Old Spot pig and stuck them straight into sausage skins, with zero processing in between.  There are no trotters peeping out of the skins though, so perhaps I’m mistaken.  The quoted figure is 72% but I suspect that Barry, the resident sausage maker, may be understating a little.

Flavour:

Now you’re talking; these sausages are the real deal.  The first mouthful whisked me straight back to my childhood in the (whisper it) mid-seventies.  Prosaically speaking the flavour is an initial peppery slap followed by a mouth-filling herbiness, underpinned with the fulsomely grand porkiness.  The British Pig Association describe the Gloucester Old Spot breed thus; “a large meaty animal with a broad and deep body”, and this also almost unerringly describes Plater’s sausages made from the same breed.  Maybe the reason for the nostalgic flavour is their use of bread as a binding agent instead of the ubiquitous rusk.

Texture:

Sometimes appearances can be deceiving, sometimes not.  You’d think that these huge, rugged logs of prime pig would provide a compact, chunky texture throughout the bangers.  You’d be right.  As the kids say these days, “O M G”.  The sausages are indeed robust and firm, and yet give way “just so” when you want them to –you certainly couldn’t use them as the legs for a meat-based coffee table, say.  All four examples cooked differently, which is something we like, but there was some sticky...”stuff”....on a couple that wasn’t particularly endearing. 

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 94g

Average weight cooked - 69g

Shrinkage - 27%

Losing over a quarter of the weight that you pay for is just not on, no matter how good the end product is (again, maybe something to do with bread instead of rusk?).  Big black mark next to these otherwise fantastic snorkers.  What a pity.

Value For Money:

£2.44 for 4 sausages, weighing 375g - this works out as a price of £6.50 per kg, or 61p per snorker.

As we’ve said before, “you gets what you pays for”.  I’d like to see the price of these bangers fall slightly but 61p is reasonable value for money.  It can’t be understated that the reason each sausage costs 61p is that they’re mahoosive and contain a lot of flavour and a lot of pork.  Four of these tasty monsters will cost a little less than a pack of supermarket atrocities, and you’ll enjoy them a million times more.

Opening Hours:

We love the crazy opening hours adopted by many of these excellent butchers, and Plater’s don’t disappoint.  Pop over to their website and have a look:  Platers-Opening-Hours

And Finally Esther:

Before you go, can you name the product that the splashing lumberjacks are promoting?  Everybody likes the advert, but nobody knows what it’s for.  The answer, my friends, is multivitamins produced by Berocca.  See, you didn’t know!  You do now.