Sausages are more than the sum of their parts – a blend of tradition, technique, ethics and flavour. I’ve always preferred proper butcher’s sausages, featuring hog casings filled with well-seasoned pork shoulder, then linked and set (I used to love making them with butcher Ray Smith on River Cottage’s regular Pig in a Day courses). Farmer’s markets and butchers are the best places to find them, but supermarkets now have a wide range, too.
Texture is key: a good sausage should have bite and a bit of snap, with a juicy, meaty interior, rather than pasty from too much rusk (a crumb typically made with flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda) in the filling. Then there’s flavour: a decent sausage should be rich in umami, well-seasoned but not overpowering, so you can actually taste the meat, and not be too sweet or packed with preservatives.
