This pork, leek and apple sausage roll is nothing like a shop bought sausage roll. It’s packed full of sausage meat, apple, spices and leeks.
Sausage rolls have a pretty bad reputation. They can be small bite sized little rolls straight from the freezer department. You know the ones, they are served at children’s birthday parties or work Christmas dos. They look anaemic or beige at best. Or perhaps you last saw a sausage roll in a bakery next to a Cornish pasty. If you buy one its sometimes best not think about what you are eating. Confession time – this isn’t something a food blogger should be admitting but, served hot, I love these sausage rolls. There is something about their awfulness that I rather like. It’s probably the combination of hot fat and carbohydrate, but I find them pretty irresistible.Don’t worry this isn’t a recipe to recreate these insipid rolls. I want you to imagine Steve Jobs taking a computer and turning it into an Apple, or perhaps Sir James Dyson taking a vacuum cleaner and transforming it. This is the sort of transformation that the humble sausage roll has undergone in this pork, leek and apple sausage roll recipe.
Gone is the anaemic, dubious looking sausage roll. Say hello to a golden puffy pastry, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. The pastry envelopes the sausagemeat which has added warmth and spice from sage, cumin and a little cinnamon. The brown sauce and Dijon mustard gives further depth to the meat. The leeks are creamy, and then in the sausage roll you’ll find little chunks of apple, which are tangy and sweet. This couldn’t be a more different roll than those found in the freezer department. This pork, leek and apple sausage roll is a perfect supper dish or if you are as obsessed with eating outside as I am, then it’s ideal picnic food too.
PrintPork, leek and apple sausage roll
For this recipe I use 375 g / 13 oz of pre rolled puff pastry. If you can’t find pre rolled pastry, just roll it out so it measures 25 cm / 10” x 40 cm / 15½”.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 4
Ingredients
- 50 g / 2 oz butter
- A small splash of oil
- 2 leeks
- 25 g / 1 oz sage or 1 tsp dried sage
- 2 apples
- 500 g / 1 lb 1½ oz sausage meat
- 2 tbsp brown sauce
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp salt
- Freshly ground pepper
- 1 egg
- 375 g / 13 oz pre rolled puffed pastry
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180°C fan / 400°F / Gas mark 6.
- Finely slice the leeks into ½ cm / 1/8” thick coins. In a pan, heat half the butter and tiny splash of oil, and then fry the leeks over a gentle heat, until soft, remove from the heat.
- Peel and core the apple. Chop into 1½ cm / ½” chunks.
- Roughly chop the sage leaves.
- Once the leeks are cooked, put them in a large bowl and heat the remaining butter and oil in the pan. Add the apples and sage to the pan and cook until the apple is soft but still holding its shape. You want as much moisture to escape as possible so it doesn’t make the pastry soggy. Remove from the heat.
- Add the apple to the leeks. Now add all the remaining ingredients except the pastry and egg. Stir well or use your hands to combine.
- Line a large baking sheet with baking paper. Un roll the pastry onto the baking paper.
- Turn the pastry so that it is portrait, as opposed to landscape. Put the sausage mixture down the middle third of the pastry and shape into a mound using your hands. Bring the pastry up from each side and smooth them together at the top with a finger, so that the roll is sealed at the top, using a little water as glue if needed. Now take a sharp knife and cut a number of 8 cm / 3” slits across the roll. This helps the steam escape from the middle and so reduces the likelihood of the soggy pastry.
- Beat the egg in a small bowl and brush over the pastry.
- Cook for 30 – 40 minutes in the oven or until the pastry is golden brown.
Nutrition
- Carbohydrates: 57g
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I made this for tea tonight and it was delicious. I never normally follow recipes exactly, tweeting them to what I have in the fridge or what I think would improve the dish, but this one I followed exactly and so glad I did, perfect comfort food as the night draw in!
Glad you liked it Nance!
H
I was definitely addicted to sausage rolls when I lived in Australia, but yours look at least a thousand times better than the ones I had! They sound and look amazing. Pinned ??
What is brown sauce please?