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Tuesday, 5 November 2013

It's British Sausage Week. What is your favourite sausage?

The Aussies may have their Kanga Bangers, Germany may be the home to over 1500 varieties of sausages and a sausage academy at Neumarkt, but the statistics show that 90% of British households buy British sausages and enjoy them for breakfast, lunch, supper and for snacks. Whose can resist a sausage sarnie, a delicious warming sausage casserole, sausage and mash with onion gravy? Sausages are just so flexible and we Brits have been enjoying them since the Romans first developed the art of stuffing coarsely minced pork or pork mixed with other meats, fat and seasonings into skins or casings. Emperor Constantine the Great attempted to ban them because he thought that the eating of them at the wild feast of Lupercalia was ruining public morals! Thankfully he failed.



Traditionally, country pork sausages are the favourite closely followed by beef. For those shoppers who shopped in traditional butchers and the chain butcher shops like JH Dewhurst throughout the UK in the 1970s and even the 1980s they may well have a fond memory of the very popular tomato sausages.



Sausage facts:

  • Sausages should be cooked slowly over a medium heat and definitely NOT pricked with a fork. If you prick them they are more likely to burst and you will lose those flavoursome juices.
  • The nickname 'bangers' was first given to sausages during the first world war when the sausages exploded in the pan while being cooked. This period was a time of meat rationing, so the manufactures bulked up the sausages with cereal and water. The sausages exploded during cooking because the water turned to steam.
Check out this great website that is celebrating British Sausage Week and all things pork.


What is your favourite sausage? Do you prefer plain or seasoned/spicy sausages?

1 comment:

Karenjane said...

Thin Lincolnshire sausages, cooked until they are very very brown (just stopping short of being burnt). I don't eat them often, & especially like them cold, when I slice then into thin rounds, & place on buttered brown bread in neat rows to create a lovely sausage sarnie.I was a seriously fussy eater right up until I got married (when I was 22), but one meal I loved was when my Mum did sausages & chips & frozen peas most Saturdays when I was a teenager. I would have spent a busy day working at my Saturday job, & it was something to look forward to....even if I could only manage a teeny portion of chips & a teaspoon of peas.