Sausage Review - we review sausages

We last sampled some of Jimmy's Farm sausages a while since so the need to update our reviews was well in order.

The deli cabinet was a bit thin on available sausages, it was a Monday if that's any reason, perhaps after a busy weekend, not much choice so we bought a pack of Classic Essex. I asked whether the sausages were still made on site and the shop assistant wasn't able to confirm such unfortunately but I got the impression it was off site. Many pork producers these days when their livestock is matured, send them off for processing to an entirely separate butchery "factory" where joints, chops, and sausages are produced, the items thus returned to the producer to sell onsite as their own produce. Nothing wrong in this of course so I wouldn't be surprised if Jimmy's Farm uses a similar arrangement like many others do.

We have emailed Jimmy's Farm to enquire as to the breed of pigs used for the Classic Essex and also asked the question "What actually does make a sausage a Classic Essex sausage?". As of posting this page we haven't as yet heard back, so we'll go with pork from a free range rare breed and update the page once we get more information. We did Google the question also and found that according to the "AI Overview" ... A classic Essex sausage is a traditional sausage made with a high meat content and lots of pepper. Well there you go.

These sausages are labelled as 95% pork with wheat flour (so probably won't be gluten free) and although not specifically referenced as such they are in natural pork casings (skins).

On opening the packaging / film, were noticed the sausages were very wet. Like a very watery blood looking wet. No smell or anything like that, just very wet and slightly sticky.

I consulted with a local sausage producer here as to what may be the likely cause of this and he responded with some scenarios:

1. A mix problem where the maker had perhaps not put enough rusk/flour in as a binder, or infact too much water was added
2. The sausages were made from really freshly dispatched pigs without the carcasses being hung sufficiently long enough before processing to aid a slight drying
3. The amount of salt used may have "drawn moisture" from the mix where the packs have been on the display or stored before purchase
4. The sausages were made and packed up immediately without being hung in a chiller for a period prior to packing.

I wasn't sure to be honest but we continued with our sampling by pan frying as we do for consistency in all our reviews.

Very quickly we got that pale ooze leaking from all the sausages, which started to burn and stick to the outsides. Quite a bit of extra oil started to appear in the pan and although the sausages did brown and look quite reasonable, we had to scrape some burnt residues off the skins just to make them more presentable. Cooked up weight loss was in the region of 25% we noticed.

Let's cut to the chase.  The skins were slightly rubbery, and the texture of the sausage very open and soft such that when you cut it the skin simply tore and the soft meat in the sausage just crumbled apart.

I asked the same local producer here what might cause this overly crumbly texture and he said that it may in fact be insufficient salt being used. Salt evidently in the mix enables the proteins in the meat to be extracted and for the mix to bind together to form the sausage we know and love. Too much salt and the cooked sausage will be very dense and taste increasingly salty, whereas insufficient salt the protein extraction doesn't happen so well and the sausage texture becomes really crumbly. There you go.

Look, these Classic Essex sausages tasted OK, a bit of a strong porky taste yes, but edible none the same. Although we didn't get the "lots of pepper" BTW that an Essex sausage is supposedly to have.

In honesty I cannot say we didn't enjoy them as part of a sausage and mash supper but they were far from what we were expecting.


Would we buy again?  Probably not...but would we eat lunch again in the restaurant?  Absolutely yes!


Jimmy's Farm - Classic Essex (Sep 2024)

Here's the sample details:
120x30mm before cooking, 100x30mm after.
84g before cooking, 63g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 16% & weight loss of approx 25%.
6 sausages in a 500g pack £6.50  (£13.00 / kg)

 


Jimmy's Farm
Pannington Hall Lane,
Wherstead,
Ipswich,
Suffolk, IP9 2AR

01473 604206

www.jimmysfarm.com