Veggie white pudding not a flash in the pan

BUTCHER Seán Kelly’s regular customers laughed at him when his latest product was sitting proudly on his counter – a white-pudding made without a morsel of meat.

But jolly Seán is laughing himself now as he is selling 50,000 ‘chubs’ of his vegetarian pudding a year in shops all around the country.

Seán worked to perfect the pudding for two years after customers continued to ask him if there was a vegetarian option.

‘I do shows around the country – from Dublin to Donegal and any place – selling our pudding and I had more and more people asking me if I had anything for vegetarians,’ he said.

‘So I developed the vegetarian pudding and, after a lot of trial and error, it worked,’ he added.

Seán’s main problem was getting the pudding to stay together while cooking. But he is a little shy about how he solved the conundrum.

‘My secret? My secret is trial and error. It’s soya-based, and added to that is a little secret we developed to get it to hold together.’

The award-winning pudding – it won a Blás na hÉireann award in 2016 – has just been chosen as Aldi’s special of the week and this week it will land on the supermarket’s shelves without a drop of blood or a morsel of pork in sight, though it is not suitable for vegans.

Seán, a life-long butcher, recently invested in a new 6,000 sq ft factory in his hometown of Newport, Co. Mayo, to keep up with demand.

Aldi will stock Kelly’s Vegetarian Pudding from Thursday in its 137 stores around the country as its latest special buy, at €2.29 each.