Pork Pie Of The Month - August 2019 - Marks & Spencers, Bourne

This is no ordinary pork pie....this is a Marks & Spencers pork pie. That's how the advert would probably sound. But would it be justified, is this really a superior product? I bought this example in the M&S foodhall in Bourne but I am sure you can find exactly the same product in any of their 959 stores across the UK. In sausage reviews we have repeatedly shown that supermarket versions are almost always inferior to the butchers' own offerings, is that same with pork pies?

Well this pie looks decent, a slightly irregular crimping is nice. There is some leakage during cooking, but I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. But there's no aroma, none at all – very disappointing. The filling is fine cut and densely packed together, heavy on the pepper but pretty unremarkable. Pastry I quite like, it's dough-y and not overdone. And there's a good layer of jelly that actually goes right the way around the pie. So it's OK. It's par for the course. It's average.

This is no ordinary pie...oh, hold on....yes. Yes it is.

Appearance & Aroma 2.5

Filling 3

Pastry 3

Jelly 3.5

Total 12.0

Price £3.50

The year so far:

14.0– Manor Farm Shop, Leasingham (made by Southern & Thorpe, Ruskington)

12.0 Marks & Spencers, Bourne

8.0 - Chris’ Quality Butchers, Worksop (made by Potters of Barnsley)

Pork Pie Of The Month - July 2019 - Chris' Quality Butchers, Worksop

Welcome to the second edition of Pork Pie Of The Month! This time we’re rating a pie bought from Chris’ Quality Butchers in Worksop but made by Potter’s of Barnsley. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed when told that Chris’ didn’t make their own pies in-house, but that certainly wouldn’t affect our judgement of the product. If you want to check out Potters’ website click here - POTTERS

I was joined for this tasting by Tony Clarke, a pork pie lover from beautiful downtown Mansfield. Tony has some decent credentials for the job – his uncle worked at Pork Farms in the seventies and would bring the family a huge gala pie every Christmas. There were no leftovers...

But on to the job in hand, and Potters pie.  First appearance showed an obviously machine-crimped lid (compare it to the top of last month’s pie), which set some alarm bells ringing. The colour was also very much what you might find in a supermarket pie - bland. We cut into it and the pastry was mid-range, firm enough to keep things where they should be but also soft enough to allow easy slicing. This didn’t please Tony much as he prefers his pastry “very hard”. Each to their own....but he’s wrong, obviously!

The filling was very finely chopped and we prefer something much chunkier. “Needs more salt” said Tony, but he did prefer the filling to the case. The flavour was average at best, again very reminiscent of a supermarket pie. There was not a lot of jelly and this pie needs a lot more of the wobbly stuff to lift it out of its mid-table mediocrity.

This pie cost £2.39 – less expensive than last month’s but also much less quality.

Appearance & Aroma 2

Filling 2

Pastry 2.5

Jelly 1.5

Total 8      

The year so far:

14.0 – Manor Farm Shop, Leasingham (made by Southern & Thorpe, Ruskington)

8.0 -  Chris’ Quality Butchers, Worksop (made by Potters of Barnsley)

If you know of an excellent pork pie please tip us the wink!

Pork Pie Of The Month - June 2019 - Manor Farm Shop, Leasingham

Welcome to the new edition of Pork Pie Of The Month! And we’ve found a  right tasty pie for the first in the series. ..

This pork pie was bought at Manor Farm Shop in Leasingham, but the credit must go to butchers par-excellence Southern & Thorpe in nearby Ruskington. Priced at £2.99 for a good size pie we really enjoyed road-testing one of Britain’s favourite pastries.

It appears rustic and home-made which is just what we want.  The score for appearance would have been a little higher if the pie hadn’t erupted over itself out of its top hole. Which sound quite rude when I read it back.

