Mettricks brought home a coveted Gold award from the British Pie Championships last month.

Held in Melton Mowbray (the Home of British pies), the competition saw the countries top pies submitted in 18 Classes. The pies underwent a stringent judging process by 93 food experts and celebrity chefs led by Andrew Chisholm. The panel, which included top food critic Charles Campion and food writer Xanthe Clay, TV chefs Rachel Green and Phil Vickery, scored the Pies on a range of criteria including appearance, and texture and  taste of both pastry and filling.

On winning the award, John Mettrick commented “We put a lot of hard work into making the best pies possible. We know we put the best ingredients into our products and that the meat in our pies is second to none, but to be recognised at these highly prestigious awards amongst some of the best bakers in the country is a great honour!  We are very excited we have received the prize and we hope this will encourage new customers to try our award-winning products.”

Matthew O’Callaghan, Chairman of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, added: “Pies are one of our nation’s favourite traditional foods and we organise this event to celebrate the quality and heritage of these iconic products. This year’s event was a resounding success and yet again we were impressed with the high quality of the Pies entered by passionate Pie makers. Our Judges, who faced the difficult task of choosing the winning Pie out of 900 entries, did a superb job. It is fantastic to see that the value of these Awards is recognised not only by large Pie makers but also by small producers who submitted over 70% of entries.”

Why not try one of Mettricks excellent homemade pies?

J W Mettrick & Son took home the bacon, on 19th March as the Glossop butcher was announced as the winner in the butchers Dry Cured category at this year’s Red, White & Bacon Awards, a national competition, devised to showcase Britain’s best bacon cures.

Their Free Range Dry Cured Rindless Back Bacon saw off competition from hundreds of other products produced by some of the finest butchers to win this year’s Butchers Dry Cured Bacon award, part of the annual Red, White & Bacon competition.

Now in its sixth year, the annual Bacon Connoisseurs’ Week trade competition aims to raise the flag and salute the huge variety of quality cured bacon currently produced in this country.  Over 220 bacon products were entered into the competition, which was split into four categories – Classic Dry Cure, Traditional Wet Cure, Smoked Cure and the NEW Rasher-nal Treasure award.

Master butcher and head judge, Keith Fisher from BPEX comments: “This year has been an extremely exciting one for entries.  The standard of premium bacon production is very high and makes me very proud to see what a wide selection of quality bacon butchers and farmers are now producing.”

John collected his award from Bacon Connoisseurs’ Week ambassador, Angela Rippon at an industry lunch hosted at Simpsons-in-the-Strand on 19^th March.