Basic Britain: sausage rolls

The sausage roll: Christmas party staple and service station favourite. But does a budget supermarket variety stand up to the big brands? Laura Rowe finds out.

When I tested sausages earlier this year for the Basic Britain series, many of you got in touch about what you consider to be a good banger. But do you take the same care in choosing your snacks? This time I took a look at three big brand sausage rolls:

• Wall’s 4 Sausage Rolls £1.79/280g 

• Ginsters of Cornwall 4 Sausage Rolls £1.50/240g

• Linda McCartney 6 Vegetarian Sausage Rolls £1.39/342g 

Plus, a budget alternative from Aldi – Crestwood 5 Sausage Rolls £89/350g

What are they made of?

Wall’s, Ginsters and Aldi’s Crestwood sausage rolls are all encased in puff pastry. Wall’s makes theirs with vegetable oil, Ginsters with vegetable margarine and Aldi with a mixture of palm/rapeseed oil. Linda McCartney uses flaky pastry and uses a vegan-friendly vegetable oil.

According to the packets, Wall's has 27% pork, Ginsters has 17% pork and Aldi contains 21%. Linda M obviously doesn’t contain any meat – instead a combination of soya, wheat protein, pea protein, onion, rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, natural flavouring and methylcellulose.

Wall’s sausage rolls are free from artificial colours, flavourings and hydrogenated fats – the only additional ingredients here are salt, dextrose, stabilisers and spices including onion powder, coriander, nutmeg, sage, pepper and herbs.

Ginsters again has no added artificial ingredients – just a bit of egg, onion, salt, potato starch, milk, spices and herbs. Linda M keeps it natural, too, with only a few stabilisers and emulsifiers and it also guarantees that its sausage rolls are GMO free. Aldi, believe it or not, also has no artificial colours, flavourings or preservatives; just sugar, milk proteins, onion powder, mace, nutmeg, white pepper, dextrose, black pepper, glucose syrup, cayenne and garlic.

Where does the pork come from?

While we might carefully analyse our packet of premium sausages to make sure they are free-range, outdoor bred (and reared) or organic, do we bother when it comes to our fast food?

Aldi, sadly, declined to provide any information on its product. However, check out the packet and it says that its pork is sourced from the EU. Wall's told us that its sausage rolls were produced to the same standards as its sausages – the pork being sourced from the UK and EU, and that these suppliers “would use both wood shavings and slats at different stages of the pig life cycle”.

Ginsters told us that its sausages are made with British “housed” pork, while Linda M’s soya and sunflower oil is sourced outside of the UK. All of the sausage rolls are made and packed here in the UK.

How does it taste?

In our blind tasting Ginsters came out on top. While there was a bit of a hollow between the sausage and its “roll”, the meat itself had a good flavour, with the pasty company’s trademark spice and a pleasant coarse texture. Aldi’s pastry – “crispy and deliciously flaky” – went down a storm, although the light, soft sausage was a little underseasoned (a splodge of brown sauce seemed to do the trick). Linda M had flaky pastry too and was surprisingly “sausage-like” in texture, if a little rubbery. Again, it needed a bit of extra seasoning for our tastebuds. Wall’s was unusual, in that it felt like an actual sausage had been wrapped in the pastry. The meat was dense, firm and had a strong porky flavour.

What’s the damage?

Sausage rolls aren’t known for their health benefits, but what exactly are we consuming? Ginsters had the most fat at 17.3g per 60g roll, Linda M had the least at only 7.5g. All of their salt contents are surprisingly similar at around the 0.7g mark.

So would you buy your sausage roll direct from the supermarket? Or would you stick to the brands? Let us know in the comments box below.

More basic Britain features

Bill Granger's sausage rolls with homemade ketchup recipe

Sausage and apple pie recipe

Top 10 recipes for kids by Charlotte Morgan