Sunday 7 May 2017

Pork, Apple and Onion Sausage Rolls

I've been doing a fair bit of baking, but mostly doing some favourites...cycling season is now in full force, so I have a little less time  to spend in the kitchen. These sausage rolls came out of a batch of cooking I did for my cycling club for a training day...I wanted a savoury that would appeal to the masses, but was a little different. It's (once again) classic flavours, and after doing the first batch I reckoned they were worth a bit of refining and documenting.

When I did the first batch a lot of juices came out of the filling...obviously sausagemeat has a fair amount of fat in there, however the apple also added a lot of water, so for the second batch I wringed (wrang?) a lot of the water out. I'm in 2 minds about this...the filling was definitely dryer and firmer, however I think that perhaps some of the flavour was lost. Maybe a gentle heating to boil off the water while retaining the vital flavours?

Pork, Apple and Onion Sausage Rolls - Recipe

Rough Puff Pastry

This recipe uses a batch of my fast rough-puff pastry. You can make this up, then chill it while you are preparing the fillings

Filling Ingredients

  • 450g sausagemeat (I used some basic stuff, as I was going to add lots of flavours)
  • 3 medium-sized braeburn apples
  • 2 onions
  • 20g butter
  • 1tbsp sunflower oil
  • 10g soft brown sugar
1) Place the butter and oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat

2) Peel and slice the onions, and add to the frying pan

3) Sprinkle the sugar over the onions

4) Cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, for ~20 minutes, until the onions are well caramelised

5) Place to one side to cool

5) Peel, core and roughly grate the apples

6) Place the grated apple on a clean kitchen cloth

7) Roll and wring the kitchen cloth, to remove the excess water from the apple

8) Place the sausagemeat in a large bowl

9) Add the cooled onion, and grated apple

10) Thoroughly mix with your hands

Assembly

  • 1 beaten egg
1) Pre-heat the oven to 190'C

2) Line a large baking sheet with baking parchment

3) Take the chilled pastry, and split in half

4) Roll each half out into a rectangle approx 20cm x 50cm (you can use a pizza wheel to neaten the edges)

5) Using a pastry brush, brush some beaten egg down the middle of the rolled pastry longways

6) Split the filling in half, and place an even strip down the middle of each piece of pastry, on top of the strip of beaten egg

7) Brush one side of each of the pieces of pastry, and fold over the filling

8) Repeat for the other side, forming 2 long sausages

9) Cut each sausage into 8 even-sized pieces (for 16 in total)

10) Cut 2 diagonal grooves in the top of each piece to form a simple decoration

11) Place the pieces on the baking sheet, spaced evenly

12) Brush each with beaten egg, aiming to cover all the edges of the pastry to help seal them

13) Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown, crisp and well puffed

14) Remove to a wire rack to cool