Sausage Review - we review sausages

Bob's Family Butchers (Hatfield) - Surprise

OK what’s in the “surprise sausages” then I said, with the response from the butcher, “Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise would it!” OK ha ha!

Now if you don’t mind a mixture of mint, garlic, sultanas, chorizo, fennel and curry (and frankly whatever flavours at Bob’s is on the go at that time), all together, in these sausages then they are the ones for you. Evidently these are a favourite with customers and always sell well!

Bob’s Family Butchers is now run by Mark Burley since taking over the Hatfield based butchers shop from the retired Bob some three years ago. We’d got to hear of it from a couple of sources so I made a point to pop over and have a look see. Mark has kept the original name as a lot of his regulars still recognise and refer to the local butchers as “Bob’s”, so why change it? Good point.

Mark’s mad keen on sausages and recently during National Sausage Week tells me he had twenty five different flavours available just to celebrate.

Now I was taken with the concept of “surprise sausages”, which were explained as the “bit of mixture left in the sausage machine after each run of each flavour” on the Wednesday sausage making day. Mark said he put these to one side and when he’d finished making each flavour for that week, he’d put all the “bits” together and run off some more. Hmm, that’s creative I mused.

Interestingly, he added that the differing flavours weren’t all mixed together, but rather they were put in to the machine one on top of the other, so you if you were lucky (he said lucky…) you’d get one end of a sausage tasting of a Moroccan flavour, and the other end Old English!

Whatever I suppose, but the makings are all from good quality ingredients, 80%+ meat content and in quality natural skins, so only the tasting by the troops will tell I thought as I drove home.

Well you know, it definitely was a sausage and mash with a difference! Mind you finding whole sultanas in one of mine and whole garlic in another certainly was a surprise!

These sausages are really worth a try even if it’s just for fun…


Reviews for other Bob's sausages to follow shortly...


Bob's Family Butchers (Hatfield) - Surprise  (Dec 2014)

Here's the sample details:
110x30mm before cooking, 105x30mm after.
71g before cooking, 65g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 4% & weight loss of approx 8%.
6 loose sausages £3.15   (£7.35/kg)

Bob's Family Butchers
20 High View
Hatfield
HERTS AL10 8HZ

01707 262209

www.bobsfamilybutchers.co.uk