Vote opens for food fans to choose new sausage flavour

A public vote has opened to choose a brand new sausage flavour in the ‘Great Sausage Mash Up’, a competition we are running with Essex pork farm Wicks Manor.

Held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wicks Manor farm, the competition launched in July and encouraged food fans in East Anglia to invent their own pork sausage flavour – no matter how wild, wacky or traditional. Among the wide variety of ingredients suggested were apricot, spinach, pomegranate and even cream cheese.

After much deliberation by three generations of the Howie family, owners of Wicks Manor, three shortlisted recipes have been selected and will now be put to the public vote. The most popular suggestion will be turned into a real limited-edition sausage, stocked in a selection of our food stores.

Facing the public vote is pork with honey suggested by Amy Buckle, pork with chorizo suggested by Ann Peters and pork with sundried tomato and jalapeno suggested by Joanne O’Neil. The creators of each flavour will receive a hamper of Wicks Manor goodies and a £50 East of England Co-op food voucher, and are now hoping their suggestion will be voted as the public’s favourite. 

Since 1967 the Howie family has been producing premium Maldon pork at Wicks Manor and today the business is run by the brothers Fergus and Hamish Howie. 

Fergus commented: “The Great Sausage Mash Up has been a great success with over 50 nominations received. As a whole family, we loved getting together to choose the three shortlisted recipes and look forward to seeing which one will win!”

The public vote opened on Monday 14th August until midday on Thursday 14th September, with the winner announced on Friday 15th September.

The winning recipe will then be put into production and stocked exclusively in select East of England Co-op food stores in October, with the limited-edition sausage bearing the name of its creator on the packaging. 

Roger Grosvenor, Joint Chief Executive at the East of England Co-op, said: “This competition has been a great way to encourage our customers to ‘think local’ and support one of our most popular local producers, a great example of some of the fantastic food our region proudly produces. Wicks Manor sausages are always reliably tasty so we are really looking forward to stocking this new limited-edition sausage, whatever the final flavour might be!”

Our Sourced Locally initiative encourages shoppers to buy local, seasonal produce. The scheme, which has ploughed £57million back into the region, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

To vote for your favourite shortlisted recipe visit: www.wicksmanorcompetition.com.