Tuesday 17 December 2013

Sausage Fest 2013

I have a passion about sausages.  My wife calls it an obsession.  
Hey ho!  It’s only an interest.  Honest!

We had some friends visit over at the weekend and she suggested we all had “Sausage and Mash” for a meal.  I thought yes, at last...passion rules OK.

Little did I know this was a psychologically underhanded and heavily disguised ploy to clear out my half a drawer of “sausage stash” from the freezer to make some space before Christmas!

So if you’re going to do sausage and mash, you need the right main ingredient…the sausages! Listed here in alphabetical order only, were my choices for the evenings entertainment:

Churchgate Sausage Co’s - 5 Chilli sausage
Churchgate Sausage Co’s - Boerewors 
Heap’s - Award Winning No 1 sausage 
Heap’s – Smithfield Breakfast sausage
Mountain’s - Boston sausage
Mountain’s – Farmhouse sausage

The preparation was very involved (yes, yes, only logistically) but eventually using two frying pans and a full grill pan, I managed to cook all 38 sausages.  The mashed potatoes, fine green beans and the thick, thick onion gravy, using a method involving extensive saucepan movements on the hob completed the task…

Enough food to feed an army.  Mind you, there were just the 4 of us.  
Tuck in then we did, plenty to go round…

Hmm, I didn’t mention the home made “brussel sprout” soup for starters…it was really good too and well, that’s entirely another story!

Back to the sausages.  My wife had suggested (good idea…wish I’d thought of that first) I make and attach some cocktail stick flags to each of the small piles of sausages just so our guests could decide their preferences.  Just as well really on reflection, because the Churchgate 5 Chilli really has a sting in the tail!


Churchgate 5 Chilli
Heaps Smithfield Breakfast











Churchgate Boerewors
Mountains Boston











Mountains Farmhouse
Heaps Award Winning No1










Over a really nice wine jelly with whole blueberries and double thick cream (oh we do live well here) to finish, we had a discussion with our guests on their thoughts on the sausages presented…

The 5 Chilli it appears were very tasty but far too hot for the girlies!  Mountain’s Farmhouse were succulent but too crumbly and peppery…for the girlies!  Seems like a pattern appearing….   I thought that the Heap’s Award Winning No 1 with it’s mild spice would prove popular with the girlies, but not so either.

Heap’s Smithfield Breakfast with it’s slightly peppery taste and Mountain’s Boston sausage with similar mild “pepperiness” jointly got the most votes…mind you Churchgate’s Boerewors with it’s deep “beefiness” was a close runner-up!

All super sausages with mash and onion gravy we all agreed!


If you want to read individual sausage reviews, have a look at  www.sausagereview.co.uk