Meatmasons (The Secret
Sausage Shop) - Ugley
The Secret Sausage Shop
is at Unit i3, Peek Business
Centre, Woodside, Bishops
Stortford! Oops that’s given
it away then. Come on, a new
business trying to establish
itself needs to be far from
secret, so here’s a loud
review on their UGLEY
SAUSAGE…
Named after the Essex
village of Ugley, just up
the B1383 (the old A11 for
all those that remember)
from Bishops Stortford,
these sausages are far from
ugly trust us. The nice
peeps at the shop tell us
that the recipe is one for
"an old-time banger", full
of flavour, and representing
the village. We’re not sure
how the villagers feel about
being referred to as
old-timers and being full of
flavour but no doubt in our
travels we’ll find out!
One thing though, these
UGLEY sausages are all
Blythburgh (Suffolk) free
range pork shoulder, no
belly cuts, just well
trimmed shoulder.
Michael the secret sausage
man was particular in
telling us this. He agreed
that that pale emulsion
leaking out when cooking in
the pan is horrid, and you
won’t get that from their
sausages!
85% Blythburgh free range
pork, flavouring, seasoning,
rusk, all hand mixed and in
what looks like fine
collagen skins. Now no doubt
at this point our regular
readers will say "hang on
minute" and "you guys don’t
really like other than
natural skins" but, we’re
assured that there’s good
"sausage performance" with
these. So, OK, we agreed
we’ll give them a go then…
Not bad looking BIG sausages
in the raw. Not at all ugly!
Good colouring and yes, you
can tell the skins aren’t
natural from the twists and
the "tube-like"
straightness. From
experience sausages made
with collagen skins do seem
to grill better than how we
normally cook up our
samples, but for purely
consistency of test, we did
pan fry using just a smidgen
of oil.
Cooked up we did see some
skins splitting to be
honest, but thankfully the
sausage shape was maintained
and those that did have
splits still cooked through
OK without falling apart. No
additional residual oil was
noted in the pan. Shrinkage
and weight loss were
reasonable.
What did surprise us was
that the UGLEY's cut easily
and the bite was good too.
Not rubbery at all. In fact
when cutting through there
wasn’t any tearing and the
slice held shape well. Hmm?
Well, we’ll need to try a
few more of their sausages
made with this type of skin
and report back accordingly.
The cooked texture was just on
the smooth side of medium
and provided a reasonable
chew, and yes there was
enough retained moisture to
provide a good succulence.
Taste-wise a fair herby
flavour and light lingering
after taste from good
seasoning.
Eaten cold later, a touch of
brown sauce was needed to be
honest, BUT as far as we are
concerned, for our first
sample from The Secret
Sausage Shop, the UGLEY is
an OK sausage.
Meatmasons (The Secret
Sausage Shop) - Ugley
(Mar
2017)
Here's the
sample details:
150x28mm before cooking, 140x28mm
after.
98g before cooking, 85g after.
That's a shrinkage of 6% & weight
loss of approx 13%.
6 loose sausages £4.93
(£8.50/kg)
Secret
Sausage Shop
Unit i3
Peek Business Centre
Woodside
Bishops Stortford
HERTS CM23 5RG
01279 657728
www.meatmasons.net