U.K. Butcher Owes Life To Black Pudding After Getting Trapped In Freezer

Black pudding Dreamstime
Elizabeth Licata|

A U.K. butcher owes his life to a very large sausage after he accidentally got locked in his own walk-in freezer this week.

According to The BBC, 70-year-old butcher Christopher McCabe was getting something out of the walk-in freezer at his shop in Totnes, Devon, when the wind blew the door shut. Temperatures in the freezer were four below zero, and at first McCabe thought he'd be fine, because the freezer has an emergency-release safety button inside, to prevent situations exactly like this one. Unfortunately, when he looked down he realized the release button was frozen solid.

Temperatures as low as the freezer's are capable of killing a person in about an hour, and nobody could hear McCabe banging. So McCabe looked around for something to use to smash the release button, and he found the best tool for the job: a black pudding from the Queen's butcher, HM Sheridan of Ballater, Aberdeenshire.

The enormous blood sausage was long, heavy, and frozen solid. It weighed 3.3 pounds, and McCabe was able to use it "like a battering ram"

"It was the right shape," he told the BBC. "I used it like the police use battering rams to break door locks in. It was solid, pointed, and I could get plenty of weight behind it."

McCabe says the black pudding absolutely saved his life, and he was really lucky it was there. It was the last black pudding in his freezer, because black pudding is very popular at his shop, even if it's one of the 10 British foods Americans just don't understand.

Recommended