The humble meat pie holds a preeminent place in New Zealand's gastronomical landscape, so it's no surprise that judging the best one baked across the country is taken seriously, damn seriously.
The NZ Bakels Supreme Pie Awards will today judge 2746 different pies across 12 categories, taking into consideration not just the taste, but how appetising its appearance and presentation is to the discerning Kiwi pie consumer.
To give a better insight into what criteria each pie is judged by, TVNZ 1 Breakfast reporter Matty McLean had a chat with NZ Bakels head baker Brent. And apparently no detail is too small to scrutinise.
"For sure, what they have to look at is does it have a nice shine on top, is the lift even, is the bottom nice and smooth, is it baked properly, there may be a bit of an imperfection there. Overall just the general appearance," Brent said as he delicately caressed his own mince and cheese pie.
"Then they would have a look at what the filling looks like inside. You see the line of cheese there, is there enough cheese in there, is the filling high enough in the pie, is the pastry baked properly, is the bottom baked properly.
"Maybe a steak pie you would look to see if there was hunks of steak in there, or bacon and egg, or chicken you'd make sure there's chicken in the chicken pie.
"Obviously in each category it's a little bit different but the general over-appearance is: what looks good people will buy."
Depending on how big the category is for the pie in question, the judges will then narrow down the entires to around 30 to 40 pies to go through to the tasting stage where they will be rejudged again form scratch.
"Then they might come back and go 'we want to taste another five' so by the end of the day they don't want to eat any pies," Brent laughed.
The judges for NZ Bakels Supreme Pie Award arrive at 7am today to fit in a strenuous day of tasting, spanning categories such as mince and cheese, bacon and egg, potato top, steak and cheese.
There are also vegetarian pie categories being judged today.
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