Our new Club Gourmet Barbecue Box is the perfect way to enjoy the world’s finest meats—Wagyu Beef and Mangalitza Pork. It contains a delicious selection of handmade Wagyu beef burgers and Mangalitza pork sausages—guaranteed to enliven a barbecue or party. These tantalisingly mouthwatering meats are from two of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes, connoisseurs Jeanette and Rachel, of Alternative Meats in Shropshire. This Gourmet Barbecue Box is a surefire way to win celebrity status among family and friends at your next barbecue.
Rachel’s Welsh Wagyu (‘Kobe) beef steak burgers are a Club favourite already. Their extraordinary succulence, melt-in-the-mouth texture and a rich, buttery, meaty and mouth-filling flavour that is not in the least fatty, ranks them as the best you will eat. They are also healthy, and gluten free. The steak is from Ifor Humphreys, breeder of a premium Wagyu herd in Wales. These cattle are those prized in Japan as ‘national treasures’—and Ifor looks after them in similar style, feeding them four pints of beer a day from the local Monty’s Brewery, accompanied by an occasional massage. He keeps them largely grass-fed apart from their daily tipple, and the result is the ‘creme de la creme of beef’—wonderful in flavour and far too good for a mere burger: we love them without the bread bun, just with salad and fries: they are delicious, better than many steaks.
As to the Mangalitza, this is the pork equivalent of Wagyu, with a rich, deep flavour, so good it can easily spoil you for ‘normal’ pork . . . but what a treat to serve your epicurean guests! The Mangalitza, or ‘Woolly Pig’, is a rare breed with an aristocratic Hungarian pedigree as well as an unusually hairy appearance. Its kobe beef-like marbling through the gamey flesh makes it the tastiest pork imaginable. It was bred by Archduke Joseph Anton in the 1880s, and it was considered so good that initially the meat was reserved for the Hapsburg Royalty. This extraordinary pig is now farmed here in the UK by a few artisanal farmers, and is being seized on by Michelin-star chefs who want to serve pork with flavour.
The pork for our sausages is from Lisa Hodgson’s 200-strong herd near Helmsley, North Yorkshire. The sausages are rustic looking, thick and chunky, and the flavour is delicious, incorporating simple spices and cracked black pepper.
The Gourmet Barbecue Box contains 20 x 170g Wagyu Burgers and 15 x Mangalitza Pork Sausages (three packs, each 400g), giving you a full 4.6kg (more than 10lb). They will fit the bill perfectly for your next barbecue—or any time, as you can eat some and freeze the rest—the burgers cook beautifully from frozen.
RRP £109. CCUK £69. Save £40. Free UK mainland delivery. Total 4.6kg