Sainsbury's 8 Butcher's Choice Cumberland Sausages: Avoid!

Just a brief review of these sausages. They are half price at Sainsbury's at the moment. They should be avoided.

Grilling the 8 medium sized sausages yielded an unbelievable amount of fat (approx. half a cupful) and the cooked sausages were almost totally tasteless. Not a hint of pork and barely any of pepper. Please avoid!

A Seasonal Treat: Customized Sausage Rolls

This is straying a little bit from the 'sausage and bread' concept but hey, it's the holidays.

I don't know about you but I've found it quite difficult to track down a really nice sausage roll when I'm out and about. Usually the sausagemeat filling is cheap, over-salted and lacking in flavour, and the pastry is too greasy or (even worse) is cold and claggy.

So having spent so much time tracking down great sausages to put in sandwiches, I thought I would experiment and try making my own sausage rolls. I say 'make' but really I'm using all ready-made ingredients and simply assembling them and baking. The results are great, though, and if you have the time this is great way of making a tasty, sausage-based snack. They key is to use a good quality sausage and to serve them warm, fresh from the oven.

Ingredients:

• 1 x pack of good sausages. Choose your favourite but avoid varieties that contain fruit (e.g. apple) or a lot of garlic as these can exude a lot of water or be too overpowering, respectively.
  
• 1 x pack of ready rolled puff pastry (defrosted if frozen).
  
• Jar of tomato relish (or condiment of your choice). I find tomato relish works especially well with the baked pastry.
  
• 1 x egg, beaten.
  

Recipe:

Lay your pastry out on a floured board and cut into long strips about 4 inches wide.


Place the tomato relish (or your own choice of condiment) along the centre of the pastry strip in a narrow line. Be sparing - you don't need a lot.

Seperate your sausages and cut along the casing of each one.



Extract the sausagemeat from the casing and place it on top of the tomato relish or condiment, in the centre of the pastry strip. You will find that most sausages are much to thick for a sausage roll and you will have to pinch the sausagemeat and 'thin it out' until it is roughly half of its original thickness. This means that one sausage link will make a sausage roll that is roughly twice its original length.




Brush beaten egg along one of the inner edges of the pastry strip, and fold the strip over to make a roll, using the beaten egg to seal. Position your rolled pastry so the join is facing down and hidden. Pat the roll gently to seal.

Cut your long roll into bite-sized or longer sections, as you see fit, with a single cut straight down.

Using scissors, make a little V-shaped snip in the top of each sausage roll.



Brush the top and sides of each sausage roll with beaten egg.

Bake at 220 degrees centigrade for roughly 25mins or until the sausagemeat is well cooked and the pasty lightly browned. Take out of the oven and eat whilst warm.



This is really so easy to do and I'm willing to bet they will be the best sausage rolls you've ever tasted!

That's all for 2008. Have a great New Year and see you in 2009 for more Sausage and Bread goodness!

Homemade: German Käsekrainer with Colman's American Mild mustard

Don't worry, I know the 'Best Before' date on the packet says August - these are actually old pictures that I've only just got round to posting!




I bought a packet of Käsekrainer (pork wurst containing pieces of cheese) from the German Deli stall at the fantastic Covent Garden Night Market earlier this year.

'German Deli' isn't a restaurant as I thought but a website where you can order all kinds of German food and have it delivered to you. Check out the site here . As well as the Käsekrainer they sell all kinds of Wurst, German mustards and other sausagey products. Well worth a visit.

I simmered the Käsekrainer for about 5 minutes, which was a little longer than recommended, and served them with baked rolls and a mustard I hadn't tried before, Colman's American Mild.







I mentioned Käsekrainer in an earlier review for Kipferl in Smithfields. Apparently emmental is the cheese usually added to the sausage as it has a higher melting point. After cooking these Käsekrainer, the cheese inside had completely melted so either I cooked them for too long or it was a different kind of cheese inside.

Not that it mattered; the melted cheese turned into a sticky, gooey, savoury sauce that worked beautifully with the pork. Cheese is never an obvious accompaniment to sausage and bread but here it really works. I can see how a Käsekrainer would make a fantastic street snack.

As for the mustard, it had a nice tanginess similar to French's but without the dubious, radioactive colouring. Not quite the German hot dog stand mustard I was after but really nice nonetheless and a good choice if you're making American style hot dogs.

