Ripon pie firm wins stars in taste awards

The firm, based at Barker Business Park, Melmerby, picked up an elusive 3-star Great Taste Award for their steak and kidney pie, as well as 2-star awards for their steak and black pudding and Yorkshire samosa pies, and 1-star awards for their mushroom and ale and steak and ale pies.

Handmade Pies founder James Sturdy said of the awards: “We are over the moon. So fantastic for the team to be recognised for all their hard work.

“Five awards is a seriously impressive haul – it’s hard to get any awards so five is really good, especially the 3-star one.”

More than 14,000 products were put through the Great Taste Award’s rigorous blind judging process, with only 241 products from around the world being awarded the Great Taste 3-star accolade, which is awarded for ‘extraordinarily tasty food and drink’.

The Great Taste 2-star is given to those products considered ‘above and beyond delicious’ by the judges, with the Great Taste 1-star going to ‘food and drink that delivers fantastic flavour’.

Yorkshire Handmade Pies are made from local ingredients including slow-cooked Heritage breed beef, herb-fed free-range chicken and grass-fed Wagyu beef.

Direct relationships with Yorkshire Dales farmers allow for ‘farm to fork’ eating.

The company says it is hugely passionate about advocating flexitarianism - a semi-vegetarian diet - firmly believing that the consumption of better quality sustainable meat less regularly is better for the planet and the body.

They were, therefore, delighted to have been awarded Great Taste Awards for two of their plant-based vegan pies.

James added: “We’re so proud of our local area and of representing Yorkshire’s finest produce on an international stage.

“Great Taste is the most recognised accolade in the food and drink world.

“For independent producers like Yorkshire Handmade Pies it really means a huge amount to be recognised.”

James Sturdy was inspired by his grandfather, who made pies from a village shop almost a century ago.