Sausage selection for Christmas dinner.

Sausage selection for Christmas dinner.

Christmas is a time for whanau. This year our family is hosting Christmas lunch at our place. It will be the usual barbecue based meal with a wide assortment of foods that will be enjoyed by all the whanau. You probably won’t be surprised that for many years I have been the provider of sausages.

Some of my family are not keen on the spicier variety of sausages, in spite of my best efforts over a number of years to educate them on the finer points of sausage cuisine. So this year’s selection tries to cater to all tastes.

I have chosen Island Bay Butcher’s chicken sausages, as these are a genuine crowd pleaser. As Sausage Boy’s sister said, "Everyone likes chicken sausages and Island Bay makes the best." I have also selected Butifarra from Mariano’s Spanish Goods in Christchurch, link. The highlight for me will be chorizo coriollo from Park Avenue Quality Meats, link.

So I am looking forward to an enjoyable Christmas Day. Hopefully the weather will be good, the barbecue will be fired up and everybody will have a good time, at your house as well as mine.

Don's Sausage Awards 2013

Don's Sausage Awards 2013

A wide range of people who know I pen this sausage blog ask me, "What is your favourite sausage?" My response is, "That is like asking an oenophile what is their favourite wine? There are sausages for all occasions, and for all taste preferences. It is not a simple response. It all depends on what you are after.

Today a vegetarian work colleague asked me to recommend sausages for the barbie over the Christmas season. She wanted to know what to buy for her carnivorous family.

I thought I might make a few recommendations. So with a drum roll, flashing lights and rolling out the red carpet here are the Sausage Awards for 2013….

 

A plain meat sausage:

Winner: Dutch Braadworst – Park Avenue Quality Meats link

Runner Up – Harmony Wild Boar Sausage – Moore Wilsons link

A sausage with a little bit of spice and smokiness

Kabonosy – Park Avenue Quality Meats link

A sausage with more spice

Chorizo Coriollo – Park Avenue Quality Meats link

 

Hot and spicy

Sremska – Park Avenue Quality Meats link

A little bit of flavour

Pork and Fennel – Island Bay Butchery link

Chicken Sausage

Chicken Sausage – Island Bay Butchery 

I have just realised I have never reviewed this sausages. No review, but they are best chicken sausages in Wellington.
I have now added a review link

Handmade Gourmet

Butifarra – made by Mariano's Spanish Goods, sold by Moore Wilsons link

 

Pre cooked barbecue sausage

Turingia Bratwurst – Prestons Master Butchers link

Enjoy the barbies over summer. You will only know that your preference is by trying a wide variety and savouring the taste of quality sausages.

 

And for those of you still reading....

My favourite sausage in December 2013 is Chorizo Criollo.

Meri Kerihimete

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

 

Malaguena - an Andalucian sausage

Malaguena – an Andalucian sausage

This is the second review I have done of sausages made by Mariano’s Spanish Goods, who are based in Christchurch. I purchased these from Moore Wilsons. Mariano’s Spanish Goods won the Cuisine Artisan Awards for this sausage in 2012 

This is an authentic Andalucian sausage, according to the packaging. The label says, “This succulent spicy sausage …. can be eaten whole or chopped to add life to a salad or mixed dish. The full meaty flavour is accented with hot overtones of chilli and black pepper, making the Malaguena a sausage to remember.” So the marketing puts the sausage in a positive light (as all marketing aims to do). 

The ingredients are listed as 85% pork, 15% pork fat, garlic, salt, black pepper, cayenne, and paprika. 

So what was the sausage like? 

The aim of this blog is cut through the label’s PR spin and offer a perspective of the world of sausages from my point of view. If I like the sausage, I’ll say so. And if I am not keen, I'll voice this opinion too. Of course your view may differ from mine, however in the glory of self-publishing we can all be experts in our chosen field. 

This sausage is hand made. The skins are tubes and are not closed at each end. The sausage handled better than the Butifarra, see review. They cooked nicely with a bit of oozing from the casing. A reasonable amount of liquid came out of the sausage during cooking. I also may have overcooked the sausage a little bit. I am a male and I was having a conversation with my wife, talking to the son about his day at school, cooking sausages and also making a vegetable stir fry. Doing all this multitasking at once, may be considered by many to be beyond most males. And maybe that’s also the case in my house, given the snags were slightly over cooked. 

They were served with a stir fry vege dish, flavoured with garlic, ginger and fresh basil leaves. 

