Apprentice snags accolade
A second-year butchery apprentice has snagged two big awards for her pure pork sausages – but she won’t tell you what’s in them.
‘‘They’re New Zealand pork, that’s all you need to know!’’ says Porsche Davis, butchery apprentice at New World Te
Rapa. Davis trialled many iterations of her pure pork sausages before landing on the winning recipe, and she has no plans to share it.
But her manager, Richard Jeffcoat, says it’s Davis herself who’s the secret.
Gender differences in the industry aside, it’s unheard of for a second-year apprentice to produce such acclaimed small goods.
‘‘It’s absolutely amazing, mindblowing, what Davis is doing,’’ he says.
The judges of the 2022 Great New Zealand Sausage Competition were unanimous in August when they named Davis’s sausages a Gold winner.
They agreed again in
September, when Davis’s sausages won the Supreme Award.
After four years as a chef in Auckland, Davis, 24, is in the second year of her butchery apprenticeship.
She joined New World in 2020, two years after the store last won the Supreme Award.
‘‘I actually started in the deli department, for about two months. It’s a good department, but butchery just intrigued me. Going from being a chef, I just thought, oh, I should go try that next,’’ she says.
Davis’s family never saw her pursuing butchery, but she says she feels completely at home.
‘‘I couldn’t live without meat,’’ she says.
Jeffcoat manages the New World Te Rapa butchery, and his butchery career spans 30 years, including owning a Raglan butchery for 17.
He’s had five apprentices over those years – all of them men.
‘‘I was so excited, having a woman with so much talent on the team.’’
Meat Business Women, a global professional community for female butchers, launched their ‘‘She looks like me’’ campaign after research by the Meat Industry Association in 2020 showed that fewer than 40% of butchers were women.
Davis doesn’t seem bothered being one of the few women in the maleheavy team, and she agrees with Jeffcoat that there has been an increase in the number of women joining the trade.
‘‘Yes, it’s a maledominated trade, but there are lots of women coming in now,’’ she said.
‘‘A lot of people underestimate Porsche, they think she’s just good at the small goods (sausages), but she’s so much more than that as a butcher,’’ Jeffcoat said.
‘‘That’s why it’s a team effort doing these sausages – she’s too important to have on just one job.’’
While she’s keen to stay on at New World and continue to learn under Jeffcoat, Davis admits she’s keen to own her own butchery one day.
Her advice to anyone looking to get into the industry is simple: ‘‘Don’t stop. Keep going.’’