M&S British Outdoor Bred
- Toulouse StyleCan't say I enjoy wandering about clothes shopping in Marks & Spencer with the ladies, come on chaps, who does? So slipping away for a visit to the Food Hall becomes very attractive...hmm...these "new" Toulouse Inspired Porks look interesting...
79% pork "cassoulet style" with oak smoked bacon, French red wine, garlic and herbs sounds very good, but how good? Now after a quick bit of research we find that cassoulet is similar to a casserole so we'll assume that the description implies that these sausages would be good in that way. But how can a sausage really be cassoulet style? We'll park that then...
So on first impression we have 4 long sausages, but wait, move the label and "whoa" this is hiding the fact that there's 8 rather small sausages in the pack, OK yes the label says so, but visually there's 4. Nothing bad about that but I'm going to need half the pack to myself I pondered.
They cooked up and browned nicely but quite a bit of that pale jelly emulsion stuff (like you get out of bacon and belly slices these days) escaped from them in to the pan. That in turn burnt and stuck to the skins unfortunately. Now we cooked these slow in a regular fry pan with a tiny drop of oil, so what's going on here? This stuff can't of been just from the 10% added bacon?
Good natural cases and the herby aroma from the pan was fair to be honest. Medium texture, meaty and a good herby flavour which the troops commented that they did like...3% French red wine in there too! However given the massive obvious weight loss of 22% per sausage when cooked and that they're £2.99 for 8 in a 366g pack (which is approximately £8.17 for a kilo), these are not a cheap sausage by any stretch of the imagination!
The single pack was not sufficient for us for a meal given the shrinkage so some rationing had to be conducted at sausage and mash-time unfortunately! Perhaps in a cassoulet with all the rest of the ingredients these would do better?
I don't get the "toulouse" style though if I'm honest. So worth a try we'd say for the taste, but unlikely we would buy these again...cassoulet or not!
M&S British Outdoor Bred - Toulouse
(Jun
2013)
Here's the
sample details:
75x28mm before cooking,
70x26mm after.
43g
before cooking, 29g after.
That's a shrinkage of
approx 13% & weight loss of
approx 22%.
6 packaged
sausages £2.99 (approx
£8.17/kg)
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Cassoulet - a rich, slow-cooked casserole originating in the south of France, containing meat (typically pork sausages, goose, duck and sometimes mutton), pork skin (couennes) and white haricot beans. The dish is named after its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, a deep, round, earthenware pot with slanting sides.
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