Top gongs for Garfield butcher

John, Lizzy, Paul, Kathy, Ian, Helen, Luke and Peter with the award winning meats. 244974_05

By Shelby Brooks

A Garfield butcher is celebrating three gold medal wins in the regional Sausage King awards.

Country Style Meats Butcher and Smokehouse won first place for their leg ham, boneless ham and rookwurst entries in the Australian Meat Industry awards in Victoria’s south east.

Owner John Preston said he was “very happy and proud” at the result.

“You try and perfect [the product], try and improve taste and moisture and textures each year,” he said.

“There are different ways around it for curing purposes, aging, smoke times, cooking times which are all part of the eight different categories that they judge each product on.”

Country Style Meats also walked away with two silver medals for their traditional breakfast sausage, bacon rasher, Strassburg lightly smoked chicken breast and lamb, pumpkin and feta sausage.

They also got a bronze for their apple and cranberry kabana

The regional awards saw entries from Dandenong to Lakes Entrance.

Mr Preston will now have the opportunity to enter his gold wining products into the state final in September.

He said the good news could not have come at a better time during the Covid-19 lockdown.

“We try to go out of our way to look after our customers. We do home deliveries within 5km twice a week,” he said.

“But yes, it does affect us all, but we are in a position that we are lucky we are still open and lucky to employ staff.”