WHETHER you love it or hate it, adding Marmite to cheddar cheese and sausage meat turned out to be a winning combination for Peter Treble Butchers in Westbourne.

The family-run business in Poole Road won first prize for its speciality bangers at Dorset’s Melplash Agricultural Show in Bridport this summer and is now through to a national final in London on Monday, November 4 to coincide with National Sausage Week.

Robert Watts who runs the popular Bournemouth butchers said they were hoping to win the Champion of Champions 2019 title.

He said: “It’s my son Jacob Watts who likes to experiment with different flavours. Our strawberry and Prosecco sausage was really popular over the summer.

“But it’s the Marmite and cheese variety that our customers really enjoy.

“Even people who say they don’t usually like Marmite seem to love these. We’re selling about 150 kilos of sausages every week.”

The secret is to choose good quality, locally sourced ingredients, according to Robert.

“We use an extra mature Cheddar but I don’t want to give too many of our secrets away.

“Making sausages is the fun bit – it’s trying to cook them to perfection that’s the tricky part as they all have to be uniform in size and shape with no splitting. We end up cooking around 100 sausages to get it just right!”

Peter Treble Butchers is now through to the national Champion of Champions final in London which recognises and rewards the very best sausage makers in the country.

The competition is judged by an independent panel of experts from the industry, who will decide which sausage has the best taste, texture, filling size and appearance.

* Now in its 19th year, National Sausage Week which runs between October 31 – November 6, aims to celebrate the Great British Banger.