A butcher who hid his secret sausage recipe in a bolted floor for the last forty years has a reason to celebrate after years of keeping his recipe under special wraps.
Mike Kennedy, a long time butcher from Flintshire, protected his valuable recipe over many decades after years of tinkering with the right ingredients in order to produce the best pork sausages.
Now after weighing his ingredients meticulously for more than forty years, Mike can now proudly call his sausages the best in Britain after being given the prestigious award, NorthWalesLive reported.
The veteran butcher has being trying to win the accolade all others British butchers covet most.
But the Champion of Champions (CoC) sausage award has always just eluded him - until now.
As he neared retirement, Mike thought he’d give the competition one last go.
He qualified for the 2022 CoC final after winning the Traditional Pork Sausage title at the English Winter Fair in Stafford last November.
By 2019, after years of tinkering with his recipe, Mike felt he had finally perfected his pork sausages.
But the Covid pandemic meant a long wait before he could unleash them on the competition circuit.
However, from the reaction of his customers, he knew he had created a very special banger.
A day before his 66th birthday, he was in the NEC, Birmingham, to see five judges give his sausages the seal of approval.
After lifting the outsized CoC trophy, he was overwhelmed, he said: “For butchers, this is like winning Olympic gold.
"Many dream of winning the trophy but very few ever do.
“I’d already decided this was to be my last ever competition.
"Old age creeps up you, then suddenly it’s racing towards you. I’ve been working seven days-a-week for the past six months and it was time to slow down.
"But what a way to finish!”
Fortunately, for Mike and his wife Margaret, there have not been any attempts to steal Mike's now award-winning recipe.
But many butchers over the years have come into his shop and discretely asked what special ingredients are used in his sausages.
Mike chuckled: “Butchers come into the shop and try to pick my brains. I know what they’re up to!
"Now that retirement beckons, they say to me, 'come on, tell us the secret'. I’ve never been in such high demand.”
His butchery business was founded by his dad Fred and celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and in that time has survived supermarket competition and thrived in the pandemic.
Mike said: “It was like Christmas every day. With the supermarkets less busy, people were coming to us for their meat.
"They discovered it was much better quality and some products were cheaper.
"Some shoppers went back to their supermarkets, but many stayed with us.”
Mike has also faced down the increasing popularity of veganism, he hushed: “Don’t say that word. In here, it’s a swear word.”
