British Sausage Week - Roasted Pork Sausage & Autumn Veg Bake - with Pork Sausages from J Phillips of Theydon Bois, Essex

It's British Sausage Week 2012, and every day we're trying out one of Al Murray's official BSW recipes, using some fabulous sausages specially chosen for the job.  We’ve reached Wednesday and we're cooking Pork Sausages from J Phillips the butcher in Theydon Bois, Essex in Al's Autumn Veg Bake dish.

This is how the Rate My Sausage version looked.

And here’s how it “should” be done....(photo and recipe with kind permission of BPEX)....

Ingredients:

• 450g (1lb) Traditional pork sausages
• 3 Cloves garlic, squashed
• ½ Pumpkin, peeled and cut into thin wedges or 3 sweet potatoes or ½ butternut squash, cut into small wedges or cubes
• 2 Large sprigs fresh rosemary
• 30ml (2tbsp) Olive oil
• 450g (1lb) New potatoes, halved
• 2 Large parsnips, peeled and cut into quarters
• 5ml (1tsp) Dried chilli flakes (optional)

Method:

• Preheat oven to Gas 5, 190°C, 375°F.
• Toss together in a large roasting pan sausages, garlic, pumpkin, rosemary, olive oil, new potatoes, parsnips and dried chilli flakes.
• Bake in oven for 40-50 minutes until sausages are golden brown and pumpkin is soft.
• Make Berry Jam: Heat oil in a heavy based pan, add onion and cook slowly until softened and browned. Add remaining ingredients and cook for a further 5 minutes stirring.
• Cover the pan and cook on a reduced heat for approx 10 minutes. Serve hot or cold with the sausage and vegetables.

It’s another simple recipe, mainly because I couldn’t afford the extra ingredients needed for the berry jam, which would need a little more skill.  I also added just a few tiny carrots and some peas to add a little extra variety and colour to the finished product.  This would make a really good recipe to make with your children, as long as you supervise them extremely carefully with the chopping involved.

After an iffy start on Monday the BSW recipe team are now firmly in their stride, and have come up with another winning combination.  Who doesn’t enjoy these kind of autumnal vegetables when they have been roast slow and low in olive oil, coming out of the oven dripping and ever so slightly crispy around the edges....delicious!  Add in some good quality sausages and you’ve got a winning tea time meal that looks quite fancy but is simplicity in itself.  I chose butternut squash but next time I’ll definitely use all of the veg listed as options in the ingredients.  

Yes, it helps when the sausages are good quality....and Phillips Pork sausages really fit the bill.  When we reviewed their Old English bangers earlier in 2012 we found them to be very solid, very porky, and very enjoyable, and the theme continues.  We arrived at J Phillips’ shop completely by (happy) accident, as a result of some Olympics-related jiggery-pokery, it was an lovely side note to a fantastic Autumn day:  Phillps_Old_English_Review

These sausages are very meaty, big, boisterous and bolshy bangers which tick the right boxes if you’re not a namby-pamby vege-mentalist.  Brilliant pork meat is the overwhelming component of what mister Phillips deprecatingly calls his “Plain Pork” sausages, but Oh! that so many other butchers’ plain sausages were as well-made as these.  The filling is compact yet distinct enough to be well on the right side of the fence, you can really see what’s in them.  This butcher really knows what he’s doing with the sausage machine!  These bangers are the ideal addition to this particular autumnal, hearty recipe, the salty, savoury pork just sets off the sweet parsnips and carrots to a tee.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 86g

Average weight cooked - 74g

Shrinkage - 13%

Really good stats for the Essex contender – we’re really being treated to sausages that don’t disappear in the pan this week....

Value For Money:

£2.41 for four sausages, weighing 342g - this works out as a price of £7.05 per kg, or 60p per snorker.  Very good sausages, very good value for money.  Bit far for us to go to get some more, sadly.

Through A Child’s Eyes (combined with) The Imaginatively Titled Next Day Cold Sausage Test:

“Sam!” I yelled, to the Junior Sidekick, who was sitting on the toilet reading Match Of The Day magazine.  “There’s a cold sausage for you to try, in the fridge!  It’s in a mug....”

