The Best Sausage Roll Recipe

Sausage rolls sometimes get a bad rap. The questionable meat content in the store bought ones have rendered this morning tea snack into logs of mystery meat loosely hugged by soggy pastry.

Actually, that doesn’t sound half-bad.

But is there a way to increase both the nutrition content and the taste factor of these iconic party food snacks at the same time?

There is. And I’ll let you in on it to improve your workouts. Because nothing mentally gets you through a run like the promise of a ridiculously tasty home made sausage roll at the end. As a bonus, it’s packed with protein and iron from lean meat, and vitamin C from veggies to help your body absorb said iron.

The secret to adding both flavour and vitamins to your sausage rolls is to pull out a saucepan.

​Normally, there’s not much nutrition action happening in an empty saucepan, but it’s what you put into this cooking vessel that concocts the most delicious sausage roll that both adults and kids alike will go nuts for.

You see, it’s the combination of sautéed celery, onion and pancetta lovingly caressed into a blend of both beef and pork mince that will level up your basic hangover snack into something you could easily find atop an ornate silver platter delicately perched on white-gloved fingertips.

Throw in a handful of caraway seeds and fresh parsley for the final pièce de résistance to your roll of meat encased in puff pastry.

The Best Sausage Roll Recipe

Ingredients

• Knob of butter. A good knob.
• 2 celery stalks, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced

• 1 carrot, grated
• 300g prosciutto, chopped
• 500g beef mince
• 500g pork mince
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 3 tsp caraway seeds
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 egg

• 1 handful parsley, chopped
• salt and pepper
• 3 sheets ready rolled puff pastry, thawed
• Milk for brushing your pastry (optional- only if you can be bothered)
• Seeds on top (nigella seeds or sesame seeds- again optional for those with any degree of volition)

Method (We be rollin’…)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line two baking trays with baking paper. Future-you will be so happy you’re not scrubbing baked-on meat juice from these pans later on.

2. Melt the butter in your saucepan and sauté celery, onion and garlic, until the onion is translucent, then add the prosciutto and mix around. Throw in the caraway seeds, give it all another stir and turn off the heat. At this point, it’s a good idea to stick your head over the pot and inhale. This is going to be good.

3. In a big mixing bowl, add both mince meats, breadcrumbs, egg, grated carrot, parmesan, parsley and salt and pepper and give it all a big squeeze with your hands. Yes, even that egg yolk that’s oozing through the fine hairs on your index finger.

4. Your hands may be quite cold now, so add in your celery mix and give that a squeeze through as well. Pretend your a masseuse for your favourite rugby club. Well this helps me anyway…

5. Lay out one sheet of pastry and cut in half. I would say lengthways, but these sheets are usually square, so same-same.

6. In the middle on one of your brand new rectangles, make a line of meat mix down down the long side. The filling needs to be thick enough so you can roll either side of pastry to kiss in the middle so you end up with something that looks like a really long sausage roll.

7. Place the giant sausage roll seam-side down on a baking tray and cut in half. Then cut each half in half so you end up with four sausage rolls from your giant creation. Repeat until your out of mixture/ pastry. If you have any mixture leftover, I like rolling them into delicious morsel meatballs which I then serve on a bed of tomato sauce. Delish.

8. Brush each little moreish morsel with milk and top with seeds. I used Nigella seeds which are an absolute pain to find in the shops. Sesame seeds or no seeds are totally fine as well.

9. Pop your 24 sausage rolls into the oven for 45 mins, swapping the trays at around the 25 minute mark. This ensures everyone gets a bit of crispy on their plate.

10. Pull out of the oven and just try to stop yourself at one.

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