These sausages were very good. They are a soft medium grind. A nice texture to eat. They were hot in taste and this complemented the free range pork.  One of the key issues with spicy hot sausages is getting the balance right between hotness and meat. In too many hot sausages the spice is overpowering, and is the only taste you get on your palate. This is not case in this sausage, the hotness of paprika and cayenne complimented the taste of the meat. My son thought they were good, he described, “the chilli as quite mild.” Number two son, aka Sausage Boy, said they were “very good.” My wife described them by saying, “I loved them, the chilli was nicely balanced with the meat, it was not overpowering. I would love to eat them again.” So as you can see the whanau were keen. So was I and I will happily be purchasing again, just to keep in the good books of my wife. These were an excellent sausage, well worth trying - again and again.

These suasages are gluten free, they have no nitrates and no additives. Just meat and flavours.

Cost per packet: $10.95 – six snarlers in the packet

Barvarian Sausages from Island Bay

Bavarian Sausages from Island Bay

These sausages won a silver medal in the Pre Cooked Barbecue section at the recent Devro NZ Sausage awards, see report. They are made by Island Bay Butchery. I did not judge this section of the competition, so I was interested to see how they tasted.

I cooked these on a Friday night recently. Friday nights at our place are often a "fend for yourself" dinner. I tend to get home from work, have low motivation for cooking, and don’t feel inclined to the "hunter-gather" routine searching out food for the whanau in the local community. As we don’t eat pets, and barbecuing the neighbour’s cat or dog doesn’t do a lot for neighbourly relations, the term "hunter-gather" in our household is a euphemism for takeaways. The Northland shops over the years have changed from a couple dairies, post office, hairdresser, chemist, butcher and green grocer to being a strip of takeaway joints comprising three pizza places, fish and chips, burgers and, the latest innovation, an Indian curry cafe. If the "hunter-gather" option is not pursued, it is often fend for yourself in the kitchen. The food on Friday night generally ranges from sausages, tins of baked beans, eggs, to the odd sandwich.

So what were the Bavarian sausages like? They were good. They are precooked so only need heating through. The butcher told me they are made from free range pork, that is finely ground. They have a hint of caraway seed and cayenne pepper. I should emphasis these are just a hint of flavour - very slight. This a sausage aimed at the NZ barbecue market so the predominant flavour is meat. The whole whanau liked the sausages. My sister even popped in and sampled one, and she was keen on it too. I did get a whole caraway seed, after the rest of the mouthful had disappeared down the gullet. I crunched it between the teeth and I got that intense burst of caraway flavour, the only one of the meal.

I would buy these sausages again, however the preferred sausage is the gold medal winner. You can see a review of the gold medal winner in this category here.
 

Cost per kilo: $19.95
 

However I still judge all plain meat sausages against the Dutch Braadworst made by Park Avenue Quality Meats. This sausage is superior in both taste and price. Although it is not a pre cooked sausage.  See review.

Double gold winner Turingia Bratwurst

Double gold winner Turingia Bratwurst

 

Peter Snell, Ian Ferguson, Paul MacDonald, Alan Thompson, Mark Todd, Danyon Loader, Valerie Adams, Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell have all reached the pinnacle of sport by winning double Olympic gold for New Zealand.

So in the culinary arts, or should that be the science of sausage making, can butchers reach the pinnacle of double gold? The answer is yes. Preston’s Master Butchers in Wellington won the pre-cooked/barbeque sausage category of the Devro NZ Sausage awards for a second time this year. See link. This sausage is sold under the Anytime brand.

I must declare that the pre-cooked and barbecue section is not a category of sausage that I would buy to sample. Those of you who read this blog will know I prefer a spicier sausage.

However, I was doing the family shop during the weekend and came across a stand giving away samples of the Turingia Bratwurst in New World and I got talking to the two guys were cooking up the sausages. They said they were very proud that, for the second year in a row, their snarler had won the gold medal. After the win sales have gone through the roof. They normally make two batches a week, but last week they had their biggest order to date and made 37 batches of the bratwurst.

The bratwurst came in a prepacked sealed package of 9-10 sausages. I brought three packs. When the first package was in the pan, I weighed the other two packs, there was a surprising difference. One pack weighed 508g, the other 639g. This means that the first pack is only 79% weight of the second. This is a big variation.

But let’s get to the nub of the issue: What does the sausage taste like?

The bratwurst is a pale colour and it cooks up nicely. Best of all it tastes good too. The pure pork filling is enhanced with marjoram, parsley and a touch of pepper and garlic. The label gives the content of pork at 82%. Monosodium is also listed as an ingredient.

