Shaun Vining's black pudding steals award

- Published: 06 June, 2008

Shaun Vining of Axminster-based Complete Meats was crowned BPEX Regional Roadshow champion at a celebration lunch held for the finalists in Butchers Hall on Wednesday.

Shaun's black pudding, which was originally created five years ago, stole him the award. "The black pudding was a new category for this year's awards and so we decided to put ours in the competition," he told MTJ.

Shaun believes his recipe won because it is quite moist, has a good after taste and depth of flavour, which he attributes to the extra herbs and spices blend in the black pudding. "After talking to customers we developed a product which has small diced chunks of fat instead of the large ones used often in black pudding."

This year's BPEX Regional Roadshow included two new categories black pudding and faggots and meatballs. "While black pudding, we found is having a bit of a resurgence, faggots and meat balls proved a bit more difficult," said Keith Fisher, BPEX butchery and product development manager.

Fisher also pointed out that 207 butchers had entered the competition with 1,300 products 37% of these received a gold award, 30% a silver and 13% a bronze. Around 88% of products had received some sort of award.

At the same time entrants to the competition had to earn 95 points this year to win a gold award compared to the 90% in previous years.