A taste for the perfect sausage Ahead of the Great New Zealand Sausage Competition, Chris Schulz learns how to make a winning banger.
It’s moody, the air tight like a collagen casing. And so are the tummies. ‘‘We’re stuffed,’’ says Greig Buckley, a gourmet food specialist who will, this day, taste close to 100 different sausages. Does he eat the whole thing? ‘‘Depends if it’s good or not,’’ he replies, smiling and patting his stomach.
He and his fellow judges, a group of six butchers, chefs and foodies, all look stuffed. Since noon, they’ve eaten nothing but sausages. They’ve been doing this for two hours, and there’s still another hour to go.
What have they learnt so far? ‘‘Chefs try to overcomplicate it, trying to be smart when they should just be subtle,’’ says writer Annabelle White. ‘‘You don’t want a chilli-vege-chocolate banger.’’
Buckley nods. ‘‘People underrate the sausage in terms of thinking it’s a simple serving suggestion,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s quite hard.’’
All of these sausages are being eaten for a very good reason. Later in the day, around an oval table in Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Smales Farm head office, the supreme winner of the Great New Zealand Sausage Competition will be chosen.
Competition is fierce, with 513 sausages being entered in 13 categories, ranging from pork, poultry and pre-cooked, to flavoured, fresh and flexitarian.
Three medals are awarded in each category, along with a supreme winner and a people’s choice award, at a glitzy awards dinner tomorrow night.
Those who come up trumps will slap their bangers with stickers boasting about their win and the publicity can do very good things for the winners.
‘‘Our tiny store has been packed to the brim,’’ says Dave Rossiter, the creator of last year’s winner, a beef and mushroom sausage from Westmere Butchery.
‘‘Demand has gone through the roof.’’
It’s an important job. Today’s judges, Buckley and White, plus chef Jarrod McGregor, broadcaster Trudi Nelson, A Lady Butcher’s Hannah Miller, and business owner Brian Everton, know they’re under pressure.
Forget the All Blacks: they say the weight of the nation is firmly on their shoulders.
‘‘This,’’ says White, chewing on another sausage while pointing at the judging sheet in front of her, ‘‘is hard work’’. She finishes her mouthful. ‘‘I’m serious about sausages. The humble New Zealand banger is a metaphor for life.’’
Buckley agrees. ‘‘It’s a national tradition. We’ve got to uphold it.’’ He’s been a judge for the past five years – and is stunned by this year’s standards.
‘‘We used to get so many that wouldn’t cook properly, just technical faults . . . these are far better made, with far more adventurous flavouring.’’
The competition started in late August, when entrants sent their entries to the office in chilled packs. Their sausages were cooked under stringent guidelines and assessed over a five-day period early last month. The finalists were chosen and now they’re being cooked and delivered, one at a time and without labels, to the judges, who slice them, smell them, eat them, discuss them, then write down their marks and comments.
Each sausage has a lot to live up to. Points are awarded for everything from colour and texture to smells, casings, fattiness and – alarmingly – ‘‘grit’’ levels. Entrants score the most points for taste. ‘‘The meat has to be No 1,’’ says White. ‘‘You need the meat flavour coming through.’’
Sausages come in and go out, forks go up and down. It’s a lot of meat to chomp through. To cope, empty cans of lime spritzers, used to cleanse the palette between dishes, line the table. A bin full of rejects sits on the floor, destined for someone’s chickens at the end of the day. Leftover sausages go to Everybody Eats, the community kitchen on Auckland’s Karangahape Rd.
When Stuff arrives, the judges report standards have been high but they’re about to dip. ‘‘I just got a huge piece of gristle,’’ says Everton, holding out his palm with a disgusted look on his face.
Another plate arrives, this time containing a hopeful entrant in the ‘‘flexitarian’’ category, one catering for the growing demand of vegetarian, vegan and ‘‘flexi’’ sausages entering the market.
The judges cut into it, sideways and longways, and start eating it. That’s when things really sour. Mouths chew quietly, there’s a long pause, and faces screw up. The silence is brutal.
It’s broken by McGregor, who doesn’t hold back. ‘‘That’s f...ing horrible,’’ he says.
The floodgates open. ‘‘That’s a depressing banger,’’ says White. ‘‘This is a butcher’s experiment,’’ says Miller.
Buckley has the last word. ‘‘It’s what you’d feed a 6-month-old – if you hate them.’’
Things quieten down. Pencils are picked up, comments are scrawled into boxes, and the judging sheets are removed, replaced by fresh ones. Then the next sausage arrives. It can’t get worse.
Or can it? In the kitchen next door, James Smith is teaching me how to make a potentially winning sausage. If he talks, you listen.