Lauren's Sausage Rolls

I remember eating sausage rolls as a child, a South African food.  Here, my sister Lauren guest blogs with her sausage roll recipe.

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My sister asked me to write a ‘lil guest blog about the Sausage Rolls that I made recently, so here it goes…

I found this recipe on pinterest (http://www.parties4me.com/2011/08/best-sausage-roll-recipe.html) – so that is where I started, but I did supplement with some other recipes/instructions along the way, that I will note below.

Ingredients:

·         1.5kg sausage mince

o   I had no idea what 1.5 kg equates to in American units so I just purchased one package (5 links) of Brautworst sausages – this turned out to be about ½ of what I really needed – so if you are going this route I suggest buying at least 2 packages (10 links total).

·         7-10 sheets puff pastry

o   I bought 2 packages (4 sheets total) – this was too much for the amount of sausage meat that I bought so I have 2 sheets left over for next time.

·         5-6 slices bread

o   I used some healthy organic weird hippy bread that we already had in our kitchen, but cut the crusts off because I thought it would be weird to have various seeds in my sausage rolls.

·         Mixed herbs

o   I just used some random mixed herbs that I already had in my kitchen.

·         Black pepper

·         Tomato sauce

o   The recipe didn’t say how much tomato sauce to use so I bought one small can – but only used about 2 Tbsps worth in the end.

·         chicken stock powder (or cube)

o   I used a cube – but highly suggest breaking it up before you mix it in – I didn’t do this and ended up with large chunks that were difficult to break down once already mixed in.

1.  Soak bread in water then squeeze out the water until doughy.

2.  Mix in herbs, pepper, tomato sauce, chicken stock.

3.  Fold in sausage mince.

Note: I used Bratwurst sausages – so they needed to be de-cased before mixing in.  To do this, I just ran a sharp night down the length of the sausage and folded back the casing to remove.  Pretty simple.

Note: I used our potato –masher to mix all the ingredients together – it worked pretty well.

4.  Cut each sheet of pastry into two or three strips.

ß AHHH – at this point realized that I had forgotten to defrost the pastry sheets.  Luckily it only takes about 40 minutes to defrost them – so I did what my mother would do, and sat down for a cut of tea.

ß Ok, back and ready now with the pastry defrosted.

Note: I wasn’t sure how wide to cut each strip so I delayed this step until after steps 5 and 6.

5.  Brush pastry with milk or beaten egg.

6.  Spoon sausage mix on to each strip and fold pastry into long roll.

Note: At this point I started to freak out a bit – so I watched a YouTube video of some old German lady rolling sausage rolls for confidence.

7.  Cut each roll into the desired size but don’t cut through to bottom.

8.  Cut diagonal slits on top of each sausage roll.

9.  Brush with milk or egg and place on baking tray.

10. Bake in hot oven for approx 15 mins or until brown then turn oven down to 160 deg. to cook for further 30 mins. 

Note: The recipe didn’t note the original temperature so I looked up a different recipe and they used 400 deg F, so that is what I sued for the first 15 minutes and then reduced to 320 deg F for the remaining 30 minutes.

11.  Cool off a little then cut pastry right through each sausage roll.

Success!