Beef Dripping Wins

Dripping in gold – James Whelan Butchers Beef Dripping wins prestigious Golden Fork Award for Ireland & is awarded the Supreme Champion Trophy at the Great Taste Awards.

Seeing the upsurge of interest in heritage foods and traditional ingredients, Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers was inspired to create his own Beef Dripping. With the very best of beef available to him – and with more than a little guidance from his mother – he soon perfected a product that he was proud to share with his customers.

The Beef Dripping is produced in Clonmel by Pat Whelan, a fifth generation butcher, and made from the purest suet from grass fed Irish Angus and Hereford beef, and wrapped simply in white waxed paper. These magical creamy ingots transform roast vegetables, crisp potatoes into delicious roasters and make the most perfectly golden fish and chips. The product stays fresh for up to six months, simply stored in a cool dark place.

Great Taste is the world’s largest and most trusted food and drink awards.  Organised by the Guild of Fine Food, it is judged by over 450 of the most demanding palates belonging to food critics, chefs, cooks, members of the Women’s Institute, producers and a host of food writers and journalists. Great Taste is widely acknowledged as the most respected food accreditation.

The Beef Dripping made the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Top 50 best foods in the UK and Ireland two years in a row and was awarded Great Taste 3 Stars both years, but winning a Golden Fork Award makes James Whelan Butchers Beef Dripping the overall regional winner for Ireland and the honour of the Supreme Champion Trophy makes this year’s Great Taste Awards a remarkable night for the James Whelan Butchers team.

“Our team is very honoured to receive the Golden Fork Award and overjoyed to win the highest accolade from the Guild of Fine Food, the Supreme Champion Trophy. Bringing Beef Dripping back into the market wouldn’t have been as straight forward 20 or even 15 years ago. Now over the last few years with the diet police’s crosshairs firmly on refined sugar and carbohydrates instead of saturated fat, our customers are educated and appreciate this classic flavour enhancer. Fat is an essential part of our diet, protecting organs and aiding the absorption of vitamins, and according to many scientists, we are probably better consuming animal fats like butter and dripping. It’s an ideal time to reassess some of the old-fashioned foods many have dismissed, and it’s great to see Great Taste leading the way with this acknowledgement of just how good our Beef Dripping is.”

Last year the judges said that James Whelan Butchers Beef Dripping was “an absolute showstopper” … …“tremendous, deep beefy flavours”… “blew us all away” and this year the judges had even more to say, describing the Golden Fork for Ireland and Supreme Champion Trophy winner as … ‘Utterly delicious, it really is a game changer’… ‘Fat is back, this is the best I have ever tasted’… ‘Simple can be really good, bring it on!’

“It’s the taste of my childhood,” said Pat Whelan. “Our Beef Dripping is nutrient rich, high in omega-3 acids, clean, pure and carries great flavour, whether for frying a steak, roasting potatoes, or spread onto good bread like lardo.”

The prestigious awards took place at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, London on the 7th September 2015.