Sausage Review - we review sausages

Porky White's (Surrey) - Surrey Premium Pork

We received somewhat negative comments from one of our readers about their experience of Porky White's sausages, so as it's been a while since we sampled such, we thought we would give them another go.

In 2012 you could buy Porky White's Surrey Porks, however these seem to have now been superseded by these Surrey Premium Porks. It has been a while and in sales & marketing terms, frankly an age. Times move on.

These premiums are 82% pork, with a blend of unique seasoning (so the packaging says) with a hint of honey and lemon juice, all filled in to natural pork casings. Sounds OK to us? The Surrey Porks of 2012 did say 82% pork shoulder, but these just say "pork", although from their web site it does say "only the finest cuts of pork belly and shoulder goes into a Porky White pork sausage". So there you go.

As for the source of the pork used we note the following: "Almost all of the meat sourced for our products comes from within the UK with some additional supplies coming from trusted EU farms to make up any shortfall of UK supplies. We always ensure that animal welfare is a priority and over 90% of our suppliers are either RSPCA or Red Tractor accredited."

So how did we get on with the sampling?

As you may be aware we pan fry all our samples basically to keep consistent in terms of process and scoring. The packaging does make suggestions how to grill, fry and oven bake...but nothing about air frying? I'm sure there will be at some stage.

In the pan they cooked up pretty good really. The natural skins browned well, yes a few splits and one burst out of 6 sausages which was annoying but not detrimental to the taste as we've highlighted before.

The previous Surrey Porks, we noted in our 2012 review, did suck up any oil we added to the pan as they cooked, but with these Premiums, nothing like that. Roughly about the same amount of oil (approx a teaspoon measure) we used in the pan initially was still there just about. They did however loose quite a bit of weight. 13% is not great. Shrinkage was minimal though at less than 1% which is excellent.

Texture of the sausage meat was medium to firm. The seasoning with added thyme (which you can see in the slice photo) was very good. Mind you we didn't get the honey, lemon or ginger as included in the ingredients list though. Nicely succulent however and the bite/chew was very much OK.

It would be worth noting, that these sausages are not gluten free BTW.

We were expecting, based on what we'd seen from emailed comments to SausageReview from Duncan of Crawley about Porky White's sausages and let's say the quality of the makings and that there may have been an issue, but nothing we could note with our sampling this time. 

These Surrey Premium Porks would make an ideal everyday sausage as far as we are concerned. Great in a sandwich or with mash. Good value too...

Porky White's (Surrey) - Surrey Premium Pork  (Jan 2024)

Here's the sample details:
100x30mm before cooking, 93x30mm after.
66g before cooking, 57g after.
That's an overall shrinkage of less than 1% & weight loss of approx 13%.
6 in a 400g pack at £3.50 (£8.75/Kg approx).
(400g pack at £3 with Sainsbury's Nectar Card discount)
 
 

www.porkywhites.com
 

Reviews & comments from others:
"Porky Whites. Must be 25% water and fat. Never again..."
Duncan Bardsley (Jan 2024)