Croots Farm Shop has some of the best-quality sausages and pies in the East Midlands, according to industry experts.
The Derbyshire farm shop, which has its own butchers’ counter, deli and café, is celebrating after receiving four gold, seven silver and five bronze awards during the BPEX regional roadshow at Newark Showground in Nottinghamshire.
Croots hit the gold standard with its Lincolnshire sausages, beef, ale and mustard sausages, the Merquez (beef and lamb) sausages and the deli counter’s beef cobbler.
Silver awards went to the team’s tomato and basil sausages, and its pork sausages, along with its cottage pies, lasagne, mince and onion pies, steak and Stilton pies and steak and kidney pies.
Croots’ breakfast bangers, lamb and mint sausages, and chilli and lime sausages took bronze, while 19-year-old apprentice butcher Lee Barton won bronze in the young sausage maker category for his pork and cracked black pepper sausages and a bronze for his onion and marmalade sausages
Lee’s prizes took the Croots haul to 16 awards in a single day.
“It’s a tribute to our butchers, Rob Tomkins, Ant Griffiths and Lee, that pork industry experts rate our products so highly,” said Steve Croot, who runs Croots Farm Shop at Farnah House Farm, Wirksworth Road, near Duffield.
“It puts an official stamp of approval on what we have known for a long time – that quality ingredients and real expertise are the key to great local food.
“Our sausages and other meat products are renowned throughout the area and some of our customers come long distances to stock up. We’re absolutely delighted to have picked up 16 awards, including four gold awards.”
The awards are not the first to have been presented to Croots. In 2009, the farm shop received a one star gold award in the Great Taste Awards run by the Guild of Fine Food for its black pudding sausage. In November 2010 Croots won a silver award for its breakfast sausage in a competition held to mark British Sausage Week.
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. The farm shop recently extended its fresh meat counter in response to demand.
Roadshow entries from all over the East Midlands were evaluated by BPEX judges using nationally agreed guidelines in this latest event. The awards promote excellence in pork products and are aimed at small producers. BPEX is a division of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board and works to promote English pork nationally and globally.
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.
Nottingham PR consultant Perfect 10 PR www.perfect10pr.co.uk
