Mud Foods: Proud To Be artisan Made - Part 2
In a 3 part series we share with you the tradition and craft of making our pies and squiches.
Part 2 - Mud’s Sumptuous Fillings
Every one of Christian’s special recipe pie fillings starts by finding the finest ingredients.
As many as possible are locally sourced, like organic steak, pork and lamb from the Goodwood Estate – grass-fed of course.
Vegetables are sourced locally, when in season.
Our traditional recipes use only natural ingredients.
We think pure mud is a great provider of unadulterated taste. Our workwear is embroidered with the words ‘GREAT TASTE STARTS WITH GOOD MUD’.
Why would you use anything artificial to enhance flavour?
Each recipe takes hundreds of hours to perfect before it is approved to be a Mud variety.
We create instructions for our butchers for the exact cut of meat we want and the exact size of each chunk. The same for our vegetables.
The tastings to check the red wine, white wine, port and craft ale in our recipes are always popular!
The selected ingredients are assembled to make enough filling for a batch of 120-150 pies (depending on the recipe).
Then the cooking. Each batch of filling is measured and mixed by hand. Each ingredient is added sequentially.
The other magic ingredient we add is time.
Each recipe has strict instructions on how long it takes to develop the flavour and thicken the sauce. Our small team can tell by the delicious smell of the cooking which batch is being made.
After cooling, the fillings are measured into each pastry case. Our squiches and many of our pie varieties are still filled by hand using a measuring jug.
Naturally, we keep the details of Mud’s recipes close to our chests.
Christian has even had chefs wanting to discover our secrets...cheeky eh?!
Look out for Part 3, Before & After The Oven, coming soon to your email in-box.