Throughout the country butchers are putting their best bangers forward in the hopes of taking out the 2013 Supreme Award in the Devro New Zealand Sausage Competition.
In the twentieth year of the competition, sausage makers will be pulling out all the stops to take home the coveted title.
Kim Doran, from Retail Meat New Zealand, says this competition continues to get bigger and better.
“20 years is a significant milestone in any competition. A main objective when this competition began was to improve the standard of sausages available in New Zealand.
“We are very proud to say the quality available to customers today is equal to that in any country across the globe. Our sausage makers have really stepped up to the challenge and as such winning this title is a mark of highest prestige,” says Kim Doran.
The judging will see over 450 sausages judged across 10 categories before the sausage with the highest mark for each category is judged in the finals to find the Supreme Award winner.
The 2012 Supreme Award was won by Island Bay Butchery in Wellington, with a Smoked Kielbasa.
The competition is supported by Devro, Kerry Ingredients and Alto Packaging.
The sausage competition has been running in various forms since 1994 and is now well established as an annual highlight for butchers and smallgoods manufacturers.
In 2007 the competition was rebranded to the Great New Zealand Sausage Competition and pushed into the retail level with on-pack stickers which clearly identify the Supreme winner, as well as Gold, Silver and Bronze medallists.
In 2011 the competition had a makeover once more to become the Devro New Zealand Sausage Competition.
The Devro New Zealand Sausage Competition has 10 categories for butchers to enter. Once entered, all of the entries are picked up by mystery shoppers and sent to Auckland.
The sausages are then anonymously judged within their categories. The judges are a combination of butchers, industry experts, foo writers and chefs. The judging process is overseen by head judge Kerry Tyack, a food writer with years of experience in food and beverage competition judging.
Each sausage is judged by at least two judges and an average score is taken from these. Medals are then awarded for the marks received. From here, the sausages which received the top mark in each category are rejudged against each other to find the Supreme Award winner and the People’s Choice Award winner.
