Easiest Ever Sausage Rolls: Only 3 Ingredients Needed...

Disclaimer:  I have not been paid to promote any brand, shop or product.  Just sharing one of the ways we've reduced our grocery bill a little by home baking instead of buying pre-prepared items.

Hello Honeys, 

How are you today?  All well I hope and enjoying the changes happening around us.  Lighter mornings (and evenings) and everything bursting into life in the gardens  Not so spring like this week but I did enjoy the beautiful sunshine we had the week before and even made a start on planting a few herbs and bulbs in the garden.  The bulbs will be beautiful when grown, they were a gift from a very dear friend (thank you Sarah, huggles xx)

Hubby was on holiday from work all of last week so he spent the week pottering about and catching up with some odd jobs needing done around our home.  Two posts were replaced in the back garden fence and a new gate was made, then painted with wood paint to match the fence and is now in place at the side of the house, leading through into the back garden.  

For my part, the sun had appeared so, other than planting, on went the washing machine for lots of laundry being done and (helped by Hubby, thank you sweetheart x) it was all pegged outside in the glorious sunshine and fabulous breeze, perfect weather for drying.  It's so, so good to see lovely, long sunny days after such a far-too-long, grey and dreary winter.💖 

Back to today's post then honeys.  It's all to do with sausage rolls...  

My dear Hubby is a fan of savory pastries like sausage rolls, steak bakes and pasties. Loves them💖 Now he doesn't have them often, they're a very rare treat in fact, and being Scottish there's only ever one place for Hubby (and lots of others) for sausage rolls. Greggs of course.  We don't eat "takeaway" meals anymore, haven't for a very long time, but had discovered some time ago a frozen, ready-to-bake version of Greggs sausage rolls on sale at Iceland. 

Naturally, they became a regular addition to our monthly "big shop" and Hubby was chuffed.  Since then though, this same box containing eight sausage rolls, went from costing £3 to now costing £5.75!  How is that even possible?  Well, since we're now running our home on one salary (I lost my job during the lockdown) we're having to watch our pennies and where they go, but I didn't want Hubby to lose out on something he likes.  He works so hard for us and deserves his wee treat.  

Why not home bake some sausage rolls I thought? Maybe freeze them too?  Hubby still gets to have his savoury treat, we get to spend time together in the kitchen having a laugh (as we always do) it's a win-win.😊  

This is definitely a post to get comfy for honeys, so why not grab a cuppa (and maybe a cookie or two😊) and I'll meet you back here after the page break?  See you in a minute...

Welcome back dear ones, do you have your cuppa?  Me too ☕🍪  Fab, let's chat then, shall we?🤗  

Since they're going to play quite a large part in this post, I thought I'd start by introducing the Scottish sausage.  A sausage, Rosie?  We all know what a sausage is....  Well, since Scotland's favourite sausage is now being found more widely outside Scotland (my much loved BiL can even buy it in Kent) it's possible you might already have met but just in case, let me introduce you to the square sausage...

The square Scottish sausage, more commonly known as Lorne - is thought to be named after either a famous Scottish comedian of the 1890s called Tommy Lorne or the place of the same name, now a part of the Argyle & Bute area in Western Scotland. Whichever is right, it's believed that the famous sausage dates back to at least the early to mid 1890s.  Advertisements for the savoury sausage have been found dating from that time. 

I can remember being really surprised to find, on leaving Scotland for the first time and travelling down south to England years ago, that there were no square sausages to be found and that when I asked for them I was met with very sceptical expressions and disbelief.  Now though, I'm pleased to say my much adored BiL can wander into his local Farmfoods shop in Kent and buy packs of frozen square Lorne sausage very easily.  Maybe it's the number of Scots now living in England that made them start shipping square Lorne "doon the road" but whatever the reason I'm sure Scots living there are "well chuffed."😊 

Back to our sausage roll experiment then, can we make our own sausage rolls at home?  Would they be tasty enough to replace Hubby's favourite savoury treat?  Also, how much do they cost to make, since would it be worth the extra work involved in making them if it cost roughly the same as buying them?  Let's see, shall we?

Easiest Ever Sausage Rolls 

Ingredients: 

One pack of ready rolled puff pastry

Sausages - These should be skinless & with as low a fat content as you can find. 

Optional:

½ an onion - diced 

Mashed potato (left over mash from dinner is perfect)

Note: I know, I said three ingredients, because who can eat sausage without onion?  However, I know not everybody likes it so I turned it into an option.😊

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.

2. Assemble your ingredients...   

As you can see I took one pack of ready made, ready rolled puff pastry from our fridge to make these sausage rolls because I had it on hand but making your own puff pastry is so, so easy.  You can find the recipe for it here just after a very-quick-to-make recipe for the easiest cinnamon rolls. Enjoy honeys x

  

Next we need sausages and yes, as I explained above, in Scotland we do like our sausages to be square.😊  The Lorne I use, after trying quite a few brands over the years (and again I'm not promoting just sharing which one I honestly prefer) is the Malcolm Allan Breakfast Lorne because it doesn't shrink in cooking and there is so little grease/oil released during cooking too.  Because of this, I didn't pre-cook the sausage because I knew the pastry wouldn't get soggy from grease and the sausage would keep its size inside the sausage roll too.

