Easy Peasy Sausage Rolls

Although I love them, I pretty much never buy sausage rolls. For starters they're not exactly good for you. But I can't claim to be completely virtuous when it comes to food, although I try to be healthy I eat plenty of naughty things. However, my main reason for not buying sausage rolls is that I don't know the quality of the meat they contain. When it come to buying sausages I am so picky about the pork content. For plain sausages I avoid anything with less than 95% pork and for herbed sausages I tend to use 80-85% as my cut off. Now call me cynical but I think you would be hard pushed to find a ready made sausage roll with that quality meat. So I decided to make them myself. Well I think make might be a little bit of an exaggeration, I carried out more of a sausage roll assembley really. I got the inspiration from a Lorraine Pascale recipe. All you need is a sheet of Jus Rol ready rolled puff pastry, 6 good quality sausages, thyme, black pepper, and a beaten egg! They are perfect for picnic or a party as they can be eaten hot or cold. And although they aren't technically 'homemade' they did feel extra special as I used thyme from my new herb garden.....but more about that in the next post.  

Cook's tip: To guarantee your sausage does not escape its roll during cooking, the sausage ‘skin’ can be slipped off before encasing it in pastry.

Ingredients

1 pack ready-rolled puff pastry

1 free-range egg, beaten

6 good quality sausages, cut in two

freshly ground black pepper

small handful fresh thyme leaves

Method

- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees

- Unroll the pastry sheet and bash the pastry with the rolling pin a bit. Puff pastry is made of fine layers and normally you have to be very delicate with it. For sausage rolls the pastry needs to be slightly puffed, but not too much, so bashing it with a rolling pin reduces the amount it puffs up

-Cut the large rectangle in half lengthways, then cut both smaller rectangles into six equal sections. The width of each rectangle should be about the size of your sausage half. You now have 12 rectangles in total. Brush one end of each rectangle with a little of the beaten egg, lay a piece of sausage at the other end, then season the sausage with freshly ground black pepper and sprinkle with thyme leaves. Roll the sausage up in the pastry to enclose and repeat with all the sausages. Put the sausage rolls in the fridge for 20 minutes for the pastry to harden.

-Once the pastry is hard, remove the sausage rolls from the fridge and score the tops with a sharp knife for decoration, or prick with a fork. Brush well all over with the rest of the beaten egg and bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes, or until the pastry has turned golden-brown and looks crisp. Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before serving.