Flush, running water, running footsteps, fridge door sound effect, and then he appeared into the living room with an already decapitated banger in hand and an expression of tastebud bliss on his clock.  He bloody loved the cold Phillips sausage.  As he ate his way through it the bites became smaller and smaller as he tried to make it last as long as possible, until eventually it was all gone and he asked “Got any more?”

So I think it’s safe to say that the TACE(cw)TITNDCST was a massive success.

Rate My Sausage star verdict (out of five):

Recipe    * * * *

Sausages     * * * *

J Phillips - Theydon Bois - Old English Sausage

Have you ever heard of a place called Theydon Bois (rhymes with “choice”)?  No, neither had Junior Sidekick and I until very recently.  It’s a village in Essex, just south of Epping, and it’s where we found ourselves parking to catch a train into the Olympic Games.  Our cunning plan had been to drive to Epping, park, and ride, but we hadn’t imagined that so many others would have the same idea, resulting in the large car park being full by quarter to eight, doh!  I’d made a Plan B, natch, which involved driving to each station successively closer to London, and we got lucky at the very next stop, Theydon Bois.  We parked on the edge of the enormous village green and had a thoroughly fabulous day at the Olympic park.

It was a happy accident that when we returned after the athletics we walked right past J Phillips the butcher, and just had to try their sausages – once again Rate My Sausage puts itself through tough times on behalf of its readers...we bought some of their regular Pork Sausages but first under the microscope and into the frying pan are J Phillips’ Old English Sausages.....

Meat Content:

I didn’t note the percentage dammit - once again it’s an EPIC FAIL!  Sorry.  But don’t worry, there’s an abundance of porkiness going on.  First impression was “OMG that is niiiiice!”, immediately followed by the notion that my cutlery may not be manly enough to deal with these chunky, loggy, meaty monsters.  Do I have a chainsaw lurking in the toolbox?  Of course I don’t, and that was somewhat an exaggeration, but if you’re looking for a muscular accompaniment for your mash then these would be perfect.

Flavour:

Woody, slightly spicy, super herby, all subtly mixed together resulting in a deliciously more-ish, very hearty sausage.  Seasoned just right, there is a battery of herbs taking turns to tickle your taste buds, sagey for sure, backed up with (I think) thyme, rosemary and....not 100% confident but I’ll go for marjoram?  If these sausages were a nineties garage group they’d be So Solid – and it takes Twenty One Seconds To Chew.

Texture:

Very, very solid, splendidly so.  Uncompromisingly dense and firm, the butcher seems to have squeezed more fantastic filling inside the snappy skins than seems possible.  You can see in the uncooked photo that they are packed with good-size chunks of ingredient, and in the sliced picture the variety and nicely random distribution of those ingredients.  All kept succulent by the melted fat.  Such a good texture to these sausages, and we like them, a lot.

Shrinkage: 

Average weight uncooked - 83g

Average weight cooked - 58g

Shrinkage - 31%

A bit disappointing, but this is the only negative aspect of an otherwise great banger.  It’s just this stat that has stopped them from barging into this year’s top four.

Value For Money:

£3.13 for five sausages, weighing 417g - this works out as a price of £7.48 per kg, or 63p per snorker.  That’s not cheap, but these have the feel of good quality.  Having pondered this one long and hard, we rate these sausages as Very Good value for money.  Good work dudes!

The Bisto Factor:

Oh Cruel Goddess of Frying Sausages, why do you torture me thus?  Phillips’ Old English sausages had my mouth watering long before they saw the plate.  The aroma matched the flavour – herby, meaty, delicious.

And Finally, Esther:

I doubt that Junior Sidekick and I will ever visit Theydon Bois again, but it was lovely to reach into a new area to try the local hand-crafted sausages.  Mr Phillips can be rightly proud of his Old English bangers, and the village inhabitants can consider themselves very fortunate to have brilliant sausages available on their doorsteps.  And it was all because of the Olympics....cosmic karma.