How do you cook sausage rolls? 10 tips for perfect sausage rolls at home

Put it down to it being the Year of the Pig, but 2019 has arguably been the year of the sausage roll. While sausage rolls have hit peak popularity in 2019, there’s still the question of how do you cook sausage rolls like a professional – and why should you put sausage rolls on the menu in the first place?

We’ve rounded up some of the best tips for perfect homemade sausage rolls – plus a whole slew of sausage-roll facts about the tasty treat.

How do you cook sausage rolls?

Nothing beats a homemade sausage roll that’s all flaky puff pastry and filled with perfectly seasoned pork.

Need a recipe for vegan sausage rolls? Here’s how to make Miguel Barclay’s vegan sausage rolls.

And they’re easy to make: Roll a length of seasoned sausage meat inside a sheet of rolled out puff pastry; egg wash to seal and glaze; slice into sausage roll sized chunks; bake in a hot oven (200C) until golden (25-30 minutes). Eat.

There’s an art to truly delicious sausage rolls. Here are some tips to remember:

1. Life is too short to make your own puff pastry. Concede defeat and just buy a readymade block from the supermarket – we won’t judge.

2. Keep a bowl of ice water ready, so you can plunge your hands in if they get too hot while working your pastry – you don’t want the butter and fat in it to start melting before hitting the oven.

3. When rolling out your pastry, you need to tread the line between thin, but not too thin – aim for 1/2cm thick. You also want it to puff up, but not too much. Bash it lightly with a rolling pin before baking to take out some of the puff.

4. Don’t just use any old sausage meat. Either visit your butcher and stock up on quality minced pork shoulder, or buy the best quality supermarket sausages you can find, with the highest actual meat content.

5. Plain pork sausage rolls are amazing, but ones loaded with sage and thyme, rosemary, chunks of apple, bacon, onion marmalade or black pudding, can be even better.

6. Season your meat. You need salt, you need pepper, you need lots of it.

7. Make your secret ingredient lemon zest – it’ll really lift the flavour of your sausage meat.

8. It’s better to overfill than underfill your sausage rolls. No one minds oozy, crispy bits falling out of the pastry casing, but they do mind pastry mainly filled with air.

9. Return your prepared sausage rolls to the fridge for 15 minutes to set before baking – it’s the secret answer to the question of ‘how do you cook sausage rolls’. The reason? It’ll keep their shape firm.

10. Don’t snub toppings – sprinkle with paprika for a bit of heat, while sesame, fennel or nigella seeds can add extra bite and flavour.

Why sausage rolls are top of the menu for 2019

The humble buffet staple and lunchtime bakery item of choice, greasy in its brown paper bag, has seemingly existed for forever, but in recent times it has taken on new pastry-laden heights – and not just in 2019.

They’re having a moment – YouTuber LadBaby is even predicted to claim the Christmas Number One with new song I Love Sausage Rolls – so here’s why you can’t not love them…

10 incredible sausage roll facts

They’ve helped propel the vegan movement

Greggs posted a 7% rise in sales for 2018, largely as a result of the bakery chain’s adoption of meat-free alternatives – particularly their feted vegan sausage roll introduced in January. People love it, and its success is showing brands what’s possible if they formulate genuinely tasty plant-based snacks. It’s amazing no one cottoned onto this whole burgeoning industry sooner.

America ‘invented’ them… in 2017

There was outrage just two years ago when American brand Trader Joe’s started selling ‘puff dogs’ – which looked suspiciously like sausage rolls. Turns out that while, for instance, Australia has a comprehensive understanding of the sausage roll, not everyone does. People were rightly both horrified and affronted.

You can eat them in wreaths

This is a thing. Like a pastry version of a retro Eighties seafood wheel, and we are very much on-board with it. After all, one sausage roll is never enough.

They’ve driven the rise of decent bar snacks

Along with huge, fist-sized scotch eggs, no longer do pubs and bars expect us to be happy with a bowl of peanuts that have been left out for an indeterminate amount of time. The sight of crisp, flaky pastry on colossal, clearly homemade sausage rolls, the fat almost burnt round the edges, will keep us from leaving any establishment these days.

Are you even having a picnic if there aren’t sausage rolls?

The Quorn ones especially, and that’s despite what some called the “brazen” packaging fiasco from a couple of years ago, when it was implied we should slice a six-pack into 12 for “mini rolls”… as if that would ever happen.

The recipe mash-ups are pretty great

Stuffed with apple and fennel, laced with cheese and caramelised onions, spinach and ricotta, spiked with chorizo and chilli, plain pork isn’t always what you fancy. You can even get your hands on pigs in blankets sausage rolls now.