Yes indeed, I am officially a sausage maker.  Check these babies out…..!

Thanks to the two pigs  that left Hunters Lodge before Christmas,  I now have lots of half pound bags of our own sausage meat (approx 75/25 meat/fat ratio) in the freezer.  With the meat having been reared here in the garden, I am not only assured good flavour, but excellent quality.

You can read more about my pig to pork story HERE.

When it comes to flavours, there are so many choices and consequently so many decisions…  Breakfast sausages or dinner sausages?  Sweet sausages or spicy sausages?  Such delightful dilemmas..

Well this is what I did…  

I divided a 350g piece of sausage meat into six pieces and added breadcrumbs and a variety of  flavourings to each piece. Then six sausage patties went onto the pan..

1.  Red onion, balsamic & red apple

2.  Goodalls Argentinian spice rub

3. Ground cumin, coriander & poppy seeds

4.  Honey, red apple and mustard seeds

5.  Sage and thyme

6.  Garlic and ketchup

When the patties were cooked,  I gathered the Dillons for a tasting session.  What craic!  We all sat around the table with pens and papers and made notes as the patties were passed around.  All flavours were a success except for No.1 – the balsamic REALLY didn’t work..

The general consensus was that I had used too much breadcrumb in the patties so the amount was reduced for the actual sausage making  the following day.

I decided to kick off my sausage-making journey with  Honey, Red Apple & Mustard Seed sausages (hugely popular at the tasting).  

Ruth had a friend over and Eamonn was coming home for lunch so, earlier in the morning,  I had made fresh soda bread for my guests (aka victims!) to enjoy with my first “proper” sausages.

350g of sausage meat gave me 1lb of sausages – and they were devoured.  

Folks I felt like Nigella, Heston and Hugh FW all rolled into one!  THEY WERE FANTASTIC!

Honey, Red Apple & Mustard Seed Sausages/Patties

What I used     (makes 1lb sausages)

350g sausage meat

125g fine breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons good quality honey

1/2 small red apple, peeled and finely diced

1 tsp mustard seeds

and

22mm casings if you are making sausages

What I did

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl (get in there with your hands and get squidgy!).  Form into patties or make sausages.

Fry the sausages/patties and serve with freshly baked soda bread topped with Kerrygold.

Sublime…

To book Fiona for a talk/demonstration email: fiona.dillon@hotmail.com or phone 085 1057314.

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