The Black Farmer Premium Pork Sausages

There's been good and bad news recently concerning supermarket sausages.

The bad: Asda has started selling 2p sausages in a bid to attract customers struggling with the 'credit crunch'. These bangers contain, according to the BBC, 34% meat, 34% water and the rest made up of rusk filler and fat. They sound pretty bad but to be honest, I'm sure some of the cafes I've reviewed on this blog use sausages of this standard, if not worse.

The good: Well this is just my observation but there seem to be more and more specialist sausage brands appearing on supermarket shelves. Perhaps a sign that there is a growing interest in good quality sausages?

Here's one brand I spotted recently. The Black Farmer Premium Pork:



These contain a stonking 90% pork and come with the accolade of being voted best pork sausage in Olive magazine (whatever that is).

I grilled them with some cherry tomatoes, sliced them and served them in a fresh baguette with Coleman's mustard.





As you can see, these had a lovely, firm texture. Really packed with meat but not too dry. The casing became crispy and light after grilling whilst the sausage itself was lightly herbed and seemed to have a slight peppery heat to it, like a mild Cumberland.

They went very well with a crunchy baguette would would have worked just as well in a soft bun, I think. Not bad at all.

Support British Pig Farmers

I just wanted to post something about this campaign after seeing an ad for it on the Tube this morning.

Top quality pork is without doubt the vital ingredient of a great British sausage so it's not nice to think that British pig farmers are facing a future so uncertain that they need a campaign like this.

Here's part of the open letter drawn up for the campaign:

"...Feed – mostly wheat – is about half the cost of rearing a pig. But wheat prices have rocketed worldwide: as a result, pig farmers’ businesses – which get no subsidies – are under serious threat.

Due to price pressure from supermarkets, farmers are now being paid around £1.10 per kg for a pig that now costs them £1.44 per kg to produce. For every pig a farmer rears and sells, he is likely to lose over £20.

This can't go on. Today, we're launching our campaign to press the supermarkets to ensure that pig farmers are paid a fair and sustainable price. Continual pressure on the price of pork, bacon and ham will squeeze the life out of pig farming.
We need the supermarkets to pay an extra 34p per kg to help preserve British pig farming.

If this price rise were passed on to shoppers, it would only mean between 7p and 17p on the pack price of typical pork products.

We think it is a small price worth paying and we’re asking British consumers to back us.

Sounds fair to me. Cheap, low quality sausages are depressingly all too common (as some of the reviews on this blog demonstrate) and the situation will only get worse if the supply of meat diminishes or becomes a 'niche market'. 

Why aren't good quality, fresh pork bangers the staple of every British cafe, rather than the revolting, mechanically reclaimed rubbish you so often find? I'd be happy to pay a little extra and I'm sure you would too.

Find out more about the campaign on the official website: http://www.pigsareworthit.co.uk/

Homemade: Sainsburys pork sausages with honey and mustard

If you've seen my other 'homemade' posts, you've probably guessed which supermarket I go to by now. However, I thought these sausages from the Sainsburys Taste the Difference range deserved a mention.

They're generously seasoned with honey and mustard, both of which retain their flavours well - better than most other 'novelty' flavourings.




The honey creates a nice barbecue taste and aroma after grilling and the mustard manages to keep it's mild kick. These are sensible flavourings for cook at home, specialty sausage. They went really well wrapped in a toasted English muffin with a small dollop of tomato ketchup.

Probably the best I've tried from this range.

Health concerns raised over cheap sausages

A new study claims that a common food dye often found in cheap sausages may pose a cancer risk.

Worrying news.

The additive in question is E128. I recommend you avoid any sausage (or indeed any food) containing this E number, which is already banned in some countries.

As some of my reviews have shown, it's a sad fact that cheap (and - we may as well say it - nasty) sausages are all too common in British greasy spoon caffs. Now, not only is there a serious taste warning attached to cheap bangers, but also a serious health warning.

Now more than ever, I think, is the time to highlight good sausages and where they can be eaten. We need to start raising the bar when it comes to quality of sausages served and sold in the UK.

Homemade: Debbie and Andrew's Harrogate Pork

Part 2 of my Debbie and Andrew's review. Had these in the freezer for a while and thought it was about time I tried them out. To go with them: a Sainsburys crusty 'French' baguette.




