Don's Sausage Awards 2015

Don’s Sausage Awards 2015

As we near the end of the year, I contemplate the snarlers I have munched on during the year. I write a review shortly after consumption of a sausage, in the idiosyncratic (my wife says obsessive) way my minds works, I sometimes come back to a sausage after a week or two and in my mind desire to consume this variety again. The sausages to be awarded as my snarlers of the year are those that made me want more, the ones that I thought about after some time had elapsed since eating them.

This year I am giving three awards.

These go to Italian Banderia and the Blue Cheese, Walnut and Pear from Westmere Butchery in Auckland. Also in the mix is Kazanka Domowa, a Polish Black Pudding from Park Avenue Quality Meats. All these sausage reviews can be read by clicking on the link.

In a hard decision my sausage of the year is awarded to the Italian Banderia. You will be delighted with this sausage if you try it.

In the almost made the podium category I considered Heritage Meat Company’s Mexician Chorizo and The Sausage Sheds, Polish Garlic Smoked Sausage. These are also very highly recommended by this writer.

Tomorrow I will make my own sausages for the Christmas barbecue season. I’m making an Italian sausage along with my own version of a blue cheese, pear and walnut snarler. We are going to a Christmas Eve dinner / barbecue with friends, and then a Christmas Day barbie with whanau. There will be around about 26 present this year on Christmas Day. The sausages will be made with care and consumed with gusto by the hungry guests. Watch out for the next post about how it all goes.

Polish Garlic Smoked Sausage – The Sausage Shed

Polish Garlic Smoked Sausage – The Sausage Shed

(This post was written a few weeks prior to it put it up on the web)

 

I cooked these up as nibbles for a couple of friends who came round to watch the Warriors take on Manly early on a Saturday evening. The sausages were infinitely better than the league. The underdogs Manly deserved to win by 20 points. It was a lacklustre performance with the Warriors playing poorly and they also lost the star of the team, Shaun Johnson, to a season ending ankle injury. Hopefully a better performance will be on display when they play the St George Dragons in Wellington in two weeks (They lost 36-0).

These sausages are coarsely ground, and the name is an apt description. Garlic is the primary flavour, and the smoked taste has a lower profile. I enjoy both garlic and smoked flavours but I would have preferred the smoked flavour to be more pronounced. However, these are still very enjoyable sausages.

So with a bit of despair we watched the Warriors lose. The kai accompanying the match was much appreciated and the sausages all disappeared. There were other morsels that remained as the friends headed off, so I was pleased that they had appreciated the snarlers from Canterbury.