When you cut in this pie holds together very nicely unlike a lot of mass-produced competitors. There’s a good amount of jelly but, as a jelly lover, I wish there had been even more.  The filling is hand mixed and is made up of lovely large lumps of porky goodness which surrenders an authentic flavour.  Again, miles better than the filling squirted out of tubes in the factory versions.

There’s a nice and subtle peppery after-taste which we loved, and altogether this is a really good quality pork pie. Here are the scores on the doors:

Appearance & Aroma  - 3

Filling – 3.5

Pastry - 4

Jelly – 3.5

Total – 14

Price £2.99

Pork Pie Of The Month - March 2013 - Bray's Cottage

The first ever RMS Pork Pie Of The Month is already a legend in pie circles - Bray's Cottage's "Naked" Pork Pie.  Adored by the commentating team on R3's Test Match Special (it is rumoured that Jonathan Agnew, aka Aggers, throws a diva hissy fit and refuses to lift the mic until said pie is placed before him), and a favourite of pork royalty (aka The Sausage King), these pies were recommended to us by several different people.  We made it a priority to get hold of a Bray's pie to launch this feature, and that led to our fun-filled and rather boozy expedition to Norwich (as described in more detail in the review of Pickerings Norwich Sausages).

Brays Cottage is located atop a hill overlooking the sea, near the north Norfolk market town of Holt.  It’s a stunning location that I intend to raid visit this summer, and the pies are stunning too.

Bray's Website - Worth A Browse!

Sarah P, the resident goddess of pies at Bray’s, is a torrential tweeter (no euphemism), and uses the social media to great effect.  You could do much worse than to follow her, her daily dialogue will keep you chuckling when you’re feeling gloomy – it’s @Brays_Cottage   Plus you will be the first to hear about the latest Bray’s competition, which seem to gestate instantly out of the blue rather be planned months in advance.  In fact, if you are VERY quick (it ends at midnight tonight, 8 March) you can enter the #piefilms competition, full rules here Piefilms Competition

Rate My Sausage hasn’t written about pork pies before, so here goes, and please don’t criticise too harshly.....the flavour of Bray’s Naked pie is full, meaty and rich, with a salty undertone thanks to the 10% bacon that is included in the mix I think.  Rich in a good way, I must add, an incredibly savoury and intense flavour that is striking on the first taste and continues to be awesome throughout .  This is not a stereotypical porkpie, it’s an off piste masterpiece in a category of its own.  Completely delicious I must say.

The pastry is just right, firm enough to stand up to slicing intact but soft and moist when you bite into it.  Flakey but squidgy, how do they do it?  The meat is fabulous, VERY densely chunky, salty, lumpy, filling and bloody marvellous.  No worries about a rogue horseshoe appearing either, because all the pork is reared in north Norfolk, a (damned good) stone’s throw away from pie HQ.

There’s no jelly in this Naked pie, which is all down to Pie Mistress Sarah, individual preference driving this potentially controversial decision.  Personally I think that the jelly is all part of the pork pie experience, so the omission is the solitary black mark on an otherwise exemplary copy book. This pie looks and tastes almost like the perfect pie.   The bar has been set extremely high for Pork Pie Of The Month, can anything come close to beating this masterpiece from Bray’s Cottage?  The large pies that we tasted are priced at  £5.40 each which sounds rather expensive.  But when you consider the superb quality of the pie, the gorgeous flavours and the supreme texture going on, this represents very good value for money.  As we say so often in our sausage reviews, “You gets what you pays for”.

Pie Testers comments:

Grandad Bungalow said “Really strong taste.  I like it.  Not like a normal pork pie.”

Dan said “It’s OK.  I prefer a shop pork pie.  Pinker in the middle.”

Camper Van Jack said “That’s bloody gorgeous that is!”

Ollie said “Nice!”

Old Bob said “God that’s bloody lovely....where'd you get that mate?”

Jane said “It’s an oral orgasm”  And yes, she was talking about the pork pie!

And here are the creators of this simply fabulous pie - Sarah and OH.  Thanks for the great food dudes, see you soon!