GUBBEEN

This well-established Cork company makes cheese as well as charcuterie on its farm in Schull, with salami, chorizo and other meat products produced from pigs from the newly set up “piggy co-op” .

“I grew up on the farm,” says Fingal Ferguson from Gubbeen. “I’m the fifth generation. My parents started out making cheese, which was successful. We built a smoker for the cheese and then started playing around with curing bacon. My mother is obsessed with food. She had lived in Spain, so I had taken lots of trips there, where I saw the matanza (traditional rural pig-killing) and tasted all those wonderful chorizos and jamon.”

Fingal says he started making chorizo “as a hobby” for his family and friends.

“The cheese brought the attention to what I was doing and the enthusiasm for it was infectious. We started out 18 years ago, selling at farmers’ markets in Bantry and Skibbereen. Several years later, we decided to build proper premises, so we built an area with hygiene lobbies and blast chillers. Two years ago we built a new smokehouse. It’s a dream building for what we do. With a good layout and design, hot and cold smokers. For the first time we have cold rooms that aren’t breaking,” says Fingal.

There are now 25 people working at Gubbeen farmhouse products; eight of them are in the smokehouse.

“We have set high standards for ourselves, making things hard and giving us more work, but we are fuelled by the passion of the people we work with and the feedback from customers, which drives us on.”

Crucial to the whole operation are good pigs. And this is where the “piggy co-op” comes in.

“We want to take on more outdoor-reared and rare-breed pigs,” says Fingal. “We have found people who have gone above and beyond for us. The piggy co-op gives us a great exposed traceability that customers appreciate and the farmers are guaranteed secure payment. We are just trying to farm the best pigs we can.”

It’s a seven days a week operation. Eighteen pigs are taken from the co-op each week. On Monday they are butchered, on Tuesday they are cured, Wednesday is for making sausages and semi-curing, on Thursday they are sliced, Friday is for salamis and they sell at markets on Saturday and Sunday.

It’s a packed timetable, but Fingal says it is worth it.

“Charcuterie is a fermented product. It is a lifetime challenge. It obsesses you and you connect with it. There’s a uniqueness to it. It is a labour of love.”

www.gubbeen.com

CORNDALE FARM

Two years ago, Alastair Crown became the first person to hand-make chorizo sausage in Northern Ireland. His farm is 20 minutes’ drive from Derry City and it is where he rears his rare-breed, free-range pigs.

“I got into the rare-breed pigs in 2012 because I wanted to produce our own free-range pork,” says Alastair.

He decided on the smoky, garlicky chorizo as a diversification project, using his own meat.

“I was fond of the product and at that stage charcuterie was not widely known,” he continues. “I taught myself how to do it. I had no formal training. I just used videos and books. It took a while to come up with the right recipe. I added in some extra herbs to make it a little bit different, but I always make sure to use the best de la Vera paprika from Spain.”

Alastair also spent a day with a woman in England who does charcuterie. She then came over for a day to Corndale, in a consultancy role. Once the recipe was fine-tuned, Alastair worked with North West College to scale up production, using an Invest NI innovation voucher.

Hotels and restaurants were soon eager to try the chorizo, and demand became so great they had to move into a new production facility outside Limavady.

“That has enabled us to double production in a few months. It has expanded to include various chorizo blends, including picante (spicy) and chilli. I dabbled with making cooking chorizo for a while, but I decided to concentrate on the cured products.”

Corndale now also makes fennel salami and garlic and black pepper salami.

“They are a good follow-on product,” says Alastair. “We trialled them for a few months and they were well-received. The fennel is selling out to chefs, so we have brought out salami retail packs in the past few weeks as well. We had already been selling the chorizo retail packs in delis across Northern Ireland for some time. They are in Arcadia, Belfast, Indie Fude in Comber, Warke’s Deli in Portstewart and Quails in Banbridge.”

The company delivers direct to four- and five-star hotels, delis and restaurants across Ulster, and its e-commerce website is almost ready to go. Future plans include whole-muscle products, such as pancetta and bresaola.

