Sausage Review - we review sausages

Our friends of many, many years, who have not long moved house to Thorrington in Essex, thought we'd like to try some sausages from "down their way"...yes please!

Receiving a bag of sausages, delivered to the door, and with a personal recommendation that we should try these straightaway was most welcome and intriguing!  We normally would buy our sausages for our reviews, but "as it's you" we said, and we said we would reciprocate the gesture next time we saw them.

Smiths of Essex Ltd have a small shop in the coastal town of Brightlingsea, which is not that far from Colchester.  It's somewhere in all our years of travelling, and the fact that we once had family in nearby St Osyth a while back, I can't remember the last time we actually visited the town. 

We were reliably informed that the butchers shop was "excellent" and included a deli section of shop made pies, cured bacon and the like.  Well, a visit ourselves is now in the diary for next time!

So Dragon Sausages?  They wouldn't call them this unless there's some "hot stuff" in them.  Now we know that our friends are not big on hot spicy food, so for them to make positive comments, the heat must be well under control I'm sure.  We on the other hand, do like hot spicy food, so were these going to be rather weak in heat we pondered.

Therefore we dropped all six in the pan and cooked them up straightaway as we had been prompted, just as soon as our drop-in visitors had departed.  Wafts of sausage goodness brought some of the team out of their rooms to see "what was cooking".  I will say the aroma of the cooking sausages was very good.

Absolute minimum leakage of fat/oil from these sausages in to the pan was noted and the natural skins just browned lovely without any splits or burst ends. OK we didn't have the full details of the makings at the times of sampling but we can recognise the use of quality ingredients and a product that is made with care.  We do like a well made sausage!

The texture of the meat we thought would best be described as medium with a slight crumb, and it had a really good bite (we just ate these on forks straight out of the pan to be honest) and a very good chew too!

So the first bite for me was Ok, no immediate tingling.  Next bite and chew, whoops there it is!  An excellent chilli buzz from a very succulent sausage.  Chilli buzz, not fire and brimstone though!

Thumbs up from all the team means an absolute winner!  We don't give full marks very often, and so, these Dragons from Smith's of Essex join a select few other top notch delights in our Top Ten.

The price, well as they were as a gift, we didn't get a price for them.  So I will update this review when we do.  Promise.


Smiths (Brightlingsea) - Dragon Sausages  (Jan 2020)

Here's the sample details:
110x30mm before cooking, 100x30mm after.
73g before cooking, 65g after.
That's a shrinkage of approx 9% & weight loss of approx 10%.
Update on price to follow shortly...

Smiths of Essex Ltd
14 High St,
Brightlingsea,
Colchester CO7 0AE
01206 302939

www.smithsbutcher.co.uk

Sunday: Closed
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 8am – 4pm
Wednesday: 8am – 4pm
Thursday: 8am – 4pm
Friday: 8am – 4pm
Saturday: 7:30am – 3pm