Judging for the Devro Great New Zealand Sausage Competition took place at the Seafood School in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter last week, kicking off a two-day sausage spectacular confirming the cream of New Zealand’s sausage crop for 2018.
The competition has seen over 480 entries across the 13 different categories, resulting in over 3,750 individual sausages being submitted for assessment. It will be up to 33 judges (made up of butchers, chefs and foodies) to tackle the daunting (and hunger-busting) task to whittle down the entries and award the medal winners in each category.
Antoinette Bisset, General Manager of Retail Meat New Zealand, a member organisation representing butchers and which runs the Devro Great New Zealand Sausage Competition, said: “This competition has been going for over 20 years and the depth and strength of the entries continues to improve year-on-year. The levels of quality and creativity we’ve seen for 2018 are incredible and I don’t envy the judges’ task of deciding the medal winners – well actually I do because they get to eat the sausages.”
After the first round of judging this week, the 13 gold medal winners in each category will go forward to the Devro Great New Zealand Sausage Competition Supreme Winner judging which will take place at Retail Meat New Zealand HQ at Smales Farm, Takapuna on 11 October.
Alongside the Supreme Award will be the People’s Choice award judging. The People’s Choice award sees the top six scoring sausages battle it out for the affection of the great New Zealand public. Anyone wanting to secure their place as a judge in the People’s Choice award are urged to get to Smales Farm, Takapuna for midday on Friday 12 October.
The medal winners, the Supreme Winner, the Devro New Zealand Wildcard Award* and the People’s Choice winner will then be announced at the Awards dinner at the Maritime Room, Prince’s Wharf Auckland on Thursday 18 October, just in time to celebrate National Sausage Day the following day on Friday 19 October. National Sausage Day gives Kiwis the perfect opportunity to fire up the barbie and celebrate the snag and further information around the National Sausage Day celebrations will follow in the coming weeks.
