The founders of Debbie & Andrew’s sausages are preparing to launch a premium French-manufactured ‘boudin noir’ (black pudding) under their Heck brand, following positive feedback from supermarkets.

Having returned from the Normandy Festival du Boudin this month, where company co-founder Debbie Keeble entered her homemade black pudding, the couple said that after two years of producing their own version, they realised it couldn’t compete with the quality of the French equivalent.

“French black pudding doesn’t have any rusk, pearl barley or oats in it, so it’s much softer than English equivalents and it comes in a natural sausage casing,” said Debbie Keeble. “Also because everything is fresh and the onions are cooked in fat and mixed into fresh blood it carries the flavour much better so it’s much richer and a completely different taste to English black pudding.”

The company’s boudin noir is created by a producer in Normandy who shares the same values as Heck, added Keeble. “At the factory in France they use fresh onions that come in daily and are grown by dedicated growers for the factory. And the blood comes in fresh every day from a local abattoir.”

Heck hasn’t put a timeline on the UK launch of the boudin noir, but Keeble said samples sent to a number of supermarket buyers had received a “very good reception”.

The company also confirmed this month that Tesco is listing three of the Heck sausage variants launched late last year in 500 stores nationwide from April.

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