GS Pickett (Ware)
- Cumberland
Choosing to
go cross country or rather the scenic route
to Ware in Hertfordshire, to avoid the
madness of the A414 dual carriageway, I
passed a small retail area in the
residential North of the town near Wodson
Park and found GS Picketts Family Butchers...
It looks like Picketts - The Ware Butchers -
have been serving Hertfordshire residents
from their Ware shop for some 61 years.
A proper butchers I will say selling a wide
range of meat product. The client I
called in to see, commented that she uses
Picketts rather than visiting the
supermarket, which is what I've heard from a
couple of other people locally too.
We bought some CUMBERLANDs from the display
which looked in the raw very good.
Made on site I was informed and
approximately 82% meat content in natural
skins confirmed also, as I asked the young
butchery assistant and he looked it up in
their sausage makings recipe book!
Cooked up we did have a few eruptions from
the sausage ends as everything tightens up
and squeezes the filling. This isn't
detrimental but it does nothing for the
overall look with of blobs of meat hanging
out of the sausage ends. The skins worked
well with no serious splits but there were a
few minor ones. The sausages did plump up
noticeably loosing a bit in their length.
Perhaps the frying pan got a tad too hot and
the skins overheated so I'll put that down
to us being a bit heavy handed in the
testing. The texture however was a bit open
given 82% meat content. The butcher I also
spoke to said they use rusk in the making
rather than breadcrumbs, so the texture and
softness was surprising.
Weight loss was quite noticeable, and
shrinkage, minimal.
Flavour-wise yes got the pepper and
seasoning, which was in moderation and made
for a good tasting sausage, but not, what we
would call, a stonking Cumberland sausage.
Eaten cold later, well, very nice!
The conclusion though: a pretty good
everyday sausage that worked well with our
mash, onions and thick gravy...
GS Pickett (Ware) - Cumberland
(Aug
2017)
Here's the
sample details:
104x30mm before cooking, 95x32mm
after.
74g before cooking, 65g after.
That's a shrinkage of 3% & weight
loss of approx 12%.
Doh, failed to get the separate
price as we also bought other items
(£8.00/kg approx but we will check
again shortly)
www.thewarebutchers.co.uk/