Tell me about yourself…
I have been a butcher for 30 years have had my own shop for 25 years. My parents and brothers are farmers and for me becoming a butcher was the next logical step. I trained in Harrogate and then set up my own shop in Ilkley at the age of 21.
And what is it that makes your butchers shop so special?
We just try to do a good job. I enjoy food, I cook and BBQ a lot myself- we try to do things I like to do and supply quality produce. I think my customers have the same mindset.
It’s a fine art choosing the right beef. I buy the meat locally, we have always done. Beef comes from Birstwith and the pigs come from York. Lambs come firstly from Boston Spa and then as the season progresses we start to source from farms in the Dales. Harewood provide our rare breed Dexter Cattle- a small slow growing breed that is full of flavour. We also get our Hebredean Lambs from there.
We have the National Sausage title- we are the champion of champions, awarded by the Meat Traders Journal. I am also now getting more into the curing of bacon and making salami. I find it interesting as it is technical, theres bit of science behind it.
What is the Yorkshire Sausage campaign about?
I was making Linconshire and Cumberland sausages and thought – why is there not a Yorkshire Sausage? I came up with 6 recipes, all unique variations on a traditional sausage. Some are pork, some beef and one is a mix of the two. I took my inspirations from old butchery books (some dating from before WWII) looking at the traditional flavours and spices from the recipes in there.
There will be tastings across the county and the public can vote for their favourite. Locations include the Great Yorkshire Show and Leeds city centre sometime in the summer. The winner will be announced on Yorkshire Day 1st of August. All of the flavours are close at the moment, there is no clear leader.
What goes into your sausages?
We make our sausages from shoulder and belly pork which have the right fat level. We only use meat from female pigs as they have a better flavour. We use bread or butchers rusk- this is not a sign of impurity, it is traditional for a British sausage and is what gives it the light texture. If you were to make a pure meat sausage it would have a very dense texture akin to a European sausage. We use between 20% and 30% bread in our sausages. The flavours come from herbs and spices that we have blended to our own recipes.
After this chat I got a tour of the preparation rooms and cold stores. I was hoping to see sausages actually being made, but this had been completed the day before and staff were busy packing the sausages in trays to be sold at local Morrisons stores.
In the huge walk in fridges I got to see beef that had been hung for different lengths of time. The hung beef looked quite different- dark, and it had shrunk right down- a sign that the water has come out of the meat. It’s this care and attention in the storage and preparation of the meat that really helps to improve the flavour and texture of the finished products- something that supermarket meat is just not allowed to do in the same way.
In another room bacon was being cured- some floating in huge vats of beer from the Ilkley brewery just a 5 min walk down the road and some was being dry cured in salt mixes.
Overall the back rooms of the butchers was probably not that much different from any other. The difference lies in Lishman’s passion for the job and attitude towards quality of his finished products. I got to take home a few slices of the traditional middle bacon. Cut in thick slices with all the fat and rind still on. It has a bit more fat than the usual supermarket back bacon, but its worth it for the amazing texture and crispy rind- heaven!
Keep an eye out for the Yorkshire Sausage stall at events this summer and make sure you have a taste and place your vote. Once the winner has been chosen David hopes to release the recipe to other butchers in the hope that in the future a Yorkshire sausage will be just as common and well known as its cousins from Lincolnshire and Cumberland.
Lishman’s Black Pudding sausages are AWESOME.