Highett butcher Piero’s Meat Merchant crowned Aussie Sausage King with $25 a kg wagyu chorizo
Forget fat and fillers, these snags are fit for royalty.
Inner South
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A Highett butcher has won his third national title after a sizzling showdown against thousands of contenders.
Piero Mastromanno recently took out the open category in the Australian Meat Industry Council awards for the third time in five years.
His wagyu chorizo sausages took the honours at the industry’s night of nights in WA.
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The second generation butcher also took second place in the poultry category with his Thai chicken sausages.
Mastromanno said “love” and “quality ingredients” were his secrets to success.
“We also use natural skins, which makes a huge difference to texture and taste,” he said.
Mastromanno won his first crown in 2014 after seven years of trying.
“That first win was for my spicy pork, fennel and chilli sausage,” he said.
“It was really special to win with that recipe. It was actually given to me by a customer. He was a retired butcher, an Italian man, who told me he’d given me his secret recipe if I made him 5kg of sausages.”
That particular sausage is still a bestseller at his Railway Pde business with customers coming from as far away as Ballarat.
“They say my Italian sausages are the best and well worth the trip,” Mastromanno said.
Proving that first win wasn’t a fluke Mastromanno won another crown in 2017 for his wagyu chorizo.
He said the days of independent butchers stuffing their sausages with fat, filler and offcuts were long gone.
“The sausage is now like a gourmet cut of meat,” he said.
Sales back up his claim with the Australian Meat Industry Council revealing Aussies buy an average of 94kg of sausages every year, at a cost of about $600 million Australia-wide.
You can try the winning snags at a sausage sizzle on Saturdays at Piero’s Meat Merchant, 16 Railway Pde, Highett.
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