I love a sausage roll but blimey, you kiss a few frogs before you find a prince! Too many are absolutely dire; the sausage meat is like meat paste and what is it with that pastry that’s neither short nor puff and is similar in texture to cardboard? I guess people tolerate it because they’re relatively cheap and they’re convenient.

As sausagemeat can be made without any fancy equipment they’re a great project for making at home. I would normally mince the pork myself to make these but to illustrate my point I’m using bought pork mince for these. You could get this from your butcher, or as in this case, the local supermarket. If it’s from your butcher ask for 80/20 visible lean. From the supermarket, buy the 20% fat pork mince, not the 5% fat one.

I assembled what I needed for the sausagemeat, most of the spices in the spice dabba won’t be used on this occasion but they do add a bit of colour to the photo!

The ingredients for each kilogram of pork mince are:

280gm Water
180gm Rusk
22gm Cornflour
18gm Salt
4gm Ground white pepper
2gm Ground black pepper
1.5gm Ground nutmeg
1.5gm Ground ginger
1.5gm Ground coriander
0.5gm Ground mace
3gm Rubbed sage

To make things easier, there is a calculator at the end of this post.

Digital scales, that are accurate to one-tenth of a gram, suitable for measuring the spices, can be bought on eBay for around £10.

I bought 500gm of meat so I used half these amounts. Once I’d measured the spices and salt, I mixed them together and sprinkled them on top of the meat in a large bowl. I put the rusk on top of the spices.

I then poured over the water and left it for a couple of minutes to soak into the risk.

Now comes the important part, it needs mixing until the mince etc becomes sausagemeat. It’s a reaction between the meat and the salt that does this. It really needs mixing well. I used my hands to squish and squeeze it, squishing it between my fingers until it becomes sticky. This would be easier had I have pre-salted the meat. Even so, it only takes 3 or 4 minutes. I’ll mix this more after the rusk has fully hydrated but it’s not far off in this picture. You may even notice that its smell changes – it becomes… …well, it becomes sausagey!

I make no apologies for the high amount of rusk and water in this mix; I like that for sausage rolls; I prefer the texture. I don’t want the sausagemeat to be a soft paste but I also don’t want it to be too firm.

I mixed it again before using it to make sausage rolls. They’re in the next post.