Pork and cranberry sausage rolls
Its always good to have a stock of these in the freezer, you can just stick them in the oven and have them ready for taking along to a friend’s house, to go along with Christmas drinks or to just have a snack.
If you are freezing them, it is best done when you have cut them to size but before you egg wash them. Lay them out on a piece of greaseproof paper on a baking tray and then place in the freezer for 24 hours.
When they are frozen you can then transfer them into a freezer bag or tub, then when you need them, you can just take them out, place on baking tray, egg wash and cook for 30 mins or until golden in a 200C oven.
(Makes about 40 small sausage rolls)
Ingredients
800g Pork sausage (my local shop had sound butchers, Scalloway meat co and Andersons available)
1 tsp juniper berries
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
½ tsp garlic granules
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
½ tsp salt
½ tsp dried sage
50g dried cranberries (or 2 tbsp cranberry sauce is nice too)
2 sheets of puff pre-rolled puff pastry*
Method
Remove the sausage meat from their casings and add the meat into a large mixing bowl.
Grind up the spices and seasonings (use a mortar and pestle, electric spice grinder or blender) and add to the bowl along with the cranberries. Mix until well combined.
Roll out your pastry on a board, keep it on the bit of greaseproof it arrives with for ease of moving. Cut it in half so you have two long rectangles.
Arrange the sausage mix down the middle of each pastry rectangle.
Fold the pastry over the sausage mix to meet the other side of the pastry and press down to seal, secure by crimping edge with a fork.
Set in fridge to rest for 20 mins. Preheat oven to 180C.
Line a tray with grease proof paper. Take sausage rolls out of fridge and cut to desired size and arrange on baking tray.
Brush with beaten egg and cook until golden brown, approximately 20 minutes – all ovens will differ.
Serve along side a nice chutney, they do go very nicely with Mackenzie’s Beetroot chutney.
*You can of course make your own pastry for this - pastry is one thing I never bother with, premade is a fine shortcut as my time can be spent on other things - but if you are feeling particularly festive and don’t mind a bit of faff, I would suggest wrapping them in Bos breakfast croissants dough for some devilishly decadent “pigs in duvets”
** I always have a few packets of cooked chestnuts lying around in the store cupboard this time of year and find that a packet of those roughly chopped up and put amongst the sausage mix really elevates the texture.