Retail Sausage Of The Year 2012

The Rate My Sausage champion Retail Sausage Of The Year for 2012 is Keevil & Keevil's Cumberland Sausage!  Congratulations guys!

In June 2012 we wrote...."Delectably juicy, lovely skins on the bangers, giving a perfect snappy crack when Junior Sidekick cut into it.  Much to my delight they fall apart enticingly when you push them apart with your knife, and the same crumbling effect occurs when you chew them, releasing the gorgeous flavour for you to savour...."

We loved K&K's Cumberlands...."Each sausage weighs more after frying than most of the other bangers that we’ve tried do before they even see the pan – make no mistake, these are big, rough and ready sausages designed to take on and defeat the hungriest of appetites."

Well done to Keevil & Keevil, you are Rate My Sausage Retail Champions for 2012!

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The runner-up for the retail category for 2012 is.....Keevil & Keevil's Pork, Honey & Mustard Sausage.  A double for K&K.

The first impression was “It’s all honey, where’s the hot stuff?”  Then, tasting the second sausage, ah, there it is!  This time it was mainly mustard with just a sniff of sweetness.  I like this a lot, the sausages seem to be hand-made with varying amounts of the component parts ending up in each link, instead of being industrially mashed together in some giant Kenwood mixer somewhere in Thailand.  The third sausage was a perfect mixture of the mustard and the honey, with the final mouthful largely mustardy, giving my tastebuds a final farewell scalding on the way down the hatch.

Just like it says on the packet, you can sniff sweet honey and tangy mustard at the same time, wafting out of the kitchen.  I couldn’t wait to get started on these sausages.

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Bronze medal for this Olympic year is, you will be surprised to hear, Tesco Finest British Pork & Red Leicester sausage.  It pained me to rate them so highly, but if nothing else this proved that Rate My Sausage judges each banger objectively on its own merits.  Well done Tesco.

Pork and red Leicester, so you’d hope they would taste cheesy, right?  Well they’re cheesy, no doubt about that.  The rather better than expected, succulent meat is your first flavour, then the super-savoury cheesiness appears.  I’d sum up these bangers as tasting like “cheese on toast, in sausage form” – and what the hell is wrong with THAT combo?  

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Fourth place, and a very well deserved "mentioned in despatches" goes to Peelham Farm Organic Pork & Ruby Veal Sausages.

Great bangers.  And the first time that RMS has ever dedicated a review to a single person, in this case Mikaela.  We really enjoyed these sausages, hence "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."

That's the retail awards for 2012.....well done to the winners and thank you for the fabulous bangers!  Here's to a good 2013 for you all.

Keevil & Keevil - Smithfield Market - Cumberland Sausage

Our first ever cockney banger!  Keevil & Keevil are based at the historic Smithfield Market, London’s famous meat market since the dawn of time.  Please, please visit their website’s history page, it’s the best “About Us” section that I’ve ever seen, a right fascinating read:  Keevil-History

K&K are also one of the friendliest bunches of meat-mongers that I’ve dealt with, and we’ve shared a delightful on-going correspondence for the past week or three.  If you place an order with them I can guarantee a warm and helpful relationship, which the vast majority online retailers would struggle to match (let’s face it, most of them don’t even bother).  A special “Thanks” to the irrepressible Jo Wendes who has valiantly dealt with Rate My Sausage’s outrageous diva demands!  If this gives you the impression that I’m impressed, you’d be right.  So...website is good, customer service is exceptional.....what about the most important part, the sausages themselves?

Well.  Anticipation was high, and we weren’t disappointed....

Meat Content:

I couldn’t read the label but there must be at least 80% pork included as directed by the Protected Geographical Indication for Cumberland sausages.  Not over the top porkiness, the meat and seasonings combine sublimely.  The pork is here aplenty and is delicious, but doesn’t dominate the flavour.  Firm and chewy (in the right way), and a lovely size – each one is roughly 12cm long and full of those small crumbly fragments that Rate My Sausage craves and loves so much.   Well balanced and well proportioned (could do with the odd bit of gristle, but that’s just our speciality taste).

Flavour:

The first mouthful prompted a mental “Cor”, which is a high accolade.  Sweet base flavour, with the pork showing its splendid quality, these sausages taste utterly delicious.  There’s a mild warm afterglow in the throat which prolongs the yumminess.  It won’t blow your head off with heat, but it’s definitely there in the shadows, just how a Cumberland sausage should be.  A subtle flavour for adults, seemingly irresistible for children (see below), these are sausages that will please the whole family.

Texture:

Delectably juicy, lovely skins on the bangers, giving a perfect snappy crack when Junior Sidekick cut into it.  Much to my delight they fall apart enticingly when you push them apart with your knife, and the same crumbling effect occurs when you chew them, releasing the gorgeous flavour for you to savour.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 84g

Average weight cooked – 70g

Shrinkage - 17%

Good performance by the cockney challengers, under 20% loss seems to be unusual yet frugal these days.  Each sausage weighs more after frying than most of the other bangers that we’ve tried do before they even see the pan – make no mistake, these are big, rough and ready sausages designed to take on and defeat the hungriest of appetites.

Value For Money:

£9.00 for eighteen sausages, weighing 1500g - this works out as a price of £6.00 per kg, or 50p per snorker.  Delivery is way below the average for courier-delivered meat products, at a decent £3.50 – this obviously bumps up your price, but if you were to add in some of Keevil & Keevil’s other produce or just bulk-buy the sausages,  it wouldn’t be too bad.  Including the delivery charge, here is how the price varies according to the amount you buy:

One pack - £9.00 + £3.50 delivery = £12.50 – this works out as £8.33 per kg

Two packs - £18.00 + £3.50 delivery = £21.50 - £7.17 per kg

Four packs (this would last you a Very long time!) - £36.00 + £3.50 delivery = £39.50 - £6.58 per kg

Thanks to the fabulous quality I’m rating Keevil & Keevil’s Cumberland sausages as “very good value for money”.

The Bisto Factor:

Driven to distraction.  Working eleven hour nightshifts at a care home at the moment and I could hardly wait for these sausages to be ready.  They swamped our home with an utterly delicious, savoury aroma.  Yum yum yum!  Are they done yet?

Through A Child’s Eyes:

We lobbed a couple of these sausages onto our first barbie of the year, and the Junior Sidekick was impressed.  So much so that he sliced up most of his banger and used it to top the burger that he had lovingly hand-made for himself just minutes earlier.  Trust me, he doesn’t add any old rubbish to the 100% beef burgers that we create together, so this is a huge endorsement for these Cumberland sausages.  OK, he had to use a skewer to maintain the structural integrity of the end product, but judging by the speed that it disappeared down the hatch I can confirm that Keevil & Keevil’s Cumberland sausages are a definite hit with the nippers.

Opening Hours:

Open all day every day, via the internet.  You’ll need to check the website for delivery timings, but you can order whenever the heck you want to.

Keevil&Keevil

Buy some of Keevil & Keevil’s great meat today!