Friday 25 November 2011

Croots Farm Shop strikes gold with sausages, pies and meat products during BPEX roadshow

Derbyshire farm shop Croots has a dozen reasons to celebrate today after scooping 12 awards for its sausages, pies and meat products at the BPEX regional roadshow.

The farm shop near Duffield was awarded three gold, seven silver and two bronze awards at the excellence in pork products event, held at Newark Showground in Nottinghamshire.

Croots Farm Shop owner Steve Croot said he was delighted that every entry put forward by Croots had been given an award at the event, judged by industry experts.

“I am absolutely thrilled for the team,” said Steve. “The products are evaluated by a team of industry experts and points are given for a range of attributes, including appearance, consistency, texture, taste and smell. The judges in the BPEX awards use a set national criteria and so we can quite confidently say that our sausages and pork products are amongst some of the best in the country.”

Croots Farm Shop, based at Farnah House Farm, Wirksworth Road, took gold for its mutton rogan josh, black pudding and black pudding with bacon, silver for its mutton and veg sausage, Cumberland sausage, beef and tomato sausage, as well as its Brian Clough Banger – created especially for British Sausage Week this year – and its pork pie, meatballs and lamb and mint pie.

Bronze awards were awarded for Croots’ pork and Roquefort pie and its game pie.

The accolades are the latest in a long line of awards that the butchery and deli counter at Croots have achieved and come just weeks after its Henry Cooper Sausage won through to the regional final of a contest to find Britain’s best banger held during British Sausage Week.

It picked up a gold star award for its pork pie in the Great Taste Awards 2011, and also scooped four accolades in the British Pie Awards 2011, including a gold award for its popular steak and kidney pie.

In May, Croots took three golds and a silver award for its sausages and pies at the 17th Robin Hood Championship.

Produced by the shop’s in-house butchers, all the pork sausages at Croots are made using free range Packington Pork from Barton-under-Needwood near Burton-upon-Trent. Croots has a range of around 40 different flavours of banger, which it sells on a rotating basis.

Entries to the BPEX awards were a team effort, with Croots deputy manager Margaret Robinson creating the pies and the rogan josh, and butchers and deli counter staff Rob Tomkins, Neil Cartledge and Sylvia Maunder producing the sausages and black puddings.

“It was an excellent team effort,” added Steve Croot, who opened Croots Farm Shop in June 2008 and recently welcomed its 250,000th customer.

For more information visit www.croots.co.uk

Croots Farm Shop & Kitchen is open Sundays from 10am to 4pm (café until 3.45pm), and from Tuesday to Saturday from 9am to 5pm (café until 4.30pm). It is closed on Mondays.

Issued by Nottingham PR company Perfect 10 PR www.perfect10pr.co.uk