The British Pie Awards are a national celebration of Pies in all their varieties. Running since 2009 the awards are normally held to coincide with British Pie Week in March. This year they were postponed, like so many other things, due to the pandemic. Last week finally saw the most important date in the pie calendar held, in the home of pies – Melton Mowbray.

For the purpose of the Awards a pie is defined as the following: ‘A Pie is deemed to be a filling wholly encased in pastry and baked’. With pies seeing a huge comeback and growing in popularity among all age groups in recent years, the awards have grown considerably and saw a whopping 813 entries this year from traditional and emerging pie makers all over the country.

The start of our week was spent busily baking entries for the various award categories, including a brand new Turner’s Pie (watch this space for details and availability of our new pie very soon!). With all the entries painstakingly baked and marked with our famous filling indicators they were delivered to Melton Mowbray to be tasted and rated by the 2021 British Pie Awards judging panel.

Wednesday – Judgment day

On Wednesday a collection of nearly 150 judges travelled to St Mary’s Church in Melton Mowbray to set about the
task of sampling and marking over 800 pies across categories ranging from beef and ale to dessert, fish pies to the classic Melton Mowbray pork pie (a dream job some might say!).

This year the competition welcomed an array of exciting creations…lots of inspiration for future Turner’s Pies products. Following 2019’s win by a vegan pie the vegan category this year received the most entries, with 72 offerings.

Friday – Awards Ceremony

It is tradition for the standing Supreme Champion pie to be served at the British Pie Awards ceremony on the final day of the awards week. It was our absolute pleasure to bake our champion Steak and Stilton pies for the guests of the event, which included some of the countries best bakers, pie makers and general food lovers.

The 2021 award winners are announced and while we are unsuccessful in becoming the first-ever three-time Supreme Champion we feel inspired and proud to be part of such a thriving industry.

The awards this year have been fiercely competitive and the innovation across some of the emerging pie categories is inspirational. A big well done to the Winners, there are some great producers across the country. Our bid to make history and become will have to wait another year…but watch this space in the mean time for new products, fillings and other happenings!

Next year the British Pie Awards will move back to it’s usual slot in the calendar – during British Pie Week in the first week of March 2022. Watch this space!