Sausages

Persons of a certain age reading the title of this blog post, might just have imagined a dog saying “Sausages“. Nevertheless, this post is actually about my meat free attempts at making my own sausage recipes, because basically, if others can have a go at making the usual sausages, can we please also do likewise without the dead body parts, skin, giblets and other bloody shite?

So moving swiftly on, here is what several of the manufacturer biggies use for meat free sausage ingredients: Well, looking at a few different types, I can see that although they vary, there’s a main component and it’s protein at around 70% which is about three times more than those obtained via an abattoir. They use things like Rehydrated Textured Soya Protein, Wheat Protein, Pea Protein, Rusk that can be made using Wheat Flour fortified with Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin or Rice flour. Obviously Water too to hydrate/moisten all the dry stuff. Then I can read that there’s some sort of oil in several of the mixes, be it: Rapeseed Oil, Sunflower Oil, Soya Bean Oil, Coconut Oil. One interesting ingredient being Chicory Root Fibre. I read some use a binder of Potato Starch, Mushroom… There’s Apple Fibre (plenty of apples on my tree). For flavour and colour, they use things like Yeast Extracts, Herbs (a bit generalised), Parsley, Spices / Spice Extracts, Onion Powder, Beetroot (Betanin), Tomato Purée, Black Carrot, Peach, Orange, Safflower, Hibiscus, Barley Malt Extract, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, Red Iron Oxide, Dextrose. There can be stabilisers like Methyl Cellulose and raising agents like Ammonium Carbonates. I’m giggling, because I’ve read up about the usual use of this ingredient: Psyllium (a natural ingredient) being added to some meat-free sausages. I’m seriously not keen on generics put into ingredients, I can read this one: Vegetable Fibre. There’s also preservatives: Salt, Sodium sulphite. Casing: Calcium Alginate. Now, that is a lot of ingredient ideas to take on board and some I’m not that keen on eating.

So, this is how my quest to create my own recipe has gone so far. I’ve stuck to my original concoction I made well before all these manufactured products came into being. I’m considering creating other sausages in the near future, but for now here is my cheap as chips, made in minutes: Red Kidney Bean Sausages: That is to open a tin of red kidney beans, drain and rinse them there beans, mash ’em and add them to breadcrumbs, well crumbled green oxo and seasoning e.g. salt and pepper; shape using flour; fry in a little vegetable oil. Note: when sliced into, these little beauties are pink. Perhaps for those that have been brought up with the other type of pink sausage, this will help them to acclimatise to a more herbivorous dinner.

Photo by Fuzzy Rescue on Pexels.com

I suggest them to be eaten either with lashings of thick onion gravy, mash and veg or let the sausages cool and put ’em in sarnies with spicy sauce or pickle. This recipe is economical, quick, pantry kept, plant based and seasoned to your taste.

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