A passion project that started in the corner of his shed – and that snowballed – Tim Wilson, the founder of Ginger Pig has always had a love for all things arable and rare breeds, and so, taught himself butchery, from bacon to sausage making (which are still customer favourites today).
One thing led to another and soon neighbours were queuing for his produce, and after supplying the people of Nottinghamshire for a couple of years, he packed his small white Escort van full of bacon and hit a food fair in Borough Market. Met with success (in fact, it was a sell-out), this marked the beginning of Ginger Pig.
Tim Wilson talks to The Knife about the charm of rare breeds and his treasured suppliers, his infamous sausage rolls, and the impending bakery that’s set to open in Bermondsey.
Where did your love for farming begin, and tell us about your background?
I grew up on the Nottinghamshire/Yorkshire borders, our neighbour was a farmer – John Pepper – who ran an 80-acre mixed farm, arable and pigs. The farm was one field away from our cottage and the whole concept of growing things intrigued me (as did bright red tractors). At the weekends and on school holidays, I would go across and – well, I thought I was helping, but perhaps not – spent time riding about on trailers and feeding pigs, probably from the age of 8 to 16.
My grandfather owned a proper old-fashioned grocer’s shop in Thorne, and had an interest in a traditional pork butcher, again in Thorne. Although all his brothers went into various aspects of food (a potato merchant, and grocers) my father was an antique dealer, always on the lookout for the rare and unusual.
Where did your passion for sustaining rare breeds come from?
I think my passion for rare breeds came from a mixture of having spent a lot of time with pigs, and my father’s influence for hunting out the unusual. It is certainly true that I loved farming, but I could not bear to see the pigs I had looked after disappearing on the back of a lorry to the market, so in my late teens I decided if I was ever fortunate enough to buy or rent a farm, it would be arable – again, lots of tractors. A book that influenced me greatly was a book by John and Sally Seymour, The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, which I read continually from cover to cover. In that book, old-fashioned breeds were written about – a small farm is well serviced by these native animals: pigs which would live on surplus roots and vegetables, which could then be converted into bacon and hams to provide food through the winter; the old breeds of chickens (of which there are numerous) seemed another good way of feeding oneself. A cross between a Rhode Island Red and the Light Sussex breed are what is called “autosexed” – the hens which will provide eggs are red, whilst the cockerels, which would be fattened for the table, are white. It all seemed to make a tremendous amount of sense.
How and when did London come into play?
I had a little farm in a hamlet in North Nottinghamshire called Harwell, where with the aid of Mr Seymour’s book, I taught myself a little bit of butchery, including bacon and sausage making. Bit by bit people knocked on the door and asked if I sold my bacon and sausages, and so from a little corner of a shed I started, totally by accident, the Ginger Pig. After a couple of years, the queue for the things I was making was massive. It would not be unusual for someone to have to wait two or three hours to be served – but there was only me and I am a very slow butcher. Around this time a food writer called Henrietta Green had the idea of a “food lovers fair” in Borough Market to be held over the August Bank Holiday. A couple of friends took a small white Escort van full of bacon and sausages, all packed in polystyrene boxes, which found a very appreciative audience; three days’ supply of sausages were sold out by 2pm on the Friday.
How did you find your niche?
I don’t think I ever found a niche – I loved rearing animals, the feeding, the husbandry, all interested me. But it had to be done very well, and with humour. I could recount many tales of pigs and cattle getting the upper hand. Having reared the animals, I was never going to send them off to market – an abattoir – and I would take them there as I felt very responsible for them. Having got the carcasses back from the abattoir, I wanted to convert them into cuts of meat: bacon, sausages, pies, whatever it was; but again, I did not want to waste any part of the animal as this seemed disrespectful.
Where was your first butchers and how did it evolve?
The first Ginger Pig in London was Borough Market – after Henrietta Green’s Food Lovers Fair, Randolph Hodgson from Neal’s Yard Dairies, Monica from Brindisa and a chap called Peter Gott from the Lake District had the idea of repeating the food lovers fair once a month; it was the third Saturday in each month. So, Borough Market started, I was asked to join on day one, and that was that. Shortly after, we decided that the market should take place every Saturday, and then it came to be a Friday and Saturday, and by then I was a London butcher.
Tell us about some of your standout suppliers, and how you go about sourcing them?
When I first started the Ginger Pig, there was a local government initiative called “Middle England Fine Foods”, which endeavoured to bring local food producers together. At the very first meeting, I met a fabulous family who farmed on the Belvoir Estate, and whilst arable was their main enterprise, they also reared turkeys and geese for Christmas. I think the first year I bought 30 turkeys and eight geese, and I was their biggest customer. Twenty plus years later, the Botterills still produce our turkeys and geese (now around 2,000 turkeys and 1,000 geese), and in addition, proper ducks and chickens, reared outdoors with skill and kindness. My breeding herd of Longhorn Cattle were dispersed to like-minded farmers, many of whom laughed at my idea when I started but then realised that there was a good market for well-finished cattle, and when the time came for slaughter, there was a ready-made customer in the Ginger Pig.
What are the pillars of the company?
There are lots of pillars, which is why I think the Ginger Pig attracts such a diverse range of customers. We tick the box for those customers who put animal welfare first – all the farmers who rear for us are family farms, some very, very small but all known to me and do an excellent job. I do have a few customers who for whatever reason are vegetarian, but still come along to buy meat for their partners or family. A second pillar is flavour – good old-fashioned English breeds do have a superior taste. English beef is the best in the world, and the Ginger Pig has won a couple of accolades (one even from the French). There is no point in spending time and effort producing something which lacks flavour. A third pillar is my desire to do everything as well as it is possible to do, and fortunately, over the years I have built up a superb team of very skilled butchers, bakers, and sausage makers, all of whom have the same ethos; if they are going to do it, they may as well do it well.
What is Ginger Pig famous for? Which are the standout products and customer favourites?
I suppose the single item which we are known for now is our sausage rolls – it used to be sausages, which I took great pains to get right 20 years ago – and this with a little help from Jane Grigson’s book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cooking. After making the sausages, a really good chef, Paul Hughes, started to wrap them in pastry, and so now we make around 5,000 sausage rolls a week – all by hand (including the puff pastry), and I have to say that they must be the customers’ favourites as we get many excellent reviews regarding them.
Do you have any new projects in the pipeline?
I love starting projects, (although many will say I leave them to others to finish), so now we are building a new bakery alongside our existing two railway arches in Bermondsey, to cope with the increased number of sausage rolls. I want to revisit our pies and go back to basics with those. After the great chef Paul Hughes, another wonderful character, “Grimsby”, joined the business as a chef 17 years ago. After going across to Norfolk and opening his own bakery, he has returned to the fold and is coming up with some new and exciting (well, they are actually very traditional but still exciting) ideas, and I suppose finally although everybody says the future is online, I would like to open another bricks and mortar butchers shop.