So, for the sausage rolls I used 4 slices of Lorne, each one halved, making 8 pieces in total.  These are your sausage rolls though honeys, so use your own favourite sausage.  

Note: If your sausage has a "skin" or casing on it, it might be best to remove it, again though this is your choice.  As I briefly mentioned above, the amount of fat released when cooking your sausage matters since you don't want to have oily pastry, as does whether you choose to cook the sausage before encasing it in pastry to bake.  Again, a personal choice and I've seen recipes advising both methods.  

3. Gather any optional extras you'd like in your sausage rolls.  I diced one half of an onion...

I then set about slicing my Lorne in half.  Additional extras to place inside your sausage rolls are only limited by your imagination dear ones.  Are you a ketchup fan?  Why not brush your pastry with a layer of ketchup before adding the sausage?  Why not caramelise your onions before adding them?  Why not use red onion instead?  Why not skip the sausage if you want to and create your own favourite filling?  

One of my favourites is mashed potato, mixed with a spoonful or two of cream cheese and some diced onion all mixed together and placed inside the pastry with a little extra grated cheese on top before sealing the pastry.. yum! (I actually made some of these cheese & onion pasty type treats and they were so yummy x)

4. Time to assemble our sausage rolls then dear ones.  I rolled out the ready made pastry and cut it into eight roughly equal pieces.  Onto each piece was placed a piece of Lorne sausage and then a sprinkling of diced onion was added...

5. The puff pastry is then folded over, making a little sausage and onion parcel, and I used a fork to seal all of the open sides closed.😊

The pastry parcels also had little cuts made in the top, before being placed onto a baking tray/sheet and brushed in a little milk (or beaten egg) as a glaze.  They were then (very carefully) placed into the middle of the pre-heated oven for 18-20 minutes, until they're lovely and golden brown...  

These sausage rolls were amazing!  There were four of them baked, as you can see above, while the other four were wrapped in baking parchment/paper, placed into a container and then frozen for later...

Were they a success?  I'd say so.  Hubby loved them, I tried one and it was really, really good.  How did they compare price wise though....

Helping Our Budget...

To make the eight sausage rolls, I used one pack of ready-rolled puff pastry, costing £1.25.  

There were four slices of breakfast Lorne used (cut in half so making eight pieces in total.) The cost per pack is £4.40 but Since we bulk buy the sausage as part of our monthly "big shop" we buy it in one kilo (2.2 lbs) packs which cost £4.40.  Each pack has sixteen slices but we bought it as part of a "deal" where you can buy two packs for £8, giving us thirty two slices to pack away in the freezer.  So, thirty two slices at a cost of £8 would mean each slice costs 25p.  

One pack of ready rolled puff pastry     £1.25

Sausage slices (4 x 25p)                        £1.00  

½ onion                                                  £0.15 

Total for eight (home made) sausage rolls: £2.40 (or 30p each.)  This could have been even less if I'd made my own puff pastry, as I normally would, but I had the pack of puff pastry on hand so I decided to use it.  

In fact it worked so well we've bought packs of ready rolled pastry since for other meal prepping dishes.  It's not just pegging out my laundry the arthritis is slowly robbing me off but it's spring, better weather and (hopefully) less pain for all of us "spoonies" (gentle hugs for fellow spoonies🤗)  

The Greggs sausage rolls we would normally buy cost £5.75 per pack of eight. This means that Hubby's favourite sausage rolls would cost 72p each.  That's quite a saving and as they say, it all adds up.  Really though, even at £5.75 (or 72p each) the frozen, cook-them-at-home sausage rolls are still a bargain because I googled the price, in store, for them and it's apparently £1.15 each.   

This is why we've been meal planning and meal prepping so much more these past few months.  Just a little extra work can pay off huge dividends in the housekeeping budget as well as make life easier every day.  

If anyone is interested honeys, I'll write a post on how we meal plan for the month, it really has been amazing in helping us save money on our grocery bill.  It's so good to know each day what dinner will be that night and, mostly even having the lasagne or enchiladas or whatever else we're having waiting for me in the freezer.  They're there because we plan ahead and on days when we make a lasagne, we'll batch cook to make two extras to freeze for later in the month. So simple.😊  

More Sausage Rolls...

I thought I'd include a last couple of photos for you honeys.  These other sausage rolls (shown in the image below) were made by Hubby, he used skinless sausages with an added layer of mashed potato and diced onion... 

 Again, a couple were baked (and enjoyed.. yum!) Hubby even added a layer of tomato puree as a base for two of them as a sort of experiment.  The unbaked sausage rolls, when they were all assembled, were wrapped in baking parchment/paper, placed into a container and were frozen for future meals/snacks.

The two sausage rolls we baked were lovely and made a fabulous snack with a cuppa.☕

Over to you then honeys.  Do you meal plan or prep?  Have you found any ways to reduce your grocery or housekeeping bills?  Please feel free to share in the comments section below.  

Till next time dear ones, thank you for keeping me company and see you again soon, hugs always xx

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