Sausage Review - we review sausages

DS Eagle (Writtle, Essex) - Venison

What a way to start a new year with an absolutely stonkingly tasty sausage!  I happened to be working close to Writtle in Essex just before Christmas and having had the nod from a friend about this butchers shop with a very good reputation, that seemed to be on a small parade in the middle of a housing development, with a bit of searching round indeed found me at DS Eagle's door...

We (myself and the wife) are quite partial to venison sausages although the girlies don't have these down as their favourites, especially with the "Bambi" connotation at this time of year, however they agreed to give them a go this time.

Venison is a lean meat, so the mix no doubt will have had some pork shoulder or perhaps better, some pork belly added to help the resulting texture and succulence. I would have liked to have a better chat with the butcher but there was quite a queue with it being popular and perhaps it was not best to keep people waiting buying their Christmas produce etc.. So with that and in my haste to get on the road to get back to my work I did forget to ask just how much venison and pork were combined but I will update the review as soon as I get that information.

Quite a deep coloured sausage in the raw as you may expect. Certainly quite a high percentage meat content too as the sausages were firm in the raw and when cooked still retained such. I'd chance to say perhaps 75-80% but I will check this when next in to Writtle.

The butcher advised that the supplier of the venison was Ben Rigby a well known and respected Essex game supplier. As for the free range pork, this came from a local Essex supplier too. So all in all a pretty good sausage and in quality natural casings/skins too.

I will admit they did have just short of a couple of weeks in the polar arctic of our deep freeze over the Christmas week, but they thawed nicely and looked very much ok for the experience!

We pan fry our all samples regardless of supplier so we can be consistent ourselves with the cooking and yes we hear you, "We oven cook them you know" or "Why don't you buy an air fryer!".  OK, ok enough. In the frying pan they went...

I was expecting a small amount of residual oil to be left in the pan but no, nothing more than I added initially, and the aroma of the cooking sausages was delightful!

The firmness of the sausage was good, the skins held up really well and the succulence was so good too. Seasoning was spot on and tastewise these were excellent.

We all agreed that these venison sausages were the best "other than pork" we've eaten.

Buy them again? Too blooming right.




 



DS Eagle (Writtle, Essex) - Venison  (Jan 2024)

Here's the sample details:
110x30mm before cooking, 105x30mm after.
78g before cooking, 72g after.
That's an overall shrinkage of 4% & weight loss of approx 7%.
6 loose sausages (470g) £4.70 (£10.00/Kg).


www.eaglebutchers.co.uk

DS Eagle 
9 Wellfield
Writtle
Chelmsford
ESSEX CM1 3LF

Tel : 01245 420516

Hours of Business:
Monday Closed
Tuesday / Friday 9 am - 5 pm
Saturday 9 am - 4 pm
Sunday Closed