Sausage Review - we review sausages

Very occasionally and completely unintentionally in my business travels I seem to find little local butchers shops I've not visited before, just as I did today.  Having not been aware of RJ Ripleys, even with them being less than thirty minutes away in Hoddesdon, it would have been bad form to not pop in for some shop produced produce, now wouldn't it?

The pork and leek combination is a winner for sure.  We've tried this before from other producers and enjoyed such, so looking at these with 75%+ pork with a generous amount of shredded leek in the mix, and loaded in to fine natural skins, anticipation was building as the samples went in to the pan. Medium heat with a dot of oil does best, cook slow and turn occasionally.

The aroma from the pan with the sausages sizzling away was very good, and the skins browned nicely, and with none of that white stuff oozing out thankfully.  The butcher and assistant I spoke to on my visit did assure me that the makings were good quality, and we wouldn't see such or indeed any fat residue in the pan as they cooked up.  They were right!  Top notch sausages.

Now we did have one sausage skin split a bit though as the skins tightened up but this sausage was very much larger than the others and I suspect a tad overstuffed in it's skin.  The others however still looked good and on cutting showed a medium-ish texture, with good succulence.  The bite was pretty good and the chew excellent.  The skins had crisped just enough to make them chew easily.

The taste of the pork and leek was stonkingly good!  Well balanced seasoning too thus making these sausages something special.  In fact the view from the troops was "next time you are in Hoddesdon, you'd better get some more for Nan & Granddad, they'll like these!"  So there you go...and very good value too!


Ripleys (Hoddesdon) - Pork & Leek  (Sep 2018)

Here's the sample details:
120x30mm before cooking, 110x30mm after.
84g before cooking, 77g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 8% & weight loss of approx 8%.
8 loose sausages £4.80 (£7.50/kg approx)


    

RJ Ripley
99 High Street
Hoddesdon
EN11 8TN

01992 462010