5 Yorkshire Foods you have to try (if you haven't already)

Here at Yorkshire Handmade Pies, we’re very proud of our Yorkshire heritage and the incredible ingredients we have available to us to make our pies. But here are some other famous Yorkshire Foods, some of which you will certainly have heard of but a few you may not have. And if there are any on the list you haven’t yet tried, then trust us, you definitely should!

1. Yorkshire Curd Tart. Tracing its origins back to the mid 17^th century, Yorkshire Curd Tart has somehow largely remained a Yorkshire secret. It’s a delightful sweet tart that was traditionally made at Whitsuntide (the 7^th Sunday after Easter) and was made with leftover curds from the cheesemaking process. Spiced with currants, allspice and baked in a sweet pastry, Yorkshire Curd Tart is the original baked cheesecake. Eat your heart out New York!
2. Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb. The Yorkshire Rhubarb triangle is the world’s second most famous geographical triangle after the Bermuda triangle (ok we accept that is probably unprovable!) and now covers an area of 9 square miles in and around Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Yorkshire Rhubarb was granted PDO (protected destination of origin) in 2010 under the protected food name scheme and now this small area produces almost all the Rhubarb consumed in the whole of Britain. For a brief period, this area produced around 90% of the whole world’s Rhubarb! So why does Yorkshire produce such good Rhubarb? Well, it’s the cold and the rain. And there’s nothing like a good Rhubarb crumble to help us cope with the occasionally dreary weather here in Yorkshire.
3. Wensleydale Cheese. Another Yorkshire Food with protected status, only Wensleydale can lay claim to producing a true Yorkshire Wensleydale. Now made in only one location in this stunning Yorkshire dale, Wensleydale traces its origins back to French Cistercian monks who settled at Jervaulx Abbey, bringing with them a recipe for Sheep’s milk that eventually became Wensleydale cheese. Cheesemaking was traditionally an important way of preserving a protein and energy rich food for the winter with any surplus being able to be sold by the farmer. A strange tradition in Yorkshire pairs Wensleydale cheese with Apple Pie, giving rise to the saying ‘Apple pie without the cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze!).
4. Yorkshire Pudding. Well there’s no way we could skip this one! Yorkshire folk have always been known for thriftiness and allowing nothing to go to waste. The Yorkshire pudding exemplifies these character traits perfectly. Yorkshire Pudding was originally designed to be cooked under roasting meat and to make use of the fat dripping off the meat to cook the batter below it. It was also originally served as a first course, the idea being to fill your guests with the cheaper ingredients so that they might eat less of the expensive meat served afterwards (I’m not sure how well this would have worked given the average Yorkshire appetite). The first Sunday in February is now National Yorkshire Pudding Day although we are firm believers that every Sunday is Yorkshire Pudding Day!
5. Liquorice. Another Yorkshire food originally produced by Monks close to the town of Pontefract. Originally grown as a medicine and later developed into a sweet treat, Liquorice became so popular in the UK that domestic supply was vastly outweighed by demand. Sadly this led to foreign imports becoming the bigger source of supply in the UK and liquorice growing all but died out many years ago. However, one enterprising Yorkshire Farmer called Robert Copley has recently begun growing liquorice again on his farm near its original home of Pontefract. This is the only place in the UK where liquorice is now grown commercially and fans of this Yorkshire delicacy can now buy directly from his farm shop. www.farmercopleys.co.uk