Sausage Review - we review sausages

Ok it's BBQ season and we've got some peeps round this weekend.  We decided to do some hot dog / chilli dog style food and needed something suitable to go in the buns rather than a "normal" sausage. We were looking for some "brat style" sausages, saw these Porky Dogs and thought we'd give them a go then...

We've cooked similar before by just barbequing straight from the pack but the packaging did definitely suggested using the simmer in hot water first approach. When we've done this before the sausages do look very grey in colour and need a good browning in a hot pan before serving and we weren't sure we'd get the same from barbequing straight after their "hot bath"!  OK so if that's what's needed I decided to try simmering the "dogs" in a plastic bag in a deep pan of 65° C water for 20 minutes then fry off gently in a hot pan, then finish off on the BBQ as a test before the weekend and our visitors arrival. 

What was strange was there wasn't any twists between the sausages so when cut I wasn't confident that the contents would hold.  As I suspected we did have some eruptions from the ends where the skins just couldn't contain the filling.  I know this isn't a show stopper but presentation-wise, no eruptions would be better. The simmering worked as expected but the "dogs" were very grey (see photo) and the hot pan brought some colour to the skins.

Taste-wise they were OK on their own with a slight smokiness but as we will offer BBQ sauce, hot sauce, chilli and various other "toppings" an OK sausage does become more interesting let's be honest. Texture-wise they were similar to a "brat" with a close texture and snappy-ish skins.  We'd perhaps describe them as a something in between a "brat" and a regular porky sausage.

Given this success we decided to go with these and I was dispatched down to our local store to buy some more for the weekend confident our guests wouldn't be disappointed.

They are an Ok sausage to be honest and given that we had no complaints at the weekend, we would probably buy again!


Porky White's (Surrey) - Porky Dogs  (Aug 2016)

Here's the sample details:
120x30mm before cooking, 120x30mm after.
100g before cooking, 90g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 0% & weight loss of approx 10%.
6 sausages in a pack £3.49 (£5.80/kg approx).

     

www.porkywhites.com