Sausage Review - we review sausages

Lashfords (Birmingham) - Special Thin Traditional Breakfast

We decided to "go away" for Christmas holidays this year to The Cotswolds.  More specifically Broadway, in Worcestershire.  On route we called in to a very interesting food store & cafe (see details below) and decided to do our bit of shopping there rather than a supermarket.  They had a good stock of sausages, pies and puddings.  "Oh dear" said the family...

It is true I cannot be trusted to pass an opportunity to further our knowledge of "sausage-ness", so a couple of packs went in to the basket for investigation later at Christmas HQ.

Interesting product labelling we note, but I was a tad confused with the 74% meat content overall, of which 85% was pork shoulder.  Hmm?   Reading on, the E261 which is MSG (monosodium glutamate) flavour enhancer to you, is not something we see on ingredients lists on packaged sausages that often.  Needless to say, this didn't inspire confidence to be honest, mind you, natural sausage skins at least put one tick in the box for these straightaway! 

A.W.Lashford & Sons of Birmingham have been master sausage makers since 1889 and produce a wide range of sausage using fresh prime English pork.  A 5th generation family business supplying a range of hotels, bars, restaurants, cafes, butcher shops and stores.

So once at our rental, no time to waste, I'm hungry and it's time.  The Lashfords had good colour, shape and filling before they went in to the pan.  Then cooked up, they looked very nice with good colour.  An appetizing aroma from the pan too, we hasten to add.

Taste-wise though they were OK, but sadly nothing special, in fact lacking adequate seasoning we would say.  Yes we agree, you can always add some yourself, which we did. 

However the sausage meat inside did retain quite a pinkness which was a bit off-putting, so we cooked on for a tad longer than we would have normally gone for.  Ok this was at risk of damaging the natural sheeps casings but all was good and thankfully with what appears to be quality skins, we experienced no splits or bursts.

Bite-wise, this was acceptable as well but they weren't as "snappy" as we would have expected for chipolatas plus the texture we found was a bit too smooth, and thus on the soft side for our taste.  In a "sausage sarnie" they were fine to be frank and soon disappeared with lips being dabbed with napkins. (Kitchen roll really...we don't stand on ceremony here when it's sausage sampling time)

With the second pack a couple of days later we got a bit creative, pinched and twisted each sausage in half to create some cocktail size sausages.  Wrapped these with streaky bacon to make some "pigs in blankets" for Christmas lunch.  Now the results with this were very good.  Oven cooked with the bacon providing a touch more seasoning cooked in, produced some little gems.

The bottom line - an Ok chipolata style breakfast sausage, but not one we would probably buy again. 

Lashfords (Birmingham) - Special Thin Trad Breakfast       (Dec 2019)

Here's the sample details:
170x25mm before cooking, 160x25mm after.
65g before cooking, 59g after approx.
That's a shrinkage of approx 10% & weight loss of approx 9%.
8 sausages in a 454g pack at £3.45 (£7.60/kg)


   
  
 

A.W.Lashford & Sons
Unit 28 Castle Road
Kings Norton Business Park
Birmingham B30 3HZ
0121 777 7010
www.awlashfordsausages.com/

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The Cotswold Food Store & Cafe
Longborough, Moreton-in-Marsh,
Gloucestershire, GL56 0QZ
www.cotswoldfoodstore.com/