“We are also working on a venison salami with Baronscourt Estate in Fermanagh. It’s busy,” laughs Alastair.

www.corndalefarm.com

ISPINI

Ispini is the Irish word for sausages, but there are more than strings of sausages to Jonny Cuddy’s bow.

He makes artisan salami and charcuterie on his farm in Dungannon, Co Tyrone. His family has always farmed pigs and Jonny says he had been looking for a product where value could be added to the meat. The lightbulb idea came from his wife, when three years ago she bought him a book about pork and how to cure it. Jonny decided he would have a go at making his own charcuterie and this decision coincided with a food business event on that very subject at Loughry College, near Cookstown, in his home county.

“I was very excited after that event. I had the idea of salami, but I had no idea how to make it, so I used a nine-month innovation voucher at Loughry to learn the different processes, and also to learn how to make safe food product.”

His first salamis were a classic Italian fennel flavour and a typical French garlic and black pepper. After mastering how to make them and getting a positive market response, Jonny then applied for an Invest NI innovation voucher to help establish the business, and Ispini Charcuterie was born.

He has since qualified in charcuterie production from the prestigious School of Artisan Food in Nottingham.

“That was an expensive course and a big investment, but it was well worth it. I rent a production unit near the farm and I work with my sister, Janice, on our range, which has now expanded to include salami, chorizo, two copas (air-dried pork neck) in paprika, chilli, mace and all-spice flavours, bresaola and alomo (air-dried pork loin) flavoured with blackstrap molasses, stout and rum.”

Jonny says he is going to stick to air-dried salamis because they are selling well across Ireland and GB.

“We are getting into more restaurants and delis every week,” he says.

His latest product will be a blood, chocolate and chilli salami. He is also moving into farming different breed pigs, specifically for charcuterie, and using pigs from local smallholders, such as Tamworth and Mangalitsa.

www.ispinicharcuterie.com

CONNEMARA AIR DRIED MEATS

McGeough’s Butchers in Oughterard, Co Galway, has been a village stalwart for 45 years. Son, James, branched out into air-drying meat 12 to 14 years ago.

“I did a master’s in Germany because the best training in the world for butchery is in Germany and Switzerland. In Ireland there are no degrees in butchery and I wanted to learn in the best place. I spent six years there and when I moved back home to work with dad, I built a small EU-grade air-dried meat factory,” he explains.

James says the first meat he air-dried was actually a leg of lamb.

“I had worked with beef, pork and ham in Germany, but I didn’t see any air-dried lamb anywhere, so I decided to give it a go and the result was really good,” he explains. “It won a competition in Holland and it all started from there really.”

James then applied for an EU licence to air-dry meat and was awarded the first in Ireland. These days, the range includes air-dried ham, beef, pork and lamb, smoked sausages and slow-cured salami smoked on beech chips.

The process is time-consuming.

“It takes around nine months from start to finish,” says James. “The meats are cured in local herbs, garlic, juniper berries, mint, lemon, orange and cloves for more than five weeks. The meat is turned each day to make sure there is moisture and flavour in every slice.

“It is then hung in drying rooms for eight months and smoked for up to 12 hours. Butchery is a hard business. You really have to love it to be successful. The air-dried meats took over my whole life. I was the first to make it in Ireland and it took a lot of work to set up. Everybody thinks you just let the meat hang. This is so wrong. You handle this product 68 times before it is ready. It has to grow different moulds of good bacteria and you have to laboratory test every batch before you sell it.”

Help to market and package the product came from Bord Bia. James says that was a huge help, because of the cost of setting up the production site.

James now sells to lots of hotels and restaurants across Ireland, through the distributor La Rousse Foods, as well as a “little bit” to France and Germany. In-store trade is strong, as is the online shop.

His son, Justin, is now also involved in the family business, and future plans include a top-secret collaboration that marries another heritage Irish product with a cut of meat. CL

www.connemarafinefoods.ie