Red Lion Pork Sausage (Profits To Armed Forces Charities)

 RED-LION-FOODS  is a different kind of food company – all their post-tax profits are given to various wonderful Armed Forces-focused charities including Help For Heroes, SSAFA Forces Help, the British Legion and  SCOTTYS-LITTLE-SOLDIERS .  I am particularly in support of Scottys, for reasons that I won’t go into, if you have a spare few bob you could do MUCH worse than sending it to their King’s Lynn HQ.

Red Lion Foods are raising this money by selling a range of food products ranging from sauces to cooked meats, confectionery, tea, and of course sausages (which is what I am writing about this week, natch).  Whatever opinion comes across in this review, please go out and buy some Red Lion products as soon as possible, even if you don’t want to use them yourself please give them to your local food bank....

Meat Content:

58% according to the ingredients list, which is not too bad compared to their market rivals.  They actually taste as if there’s meat in them too, not just been driven past the pig farm in the back of a van.  The next day the sausages had seemed to increase in meatiness, not the first time I’ve noticed this phenomenon – how does it happen?

Flavour:

Warm and chunky and homely, equals “not bad at all”!  I was pleasantly surprised (no offence Red Lion) as I had been expecting a generic supermarket banger.  Wrong!  These sausages are never going to rival those from your local neighbourhood butcher, but they’re also not porky abominations, a la Richmonds.

Texture:

Not the best, not the worst, but at this fabulous price you can’t go wrong.  The casings aren’t natural and they’re rather too smooth and uniform for my personal taste – but then again, nearly every single one of the bangers we review falls down for the same reason.  There’s certainly some fightback when you cut them, you certainly can’t just splosh through them with the back of a spoon!  Summary for the texture – could do better.  But....could also do a lot, lot worse.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 51g

Average weight cooked - 43g

Shrinkage - 16%

This is a pretty darned good stat for the Red Lions!  Only six bangers have achieved a better figure so far in 2012.

Value For Money:

£1.00 for eight sausages, weighing 406g - this works out as a price of £2.46 per kg, or 12p per snorker.  This pricing is absolutely unheard of!  OK, I took advantage of a “two for £2” offer, but Red Lion’s sausages would be great Value For Money at twice the price.  And when you think for a second about where ALL the profit will be going – you have no excuse, GO AND BUY SOME NOW!

And Finally, Esther:

Look, these sausages will not win Sausage Of The Year 2012, yet they are at joint-tenth position in this year’s standings so far.  You must still buy lots of them, today, because of the fabulous work the Red Lion Foods are doing.  In a time of greedy banks and their take, take, take, and sod you attitude, how shocking that there’s a company out there working purely for the good of others.  As sausages that you find in the supermarket aisles go, they’re half decent.  Definitely more appealing to the palate of your children I would imagine, but you know that it makes moral sense to go and purchase some as soon as you can.