OLD SPOT SAUSAGES INSPIRED BY RIVER COTTAGE

BEST SAUSAGES EVER...

Home reared organic outdoor living rootling and tootling, loved and hugged, Gloucestershire Old Spots, Sandy Oxford Blacks, Duroc and Large Blacks sausages.

Finally we are living our dream inspired by River Cottage 10yrs ago and still are, we have moved from our home garden to a few acres where we can now be almost self sufficient, so far pork. lamb and eggs, next chickens, geese and one day a cow!

See Our Blog Post... 18th Oct 2015...  Self Sufficiency The Start Of The Good Life Raising And Producing All Our Own Food

To celebrate our pigs I wanted to make good old fashioned honest sausages, no preservatives, use fresh herbs and seasoning, maybe some organic rusk or not, and use British casings.  Our first tester batch was terrible, I really was not sure why you needed rusk in your sausage and as I wanted a high meat content sausage I decided to make the first batch without, big mistake!  The sausages were like eating sawdust, dry and grainy.

Tester batch two and three were much better but low on seasoning, finally batch four hit the spot and our three flavours were created.

Traditional Old Spot Sausage 

A classic sausage great all rounder and for breakfast, thanks to all the original River Cottage Lifestyle books, 1kg minced pork shoulder and belly seasoned with 10g sea salt, 5g fresh ground white pepper, 2.5g soft brown, 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, 50-100g organic breadcrumbs and 50ml iced water.

Henley's Down Herb

The classic sausage seasoned as above with 20 fresh sage leaves, 20 chives stems, 6 sprigs of thyme and 6 marjoram stems.

Pork Apple and Cider

Again the classic sausage seasoning with 100g diced soaked apples in cider, and 50ml of apple cider instead of the iced water

There is a debate on the best way to cook a sausage, I prefer to slowly bake them in the oven, turning only once 3/4 of the way through, if I was not so impatience I would cook my sausages in a frying pan long and slow, allowing them to gently caramelise keeping all their gorgeous flavours inside.  But I find I get the same result from the roasting pan in the oven, once cooked I deglaze the pan with some water, wine or cider and add the caramelised stock to my onion gravy for further depth of flavour, I love to serve my sausages with 30% buttery mashed potatoes.

Making sausages is a lot easier than you think, you can start with your sausage casings, a funnel, handle of wooden spoon to use as a prodder, fill the funnel with your sausage meat and thread the casings on the spout of the funnel, using the end of the wooden spoon prod the sausage meat down the funnel into the casings, this is how I started and now I have a hand turning sausage stuffer that allows me to make 20 meters of sausages at a time.

 

I love old fashioned butchers and think all our food should come wrapped in paper and not plastic, just like my childhood memories, so we have 100% lambs wool recyclable paper wrapping along with our own stamps and some jute string for presentation in tying up the sausages.

Hug your pig...