Dripping in gold – James Whelan Butchers Beef Dripping wins prestigious Golden Fork Award for Ireland & is awarded the Supreme Champion Trophy at the Great Taste Awards 2015
The Great Taste awards celebrates the very best in food and drink. This year the Great Taste Golden Fork award for the best food from Ireland was awarded to James Whelan Butchers from Tipperary for its Beef Dripping, a product that has also been named Great Taste Supreme Champion 2015.
From 10,000 entries into Great Taste 2015, judges awarded the top honour of Great Taste Supreme Champion 2015 to Beef Dripping from James Whelan Butchers of Clonmel in Co. Tipperary. Up against the most exquisite food and drink made by award-winning producers, the Beef Dripping was heralded as champion at the Great Taste Golden Forks Dinner, held on Monday 7th September at The Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, in front of a gathering of more than 300 guests from the world of fine food.
Seeing the upsurge of interest in heritage foods and traditional ingredients, Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers was inspired to create his own Beef Dripping. With the very best of beef available to him – and with more than a little guidance from his mother – he soon perfected a product that he was proud to share with his customers.
The Beef Dripping is produced in Clonmel by Pat Whelan, a fifth generation butcher, and made from the purest suet from grass fed Irish Angus and Hereford beef, and wrapped simply in white waxed paper. These magical creamy ingots transform roast vegetables, crisp potatoes into delicious roasters and make the most perfectly golden fish and chips. The product stays fresh for up to six months, simply stored in a cool dark place.
Golden Fork from Ireland
Great Taste is the world’s largest and most trusted food and drink awards. Organised by the Guild of Fine Food, it is judged by over 450 of the most demanding palates belonging to food critics, chefs, cooks, members of the Women’s Institute, producers and a host of food writers and journalists. Great Taste is widely acknowledged as the most respected food accreditation. 
“Great Taste recognises flavour above all else and James Whelan’s Beef Dripping is a perfect example of this, astonishing our panel of judges with its pure beefiness and savoury depth. The dripping is a simple, quite humble product made exceptionally well by a master of butchery. It succeeded through day-after-day of blind-tasting, winning favour at every stage of Great Taste and wowing expert judges who really know their stuff. As one of our judges said, just a spoonful would add sheer magnificence however it was used,” commented John Farrand, managing director of the Guild of Fine Food, organisers of Great Taste. The Beef Dripping made the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Top 50 best foods in the UK and Ireland two years in a row and was awarded Great Taste 3 Stars both years, but winning a Golden Fork Award makes James Whelan Butchers Beef Dripping the overall regional winner for Ireland and the honour of the Supreme Champion Trophy makes this year’s Great Taste Awards a remarkable night for the James Whelan Butchers team and Ireland. “Our team is very honoured to receive the Golden Fork Award and overjoyed to win the highest accolade from the Guild of Fine Food, the Supreme Champion Trophy. Bringing Beef Dripping back into the market wouldn’t have been as straight forward 20 or even 15 years ago. Now over the last few years with the diet police’s crosshairs firmly on refined sugar and carbohydrates instead of saturated fat, our customers are educated and appreciate this classic flavour enhancer. Fat is an essential part of our diet, protecting organs and aiding the absorption of vitamins, and according to many scientists, we are probably better consuming animal fats like butter and dripping. It’s an ideal time to reassess some of the old-fashioned foods many have dismissed, and it’s great to see Great Taste leading the way with this acknowledgement of just how good our Beef Dripping is.”
Supreme Champion
Last year the judges said that James Whelan Butchers Beef Dripping was “an absolute showstopper” … …“tremendous, deep beefy flavours”… “blew us all away” and this year the judges had even more to say, describing the Golden Fork for Ireland and Supreme Champion Trophy winner as … ‘Utterly delicious, it really is a game changer’… ‘Fat is back, this is the best I have ever tasted’… ‘Simple can be really good, bring it on!’
“It’s the taste of my childhood,” said Pat Whelan. “Our Beef Dripping is nutrient rich, high in omega-3 acids, clean, pure and carries great flavour, whether for frying a steak, roasting potatoes, or spread onto good bread like lardo.” – Just a spoonful of this once forgotten favourite can form part of a balanced diet and impart a rich savoury note into all manner of dishes, from roast potatoes and shortcrust pastry to the effortless indulgence of dripping on toast with a pinch of salt.
But the beef dripping started it’s Great Taste Journey in 2014 read more…. 
