Sausage Review - we review sausages

Neil Risdon (Calcott Hall, Essex) - Traditional Pork

We tried some cumberlands from Neil Risdon a week or so ago that were very good. We bought some traditional porks from him too that have had a short spell in the freezer so we hope they follow the same. Bring it on...

As we said in the previous review, friends of the family told us about the Calcott Hall farm shop that they regularly use. Having a really good butchers, a comprehensive fresh fish and cheese shop, and an extensive green grocery, bread and cakes display, plus loads more and a decent cafeteria too, within the same locale is right up our street. Not to mention the Brentwood brewery right next door!

Calcott Hall if you are coming from Ongar on the A128 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 what it says it is, a "High Class Butchers". We were well impressed. Well stocked counters, excellent looking produce and time to speak to customers about produce and how to best cook it.

The cumberland porks went down really well, so how do the traditional porks fare?

The young butcher we spoke to said that the 82% Essex pork used is from a farm near Burnham on Crouch, and the 120 year old recipe they are using is one that has been handed down butcher to butcher to Neil.

We believe there is wheat rusk in these so are unlikely to be gluten free.

I have to say sausages in proper natural hogs skins like these and not those "collagen tubes" are far more appealing to be honest. We're seeing more and more production in beef collagen or vegetable casings these days, yes we know it's easier for the producer when using machinery, plus keeping uniform sized product, and a bit cheaper of course which keeps production costs down, but we've had so many cooking disasters with split skins that do nothing for the presentation or look of the cooked food. I'll get off the soap box now...

The sausages in the raw were quite soft to handle. They looked good though. Nicely tied. In fact Neil got a large tied string from the chiller to cut off half a dozen for us. (Slight faux pas, in my rush to fry these up I failed to take a photo of the sausage in the raw...50 lines, I must do better)

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.

Shrinkage and weight loss was very much under control too. We pan fry all our samples for consistency as we've said before, so if you do oven bake, grill or even air fry you may get a slightly different result.

Texture-wise we'd say quite open and soft, which wasn't bad but we were expecting something just a touch firmer. They cut OK without tearing, and the bite and chew even though on the soft side was still good. The flavour was just how we would expect a traditional pork to taste. Proper sausages these. Spot on seasoning as far as we are concerned. Lovely.

I'm afraid they all went though, so no chance to try the "eaten when cold"...

Coming in at £9.99 / kg like the cumberlands is reasonable too these days. Decent sausages with decent ingredients 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.


Would we buy again?  Yes of course we would.

Neil Risdon (Calcott Hall, Essex) - Traditional Pork   (Sep 2024)

Here's the sample details:
115x30mm before cooking, 110x30mm after.
86g before cooking, 78g after.
That's a shrinkage of 4% & weight loss of approx 9%.
6 loose sausages (594g) £5.93 (£9.99 / Kg)
 

 

 

www.calcotthall.com/butchery