What’s more quintessentially Kiwi than a sizzling sausage on the barbecue in summer?
This week the small but mighty meaty delight has received the recognition it deserves, thanks to the Great New Zealand Sausage Competition, and Masterton’s Homegrown Butchery has snagged itself a Gold Medal at the prestigious annual event.
The tasty sausage selection available at Homegrown Butchery. PHOTO/MARLEE PARTRIDGE.
Homegrown’s beef brisket and steak butter banger has been a local bestseller for a while now, manager Jake Wiffen told the Times-Age, so the award won’t come as a big surprise for many of Wairarapa’s sausage aficionados.
Inspired by the classic steak-in-butter cooking combo, the sausage had been sold since Homegrown launched but started “flying out the door” after a tweak to the recipe.
The award-winning sausage features “lumps of steak butter whipped through it which melt into the sausage and release flavour when cooked”.
Wiffen said the classic simplicity of mashed potato and gravy combo is a great pairing with such a sausage, while a Heineken will do the trick when washing it down [while admitting he isn’t much of a wine man himself, Wiffen also hazarded a guess that a nice red wine would probably also do the job].
Homegrown Butchery entered the competition for the first time last year and was awarded a Silver Medal for its pork and watercress snarler, but Wiffen admitted his favourite is the chardonnay and French herb.
And the secret to cooking the perfect sausage?
“Always start with a cold pan and let the sausage heat up,” Wiffen said.
Other winners in the region include Scotty’s Meats, which received a Silver for its venison patty and a Bronze for its goat curry, while Four Square in Martinborough took out a Gold for its beef sausage and Silver for its lamb patty.
