Wild and Game launches ready meals range

04-Oct-2018 - Last updated on 09-Nov-2018 at 10:53 GMT

Wild and Game has launched a range of game-based ready meals

UK specialist and not-for-profit business Wild and Game has launched a range of ready meals using meat from game.

The company said it wanted to turn the UK into a nation of game-eaters.

The new high-quality ready meals focus on familiar favourite dishes and substitute game for more widely used meats, such as beef and chicken.

The ready meals include grouse with a mushroom and peppercorn sauce; pheasant breasts with a pancetta, mushroom and cider sauce; pheasant breasts Florentine; and pheasant tikka masala. The company also supplies a range of pies, pasties, sausages, pâtés and packed game for home cooking.

Referring to the product development process, Wild and Game’s co-founder Steven Frampton told Food Manufacture: “It depends what the product is – with our pies and pasties we have been looking at taking well-known recipes like steak and ale or steak and peppercorn and devising versions made with game. We are working to develop a base range of products and over time we will try different recipes and add the ones that are successful.

'Different recipes'

“With the ready meals and the pies we went to companies that already make similar products and worked with them to create game versions – but as time goes on we will be looking to do some slightly different recipes: once people know the brand and have tried the base products I think we can take a bit more of a risk.

“We work with a developments chefs to create the products, usually the development chefs of the companies we buy the products from – they work on it then we taste and refine it – for example, with the ready meals we started with ten then whittled it down to the ones that worked best and were the most cost effective to produce.”

Frampton said the company outsourced manufacturing to specialists. Packed game products came from four main game dealers, he added. “We buy direct from the dealers and supply our manufacturers with the meat.”

'Supplied frozen'

“Our products are supplied frozen, so will be available all year round, not just in the game season,” said Frampton, who co-founded Wild and Game with Michael Cannon.

“We would love to see game such as pheasant eventually becoming a common sight in UK supermarkets.”

Wild and Game’s products are available online, with the company also supplying pubs, restaurants, small shops and the general public.

In September, game supplier Ben Rigby Game completed an extension project to double the size of its venison processing facility.