James Whelan Butchers Grab the Stars at the Great Taste Awards

JWB Beef DrippingEvery year the Great Taste awards celebrates the very best in food and drink from across Ireland and the UK. Last year was an incredible experience winning both Great Taste Golden Fork award for the best food from Ireland and the overall Great Taste Supreme Champion 2015 for our humble beef dripping.

This year we’re delighted to announce that 8 of our delicious products have received the stamp of excellence from the Great Taste Awards.

What’s really interesting about Great Taste, is what the judges had to say. The great thing about the process is that the judges blind taste all of the products, so you receive comments based entirely on the taste of the product. All of their comments help us to learn and develop the products from the feedback be it good or bad. We’re delighted to further announce that our Heritage Cure Ham has now been named as one of this year’s Top 50 Foods. It will be interesting to follow this product and see where it ends up for Christmas. See what the judges said about our Gold Star products:

Heritage Cure Ham – 3 Stars

“An impressive joint, juicy and with a good even layer of fat. Wonderfully inviting, moist, pink slices. The fat is delightful and the lean meat is tender, sweet and succulent. Well judged cure and delightfully delicate smoke. There is good pork flavour here. We tried this both thickly chunked and thinly sliced, both were wonderful – we were rather reluctant to let this leave our table.”

Heritage Cure Rack of Bacon – 3 Stars

“An impressive looking piece of bacon, with a good layer of fat, well caramelised. There is a good amount of juice when cut into, and it cut quite easily. The meat was succulent and soft, and there was a great piggy flavour and subtle smokiness. The flavours of the meat were superb and very well balanced through the curing. Clearly a quality piece of pork, and well looked after.”

Free Range Iberico Rack of Pork – 2 Stars 

“An impressive looking bit of pork, with good colouration and an appealing layer of fat. The meat was succulent and had a good level of fat, but not overly greasy. There was an agreeable amount of “piggy” flavour that came through, and there was some lovely sweetness from the meat. It carved well, and the meat had a good density to the muscle. Quality meat.”

Sweet Cured Streaky Bacon – 1 Star 

“A sweet flavoursome belly with juicy meat, a good nose of pork, the glaze has a good sweetness to it.”

Heritage Cure Oyster Bacon – 1 Star 

“A good cut of bacon with a superb crunchy crackling. Sweet bacon with good juicy succulence. The meat has a slightly stringy texture, the profile is not complex but it is delicious.”

Free Range Iberico Pork Chops – 1 Star

“A very delicious crackling with good clean fat. The pork is very simple and pure. The whole thing is lifted by the fat – there is a good tenderness to the lean meat.”

Cured Pork Belly – 1 Star

“A good piece of belly – fat to meat content is very good. The fat gives flavour and succulence. The porkiness carries on and this would be good hot or cold. Juicy and succulent pork with real depth of flavour.”

James Whelan Pork Lard – 1 Star

“A beautiful creamy colour and texture. The aroma is characterful but markedly clean. The aroma carries through on the palate – the flavour is gentle and clean; quite mild. Both at room temperature and melted the gentle flavour is very appealing and we did find the clean finish a happy one, ensuring the versatility of this product for pastry sweet as well as savoury.”

 

 

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