Sausage Review - we review sausages

Occasionally we do buy pre-packed foreign sausage it's true, but not often, however these Toscana Classica just looked different so needless to say we had to try them...

Tuscan sausage evidently is normally with fennel, but these we were assured by the butchery we bought them from was without such. OK what else goes in to a Tuscan sausage? So doing a bit of research online for typical recipes we found out that no rusk or bread is used, and likely no other fillers either, so these sausages will be a very high meat percentage meaning they are likely to cook up quite firm. 

From further reading we understand that typical ingredients of Tuscan sausage may well be: pork shoulder with at least 20% pork fat, basil, oregano, paprika, black pepper and cayenne pepper or chilli powder, which could well be the reference to "flavouring and spices" on the labelling. Hmm the labelling? This was a little sparse of info to be honest. No reference to meat percentage but thankfully all loaded in to natural pork casings!

The translation of the packaging tells us that these particular sausages are "Gluten and milk product free, and are ideal for grilling or as a basic ingredient for your recipes". Sounds OK, however, we shall be pan frying these as we do all our sampling for consistency sake and hope all goes well with the skins.

So, cooked up, yes we were correct in our assumptions, very firm sausage. Very deep colouring too. A very good bite and chew though, and the skins cooked very well and weren't rubbery in the slightest.

However let's be honest here, these are quite small chunky sausages before cooking, but with considerable shrinkage and a weight loss of 20%+ after cooking, plus where there's only 5 in a 300g pack, feeding at least 4 as we did, you will need more than one pack, or do what we did and add couple of extra sausages from elsewhere...

Don't get me wrong these are a good tasting and eating sausage, but very much on the small side. However we have since bought another packet of these on a subsequent trip out so to answer the "would we buy again question", yes we would and did! This time with the fennel!


VIANI - Salsiccia Toscana - Classica  (Apr 2023)

Here's the sample details:

80x32mm before cooking, 70x30mm after.
66g before cooking, 48g after.
That's a shrinkage of 18% & weight loss of approx 27%.
£4.99 / 300g pack of 5 sausages.

Bought from The Teddington Butcher, Teddington Middlesex TW11 8NA.
also available from The Village Butchers, West Horndon, Brentwood, Essex, CM13 3TP
and The Italian Food Shop, The Harpur Centre, Bedford MK40 1TP, plus other online sources.


 



Note: the web site address on the labelling doesn't function but refers to
The House of Westphalia Ltd, UK office in Luton.