A Hawke’s Bay butchery has been announced as the Supreme Winner in the 100 percent New Zealand Bacon & Ham Awards bacon and ham categories. Wild Game in Hastings has won New Zealand’s top bacon award with their middle eye/loin entry and New Zealand’s best ham award for their boneless ham.
Wild Game owners Jordan and Varnnah Hamilton-Bicknell run a boutique butchery in Camberley, Hastings, creating quality products sold in-store and online.
Jordan, passionate about hunting and the outdoors, started his butchery trade at 15 in a butcher shop in Woodville. After working six years for the previous owner of Wild Game, Jordan took over the business and took great pride in crafting his award-winning products.
“It blows me away to be the supreme winner of the bacon and ham awards. It’s the first time I have entered, and I never thought I would win both,” said Jordan.
“My secret is just keeping it real, creating old school bacon and ham, using good quality New Zealand pork, keeping it simple and doing it well.”
It’s a local success story with the pork supplied by Dean Nikora of Crackling Good Farm, also in Hawkes Bay.
Nikora, who was in attendance at the event, was delighted to have played a part in Jordan’s success, adding that supplying someone like Wild Game was critical to Crackling Good Farm because it helps the business to grow in terms of offering a specialised product, caring for the animal well and being able to present it to Jordan in the way that he needs it. This allows him to create a superior product.
Judging took place over three days, with a team of butchers and culinary experts inspecting and sampling our country’s finest bacon and ham products, all produced from 100 percent.
New Zealand born and raised New Zealand pork. Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded in each of the seven bacon categories and the two ham categories. From there, all gold medal winners were re-judged against each other to find New Zealand’s supreme bacon and ham.
Judge and food writer Ginny Grant said seeing such a high standard of entries this year was beautiful.
“The judging panel were looking for great flavour, good salt levels, subtle smokiness and a nice even fat distribution. It’s important to get those attributes right to allow the flavour of the pork to shine through,” said Grant.
She continued that the Supreme Bacon winner was a great piece of bacon with a lovely balance of flavour. Smoke didn’t dominate, and most importantly, it tasted of pork.
A less traditional ham took out the supreme award, and judges said it was pretty unique but refreshing to see a pressed shoulder ham win a national award.
“The winning ham was a beautiful piece of meat. It looked and tasted amazing with a lovely texture.”
Aside from the traditional ways of cooking, Ginny’s top tip was to use bacon and ham as flavouring ingredients in the base of soups or pasta sauces to add depth and richness to various dishes.
“I like to use bacon or ham at the beginning of a dish to get all the flavour of the fat out into the final dish, as we know fat is flavour.”
Whichever way New Zealanders choose to serve bacon and ham, they can check out where all the medal winners are located here.
For more information on Wild Game, please click here.
