Sausage Review - we review sausages

Porky Whites (Surrey) - Premium Pork, Turmeric & Coconut

This was the last pack in for review that the kind people at Porky Whites had sent us from their range of sausages. We will admit we held these back until last ( a short stay in the freezer) as we were unsure about the flavour combination...

The Porky Whites packaging has the recently been updated to a new style which we understand to be referred to as "dinner inspiration" and like their other packs it also carries a novel QR code on the back which links to some interesting recipes etc., on Porky Whites own web site. This packaging says that these are made from 82.5% of the finest cuts of pork with a hint of sweet coconut and warming turmeric giving these a Thai-inspired and distinctive taste.

We note one of the recommended recipes from their web site suggests using these in a Thai-inspired Sausage Curry which we may try, however cooking these as we do by pan frying to keep consistent with our sampling is our first call.

The pork is described once again as from UK and non-UK sources, which isn't as specific as we would like to be honest given the amount of interest of such Sausage Review readers have said they would like. As we've said previously we'll continue to investigate this but we have read from the Porky Whites web site that "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." (We think a figure of 100% should be the case really)

We would have preferred natural skins on these ones but it appears that quite a few manufacturers nowadays have switched to using casings that are the collagen type and these particular sausages are in pork collagen too.

I'm sure you've probably read previously our views on collagen skins and the difficulty we've had trying to cook such by pan frying and trying to avoid the skins splitting and in some cases going all "rubbery" and peeling off. OK yes it might not bother some, but it does bother us, and frankly, others we have spoken to.

We noted the recommended guidelines on the packet regarding shallow frying, however this time yet again, given the continual incidence of skin failure, we'd cook at even a lower temperature (4 on the induction hob) and cook until we exceeded an internal temperature of 71°C (measured for 20 seconds) rather just the 15mins the packaging recommended. Cooking took more like 25 minutes in reality.

Our plan was to cook the whole pack, make our sampling notes, then dice up the sausages and add them to a vegetable tray bake. As it happend, this worked really well as a meal choice for these.

Well, just to confirm all the sausages experienced skin failure, which wasn't a surprise to be honest.  However flavour-wise, these Premium Pork, Turmeric & Coconut sausages were VERY GOOD and we mean that honestly. The sweetness we'd anticipated from the coconut was well under control and the very slight zing from the chilli was very good too. Overall the taste was, and we had a lot of discussion here about this, similar to an onion bhaji. Well I thought it was anyway, but you may not agree? Look we've given these a good score on flavour and texture alone. OK suffice to say, we just cannot ignore the poor skins, that let the overall score down.

We had read that this GLUTEN FREE recipe also won "Best Cocktail Sausage at the 2025 UK Sausage Week (UKSW) awards" which doesn't surprise us. The flavour combination with ingredients such as turmeric, coriander, cumin, ginger, fenugreek, chilli, garlic and onion to mention just a few combined with a premium pork meat really works.

Look, this is our honest opinion and of course it may differ completely from your own. If you don't agree or have yourselves a comment or two about these, we'd be pleased to hear about it.


Just as a foot note though: The artwork on the packaging showing a pan of these sausages in a curry style sauce don't look like the cooked sausages we had. Sausages in NATURAL skins get a slight bend when cooked (it's a thing) and as far as we have experinced, sausages in collagen cases/skins, stay bar straight when cooked. So here's the question: is the artwork depicting accurately what's in the packaging? Hmm?


Porky Whites (Surrey) - Premium Pork, Turmeric & Coconut ( Jun 2025)

Here's the sample details:
100x25mm before cooking, 100x25mm after.
65g before cooking, 61g after (pan fried)
That's a shrinkage of 0% & weight loss of approx 6% (pan fried)
6 in a 400g pack from Tesco at £3.50 (£8.75/Kg approx).

   

 
 

www.porkywhites.co.uk