Sausage Review - we review sausages

Neil Risdon (Calcott Hall, Essex) - Cumberland Pork

A friend of the family told us about a farm shop they regularly use on the Ongar Road (A128) just outside Brentwood. They have a REALLY good butchers, a comprehensive fresh fish and cheese shop, and an extensive green grocery too. Not to mention a very nice cafeteria. So, we like a recommendation like that...

Calcott Hall if you are coming from Ongar is on the right just before the bridge over the A12 to Brentwood. They won the 2021 Farm Retail Association Award for Large Farm Shop as it happens. The butchery run by Neil Risdon within Calcott Hall is promoted as "High Class Butchers" and certainly is what it says it is. We were well impressed. Neil and his staff have time to speak to customers about cuts and joints and how to be best cook such just like I remember "old school" butchers used too. Well stocked counters and excellent looking produce too.

So after loading up in the green grocery with proper potatoes (still with a bit of field dirt on them), massive onions, colossal broccoli and some absolutely wonderfully smelling roasted garlic, we hit the butchery and between us we did buy quite a few things, but of course that included some sausages. The cumberland porks looked particularly interesting in the display so along with a few traditional porks we moved on to the fresh fish counter. I could go on but back to the sausages...

Cumberland porks go down very well here. There's something about that slight zing of pepper and spice you taste that is so good.

82% Essex pork in natural skins sounds good to me. We believe there is wheat rusk in these so are unlikely to be gluten free. Coming in at £9.99 / kg to is very reasonable too these days. Decent sausages in decent skins do cost. Yes you can buy cheaper but let's face it the difference between a decent sausage and a "fat stick" is pretty obvious.

Cooked up though the skins browned really well and showed no signs of bursts, splits or ruptures and kept their innards nicely together. No nasty white stuff leaking in to the pan either, or indeed any oil residue that was cooked out.

Skrinkage and weight loss was very much under control too. We pan fry all our samples for consistency, so if you do oven bake or grill you may get a slightly different result.

Texture-wise we'd say medium to firm. They cut really well without tearing, and the bite and chew was very good. The flavour was as we hoped, peppery with slight zing. Lovely.

Would we buy again?  Of course we would.
 

Neil Risdon (Calcott Hall, Essex) - Cumberland Pork   (Aug 2024)

Here's the sample details:
110x30mm before cooking, 105x30mm after.
77g before cooking, 69g after.
That's a shrinkage of 4% & weight loss of approx 10%.
6 loose sausages (616g) £6.15 (£9.99 / Kg)
 

   

 

www.calcotthall.com/butchery