For a change I cooked these under a proper grill (hence the tin foil). I have to say they browned beautifully and stayed plump and juicy.





They were good. Really flavoursome meat and not too much seasoning. Quite a clean taste, if you know what I mean. The crispy grilled skins worked very well with the crusty exterior and fluffy interior of the bread, I thought. I love the French style merguez and baguette sandwich and this sort of reminded me of those.

I've been pretty impressed with Debbie and Andrew's so far and I hope I can try the whoe range eventually. Recommended.

Homemade: Debbie And Andrew's Sicilian pork

I haven't seen these sausages in my local supermarket but apparently you can get them at Morrisons. I actually found them by chance when I went to the 'Ideal Home' Exhibition in London earlier this year. You can find out more from the company website here http://www.debbieandandrews.co.uk/

The first variety I tried was the Sicilian pork which , as the packet says, is flavoured with basil, garlic, sun-dried tomato and mozzarella. I served the sausages in simple hot dog buns with mustard and ketchup.



They were delicious. Intensely flavourful but well balanced. The mozzarella was hard to make out, to be honest, but the meat and the herbs worked really well. These are top quality sausages - possibly the best I've had at home and they go fantastically well with a hot dog bun (the plainer the bread the better, I think, as the sausage is so full of flavour).

Highly recommended.

Homemade: Sainsburys Pork and Apple 'Taste the Difference' + Warburtons Cheese Rolls

I thought it was time for another homemade effort so I made a trip Sainburys and picked up a different variety from their 'Taste the Difference' sausage range. Maybe influenced by the "Best Sausage Sarnie in Britain" mentioned earlier, I chose Pork and Apple this time, along with some nice looking Warburtons cheesey rolls.




As usual I cooked the sausages in a grill to lose some of the fat. First thing I have to say a LOT of fatty liquid came out of these sausages when I cooked them. It almost filled the small plastic collecting dish.

I don't know if this was pure fat or a mixture of fat and water (perhaps having apple in these sausges gives them a higher water content?) but in any case I was shocked at how much came out. As a result, the sausages were a lot smaller once cooked and nowhere near as plump as they looked in the packet. The skin also charred very easily compared to other sausages. All in all, these are slightly weird sausages.

I split the six sausages between four lightly buttered rolls and added some sliced tomato (yeah I know - I got really carried away there!) and added some HP sauce. Not having had HP sauce at home for a while, tasting it this time really brought home how awful the brown sauce you get in cafes is. The real thing is so potent and aromatic, it really whacks you with flavour and piquancy. God knows what the stuff they serve in cafes is but rarely do you get real HP.



Anyway it was decent enough sandwich. I may have been a bit over-enthusiastic with the HP sauce because that flavour kind of dominated everything. Still, I didn't think much of the sausage. Having apple inside the sausge didn't seem to make much sense because your effectively cooking bits of apple with the meat which doesn't seem to work. Also I think the high water content gave the sausage a slight 'steamed' feel to it.

Not a sausage I'd recommend for sandwiches. The rolls were good but at £1.80 (approx. I can't remember exactly) for four, I would look for a cheaper alternative next time.

Homemade: Sainsbury's Pork and Herbs Taste the Difference

Sometimes, after you've had a few bland, disappointing sausage sandwiches from cafes, you get the urge to do it yourself and make your own. So the other day I grabbed a pack of 'Taste the Difference' Pork and fresh herbs sausages from Sainsbury's and rustled up my own sausage sandwiches.

At home I cook sausages in an electric griddle to lose some of the fat content. I also don't prick the sausages, as you lose flavour if you do and there really isn't much risk of your banger literally going 'bang' unless you buy the really cheap and nasty varieties that contain a lot of water.

The nicely grilled sausages were combined with buttered Hovis white granary bread - nice and light, with not too many grains. Ideally I would have had HP sauce but I didn't have any and had to use Heinz ketchup.






The sausages were great. Really lean and moist, and the herbs were not overpowering. Would happily eat these again although there a number of different varieties to chose from in this range. Think I'll go for the Cumberland next time! The bread was good too but perhaps a bit too fragile for such a substantial sandwich.

Don't you just love Sunday breakfasts? :)

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If you have a favourite hot dog, condiment or want to comment on anything related to sausage and bread I'd love to hear from you. Drop me a line at "steve london 88" (remove the spaces) at hotmail.com