The sausage is finely ground, and pre-cooked, so only heating is required. This bratwurst tastes good. It has a piquant flavour of the listed herbs and spices. The primary flavour is pork. My kids said they were very good eating, as they headed to the plate to get another one. I was remiss in not quickly taking a photo of the cooked bratwurst, so you can see that by the time I did this there were only two left.

Addenda: 1 Dec 2013. I cooked up another packet. Here is a photo.

If you are looking for a sausage that will appeal to all then this sausage fits the bill. When you fire up the barbie these will please your guests. Personally I prefer these to Island Bay Butcher’s Bavarian sausage, which won the silver medal this year in the same category. Clearly the judges for this category agreed but individual taste is the key component here. The best way to determine your favourite pre-cooked sausage in Wellington is to try them both.

Congratulations to Preston’s Master Butchers for achieving a goal that I don’t think has been done before - double gold in the same category is a fantastic achievement. Roll on great summer weather and many pleasant barbecues.

Cost per pack: $7.99

Viva Mexico meets Fritz's Wieners

Viva Mexico meets Fritz’s Wieners.

I went with a group of friends to the stadium to see the second leg of NZ playing Mexico for a place in the FIFA World Cup finals in Brazil in 2014. Four years ago I was present when NZ beat Bahrain to claim a place in the World Cup in South Africa. The place was electric that night. It was the best sporting event I have been to at the stadium. (It probably almost goes without saying that the best sporting event I have been to was the final of the Rugby World Cup in 2011. It was an extremely tense match - that was not enjoyable, but we all had such great delight when the ball was kicked out for the final whistle.)

 

After a 5-1 trashing by Mexico in the first leg, I went hoping to see a good game. The Mexicans were faster, more skilful and a vastly better team. After banging in three goals in the first half, the game was gone. When NZ scored two late goals after 80 minutes the NZ supporters became wistfully delusional and chanted 8-3! 8-3! 8-3! The Mexicans then reignited their team and banged another one past our goalie to reiterate which team was the quality soccer team.

 

 

The packed stadium meant we arrived reasonably early. My son, Sausage Boy, and I brought a Fritz’s Wiener to eat prior to game. He had a mild bratwurst, I brought the spicy bratwurst. Fritz’s Wieners are a franchised sausage operation. The guy behind the barbeque was able to tell me that the sausages were made by Hellers, and they only sold this variety of sausages to the franchise.

 

 

My sausage was pork and beef sausage which was lightly manuka smoked. Tasting the sausage you would not know it was smoked. The dominant flavour is hot spice. Biting into the sausage there was reasonable amount of watery fat and you could see small lumps of fat in the ground meat. The amount of mustard placed on the sausage also diminished the flavour, rather than enhancing it. So the dominant taste was hot spice and mustard.

 

 

Sausage Boy thought his bratwurst was bland. He said it was like the frankfurters I used to put in the rolls I made for the boys for lunch when they were at primary school. The only thing of substance was the condiment, with the mustard being the dominating flavour. His bratwurst was also smoked, but again you could not taste any smokiness in the flavour of the sausage.

The buns were very good. They were nicely toasted and were a light bread. Within the context of mass produced takeaway food at a stadium with over 30,000 people present the bratwurst was above average. Better than the chips and burgers that are served. I would buy these again, however my culinary expectation would be reasonably low. You are talking about fast food here, and it is an upmarket hotdog in a bun.

Butifarra

Butifarra

 

These sausages were purchased at Moore Wilsons, they are variety of sausages made by Mariano’s Spanish Goods from Christchurch. Butifarra is described as authentic Catalan sausage. I like the description of the ingredients; pork 85%, pork fat 15%, along with salt, nutmeg, black pepper and edible casing. This sausage is gluten free, with no additives and nitrates. The pork is free range.

These sausages need to handled with care. They are a little delicate. when cooking they needed a little bit of extra attention to ensure that the sausage remained in the casing. You can tell these sausages are hand filled, I am always keen to eat sausages made by hand. The meat is ground to a medium coarseness, and I like my sausage a little chunky. The quality of the taste is very good, the pork is the main flavour, this is accented the natural sweetness of the spices, there is the taste of pepper and slight hint of nutmeg. These sausages make for very good eating. I will buy these again. The whanau liked the small morsels they had too. A very nice sausage.

If you go to this company’s website you can see that they have won Cuisine Magazine’s Artisan Award for sausages twice. The Malaguena Sausage won in 2012, and in 2010 the fresh chorizo won. I will be buying more of Mariano’s sausages from Moore Wilsons, so watch out for further reviews.

Cost per kilo: $29.84