Chef Thomas
A Proper Ploughman's Board
A board of good cheddar, thick ham, proper pickle, hard-boiled eggs, and crusty bread. Not cooking so much as assembling with conviction, and one of the finest lunches the English kitchen has ever produced.
Culinary Explorer
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Classic Sausage Rolls
Created by Chef Thomas
Pork and sage wrapped in shattering, golden puff pastry, scored and glazed, the kind that vanishes from the tray before you've had a chance to count how many you made.
Appetizers & Snacks
British
Picnic
Potluck
Christmas
25 min
Active Time
30 min cook•55 min total
Yield12 sausage rolls
The smell arrives before the sausage rolls do. Butter and sage and something deeply savoury drifting through the kitchen, and whoever is in the house will appear at the oven door within minutes, asking when they'll be ready. This is perhaps the most reliable fact in British baking.
A sausage roll is not a complicated thing. Good pork, a few herbs, a sheet of pastry, and an egg to make it shine. The craft is in the seasoning of the meat and the quality of the pastry, and in knowing that the oven needs to be properly hot so the pastry puffs and the fat renders and everything comes out golden and crackled and impossible to eat just one of. I've never managed fewer than three, standing at the counter, burning the roof of my mouth because I couldn't wait.
They belong at Christmas, obviously. On picnic blankets in summer. At any gathering where people are standing around with a drink in one hand and nothing in the other. But they also belong on a Tuesday, warm from the oven, with a smear of mustard and a cup of tea. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: sausage rolls, Tuesday, no occasion, didn't matter. The best food rarely needs a reason.
A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. If you want more sage, add more sage. If you like a hit of chilli, a pinch of flake won't hurt. The mustard in the filling is my addition, not traditional, but it lifts the pork without announcing itself. Trust your hands and your nose. Season and taste. Then taste again.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
pork sausage meat
Quantity
500g
or good sausages with skins removed
fresh sage leaves
Quantity
1 tablespoon
finely chopped
fresh thyme leaves
Quantity
1 teaspoon
nutmeg
Quantity
generous grating
English mustard
Quantity
1 teaspoon
onion
Quantity
1 small
very finely grated
fine sea salt
Quantity
to taste
black pepper
Quantity
to taste
all-butter puff pastry
Quantity
500g
cold from the fridge
egg
Quantity
1
beaten with a splash of milk
sesame seeds or poppy seeds (optional)
Quantity
a scattering
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| pork sausage meator good sausages with skins removed | 500g |
| fresh sage leavesfinely chopped | 1 tablespoon |
| fresh thyme leaves | 1 teaspoon |
| nutmeg | generous grating |
| English mustard | 1 teaspoon |
| onionvery finely grated | 1 small |
| fine sea salt | to taste |
| black pepper | to taste |
| all-butter puff pastrycold from the fridge | 500g |
| eggbeaten with a splash of milk | 1 |
| sesame seeds or poppy seeds (optional) | a scattering |
Equipment Needed
- •Large baking tray
- •Rolling pin
- •Pastry brush
- •Box grater for the onion
Instructions
- 1
Season the sausage meat
Put the sausage meat in a bowl with the sage, thyme, nutmeg, mustard, and grated onion. Season with salt and a good few grinds of black pepper. Mix it together with your hands until everything is evenly distributed. Don't overwork it. You're not making a mousse. Take a small pinch, flatten it, and fry it in a dry pan for a minute. Taste it. This is your chance to adjust the seasoning. More salt, more pepper, more nutmeg. You won't get another opportunity once it's wrapped in pastry.
Grate the onion rather than chop it. You want the flavour and the moisture, not pieces of raw onion sitting in the filling. A box grater, fine side, over a bowl. Squeeze out any excess liquid. - 2
Roll and fill the pastry
Set the oven to 200C/180C fan. Line a large baking tray with parchment. Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface into a large rectangle, roughly 40cm by 30cm, about the thickness of a pound coin. Cut it in half lengthways so you have two long strips. Divide the sausage meat in half and shape each portion into a long sausage down the centre of each pastry strip. Your hands will need to be slightly wet. The meat should sit in a neat log, leaving a border of pastry on each side.
- 3
Seal and cut
Brush the exposed pastry edge with beaten egg. Fold the pastry over the filling, pressing the seam together firmly with the back of a fork. The seal matters. If it opens in the oven, the juices run out and you lose the best part. Turn the rolls seam-side down and cut each long roll into six pieces. Some people like them cocktail-sized, some prefer a proper handful. Your kitchen, your rules.
If the pastry has warmed up and gone soft, put the whole tray in the fridge for fifteen minutes before baking. Cold pastry puffs. Warm pastry slumps. The difference is everything. - 4
Glaze and score
Place the rolls seam-side down on the lined tray, leaving a little space between each. Brush the tops generously with the beaten egg. Use the back of a knife to score two or three diagonal slashes across the top of each roll, just through the pastry, not into the meat. Scatter sesame seeds over the top if you're using them. The egg wash is not optional. It's the difference between golden, lacquered pastry that crackles when you bite through it and something that looks like it gave up halfway.
- 5
Bake until deeply golden
Bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until the pastry is a deep, confident gold and the kitchen smells of butter and sage and something undeniably good. Not pale gold. Deeper than that. The colour of a conker. Pull them out and let them rest on the tray for five minutes. They'll be too hot to eat, and the filling needs a moment to set. Then put them on a board, stand back, and watch them disappear.
Chef Tips
- •The sausage meat is the whole thing. If you can get it from a proper butcher, coarsely ground with a good ratio of fat to lean, you'll taste the difference immediately. Failing that, buy the best sausages you can find and squeeze the meat out of the skins. Cheap sausage meat tastes of breadcrumbs and sadness. This is not the place to economise.
- •All-butter puff pastry or nothing. The block kind you roll out yourself is better than the ready-rolled sheets, which tend to be thinner and less generous. If you can find a brand made with real butter, that's the one. The pastry should smell of butter when you open the packet. If it doesn't, it isn't the right pastry.
- •Fry a small piece of the seasoned meat before you wrap it. This takes thirty seconds and saves the whole batch. You can't taste raw pork, and you can't adjust the seasoning once it's inside the pastry. This tiny step is the difference between sausage rolls that people remember and sausage rolls that are just fine.
- •They reheat well. Ten minutes in a hot oven brings the pastry back to life. Never the microwave. A microwave turns puff pastry into a damp flannel, and there are few sadder things in a kitchen.
Advance Preparation
- •The sausage meat mixture can be made a day ahead and kept covered in the fridge. The flavours deepen overnight, which is no bad thing.
- •Assembled but unbaked sausage rolls freeze beautifully. Lay them on a tray to freeze individually, then transfer to a bag. Bake from frozen, adding five minutes to the cooking time. This means you're never more than thirty-five minutes from a warm sausage roll, which is a comforting thought.
- •Baked sausage rolls keep for two days in the fridge and reheat in a hot oven for ten minutes. They're also perfectly good eaten cold on a picnic, straight from the tin, with English mustard on the side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 85g)
Calories
285 calories
Total Fat
20 g
Saturated Fat
11 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
9 g
Cholesterol
55 mg
Sodium
580 mg
Total Carbohydrates
17 g
Dietary Fiber
1 g
Sugars
1 g
Protein
9 g
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