The great black pudding taste-off

When Dan the neighbour invited us around to nosh on his bloody sausage I was very pleased to see this when we arrived at his flat:

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They are three different types of black pudding from Sillfield Farm (London’s best pork butcher). The idea was to compare and contrast to see which style was our favourite.

Black pudding is easy to prepare, you just slice it (if it is not already pre-sliced) then fry the slices for a few minutes each side. Here it is ready to be put in the pan:

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The styles are Bury (the smaller round slices), Homemade (the rectangular slices) and Stornoway (the large round slices).

Fry them up and serve with other piggy goodies and you have a marvellous breakfast:

So, on to the taste-off. We tried the Bury style first, which was a densely textured black pudding with lumps of belly fat and grains in it. This was Daniel and Jeff’s favourite; they said they liked the texture, the melting loveliness of the fat and its rich flavour. For Dan and me this was good, but we preferred the other two styles as we thought this was not strongly flavoured enough.

The Homemade style black pudding was similar in texture to the Bury, quite dense with fat and grain added, but it also contained some onion. In my view this onion really enhanced the flavour and added complexity. Again Daniel and Jeff really liked the texture. All four of us ranked this black pudding second out of the three.

Finally there was the Stornoway, Dan’s and my favourite. This was very different from the other two in that it was more loosely textured, as if it had been minced. Dan and I loved this texture, Daniel and Jeff were less impressed. I found the onion and spice added to this really made the flavour complex and interesting.

All three of these we could happily eat, but the pronounced differences between them made it possible to easily pick favourites. Since our views were so divided all I can do is suggest you have the same tasting challenge at home so you can decide for yourselves.

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