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?

Mettrick’s is to have its own stall at the Stalybridge Farmers’ Market starting next month, at the request of Stalybridge and Hyde MP Jonathan Reynolds.

The high quality markets are one of the ways the Tameside Council are trying to breathe new life into the town centre. It boasts a variety of stalls selling all sorts of seasonal and regional produce, including cheese, vegetables, jams, bread and home made cakes. Mettrick’s is very happy to add our very own award winning produce to this list.

The market, which takes place the second Sunday of every month, is in Armentieres Square from 9.00am-1.30pm. You can see Mettrick’s there on May 13th, June 10th and July 8th! For those who wish to visit, you are able to pre-order online and pick up your items at the market on the days themselves!

We also have a short questionnaire to complete and you can be in with a chance of winning half a Peak District lamb worth over £50. You can download the pdf here. Enter bypost, e-mail or by dropping off your feedback at our next Farmers’ Market.

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.

Hogget (Lamb aged between 1 and 2 years)  has featured on TV a number of times over the last few months, including the time when Ade Edmondson Visited our Glossop shop to sample some of our High Peak Hogget.

Well the great news is that it is now coming into season, so we have added a full range of Hogget cuts onto our website.

If you want to know more about this interesting and flavoursome meat, you may find this post interesting

We are running more of our popular butchery courses in Glossop across February and March, and still have a few places left.

The first of these will be on beef,  run at our Glossop shop on the evening of  Wednesday 15th February from 6:30 – 9:30pm. The second course, with the same time slot, is on Wednesday March 14th and focuses on pork.

You can find more details on these course, along with costs and a link to book a place via the link below:

Mettricks Butchery Courses

We are also planning a number of courses throughout 2012, so if you can’t make either of these but would like to hear about future courses why not follow us on Twitter or Facebook and we will keep you posted as new dates are announced.

20th-29th January is British Pork and Farmhouse Breakfast Week and to celebrate this we have a great offer for you.

If you buy 1lb (500g) of our excellent Home dry cured bacon, we will give you 6 eggs and 6 free range pork sausages absolutely free. Giving you everything you need for a traditional British breakfast.

All the bacon is sourced from farms locally to our shop, and cured on the premises, and all the pork in both the bacon and the sausages is free range.

We are running one of our popular butchery courses in Glossop on 18th January, and have a few places left.

The course will focus on pork, and will be run at our Glossop shop on the evening of  18th January from 6:30 – 9:30.

You will find full details of the course, along with costs and a link to book a place via the link below:

Mettricks Butchery Courses

We are also planning a number of courses throughout 2012, so if you can’t make the 18th but would like to hear about future courses why not follow us on Twitter or Facebook and we will keep you posted as new dates are announced.

Mettricks Large Pork Pies were  given a 100% score at a recent awards ceremony.

The Judges at the Q Guild awards ceremony which was hosted by celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott, described the Pie as the “Perfect” pork pie.

With Christmas coming up, now is the ideal time to try the pie which would make a great addition to any festive buffet.

Mettrick’s will be featuring on the Hairy Bikers’ BBC2 show ‘Best of British Food Tour’ on December 5th at 3.45pm in a specially themed “slow food” episode.

Dave Myers and Simon King visit Mettrick’s to talk ‘Mutton Versus Lamb’ with John.

While the bikers are out talking to the farmer who supplies Mettrick’s mutton, John cooks a leg of lamb and a leg of mutton. Which will taste the best? Tune in to find out!

In case you missed John on ‘Ade in Britain’, you can see what they got up to on the ITV food website, found here. Included is an 8-minute video of John’s involvement plus programme synopsis and recipe for a local lamb dish.

Alternatively, you can find the episode in its entirety on ITV Player here.