Sunday morning I was surfing around Instagram when a Jamie Oliver video describing how to make “cheater” homemade sausage rolls came across my feed.
Knowing that I was going to be making lunch for the kids later in the day I figured why not…”cheater” homemade sausage rolls? Maybe the kids would like them.
Sunday morning so Farm Town Meats was closed so I had to head off to our local grocery store (NOT sponsored) to get supplies. A tray of sausages, puff pastry, sage, and some new honey mustard – I figured that the sausages were honey-garlic so I went with the honey mustard.
Everything that Jamie Oliver does looks SO SIMPLE and EASY. It certainly isn’t that way for me. Of course if you have a team prepping stuff for you and you are thinking ahead, well then it probably is easier.
For example – wait until the puff pastry is defrosted BEFORE you try rolling it out. Otherwise it gets cracks in it. Which can be “repaired” by massaging the pastry back into one piece. Oops.
Squeeze the sausage meat out of the casings – don’t let the kids see you doing this because they will think it looks disgusting and then won’t eat their lunch. Unless you want to save all the sausage roll slices for yourself!
Line the sausage meat up across the puff pastry, add a piece of fresh sage to the top of each sausage “ball” and get ready to close it up.
Lay on a bit of egg wash, use a fork to press the pastry closed, and slide it into the oven – pre-heated to 350 degrees. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
I have learned my lesson, let hot food rest for a couple minutes (minimum!) after you take it out of the oven. It is much nicer slicing it after it has rested.
I sliced the first couple pieces too wide, but then I started making thinner slices. The kids preferred the thinner slices.
And you know what? They actually tasted pretty good. And miracles of miracles BOTH kids liked them enough to eat them.
I will be making them again – maybe tomorrow – because the package of puff pastry had two pieces in it! And now that I know to let the pastry defrost BEFORE working with it, I may have more success and less mess.
I may actually try working with smaller pieces of sausage and making two sausage rolls instead of one big one with a pastry tail. We’ll see.
I can also stop at Farm Town Meats to get some homemade sausages – maybe some pork and apple sausages – to put inside the next roll of homemade “cheater” sausage rolls.
Update to come when I do make them again.