Colletts Farm (Wormingford,
Essex)
- Pork & Cracked PepperA little run over to Lavernham in Essex for their Christmas Farmers Market was the order of the day...and I knew there would be a sure bet there would sausage producers there so I was more than happy to do the driving and carry the shopping bags...
Lavernham is a very "oldi worldy" village of note as one of England's best preserved Medieval villages with more than three hundred listed buildings. It has previously been used as a location for a Harry Potter film, scenes in the British horror movie Witchfinder General and John Lennon and Yoko Ono used the Market Place for scenes for a short film called Apotheosis, featuring a hot air balloon.
The village farmers markets are pretty well attended and take the form of outdoor stalls on the grassed area from the public car park and indoor crafts within the village hall building. The Christmas one follows the same format, just with more tinsel!
We had seen Collets Farm's stall on a previous visit, but they had run out of stock by the time we got there last time. However this time I did managed to bag a pack of Pork & Cracked Pepper sausages.
Collets Farm is owned by Tim and Sophie, who are tenant farmers on the 120 acre holding they secured in 2010. They now sell their own beef, pork, lamb, home made pies and milk regularly at farmers markets and from their shop which is open 7 days a week. The pork used for the sausage making (carried out by Clarkes Farmers Butchery Ltd of Halesworth) is from their own herd of middle white pigs. They say that they are extremely passionate about their livestock and the health and welfare of such is their first priority. Excellent.
8 sausages in a pack here, who said packs of 6 were the rules?
Not
bad looking in the raw
indeed. 70% pork, rusk,
dried onion and potato
starch in the mix filled in
to natural hog casings.
Probably not gluten free,
what with the rusk BTW. So to cut to the chase. Cooked up they taste very good. Not over powering in the pepper department thankfully, but we felt that they were lacking just a tad on general seasoning though. Yes I know you can add some yourself to your meal to your own taste, which is what we did with our sausage and mash.
Texture-wise medium, not a bad bite/chew, and certainly a sausage you could easily eat in a sandwich or with mash, no problem.
These are quite smallish sausages at 65g / 110mm x 28mm each. They did have a bit of weight loss in cooking. 12% is pushing on and approx 9% shrinkage is just about ok, and they did have a little additional oil in the pan we noted from the cooking process.
So what do we think? A pretty good everyday sausage we'd say, and not bad value either.
Would we buy again? Yes of course.
Colletts Farm (Wormingford, Essex) - Pork & Cracked Pepper
(Nov
2023)
Here's the
sample details:
110x28mm before cooking, 100x28mm
after.
65g before cooking, 57g after approx.
That's a shrinkage of approx 9% &
weight loss of approx 12%.
8 sausages in a 448g pack £4.30 (£9.60/kg)
Collett's
Farm
Wormingford
Colchester
Essex CO6 3AU
01787 227292
www.collettsfarm.co.uk
Farm Shop is Now open 7 Days A Week:
Monday to Friday 8am-6pm
Saturdays 9am-6pm
Sundays 9am-12pm
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