Ashfield Butcher’s Select Lincolnshire Sausages

I thought I’d try the Butcher’s Select sausages from Aldi, there were a few varieties and so I chose the Lincolnshire sausages.  These are in a pack of 8 sausages at a price of £1.39, so just over 17p per sausage.  I’d not bought sausages for some months as I’ve been buying ready made sausage rolls, but I just fancied some plain sausages for a change.

The Ashfield Butcher’s Select Lincolnshire Sausages are made with pork and delicately seasoned with sage. They use 100% British pork.

I didn’t give too much thought for which sausages I was buying – I’d not bought any sausages from Aldi before, so I figured “any packet will do as a starting point!”.

Can I Oven Bake Sausages?

As I’ve got the small mini oven, my plan was to oven bake these sausages in a dish – unfortunately I chose the wrong dish as the dish I chose wasn’t quite wide enough, but as I’d already put a couple of the sausages into the dish I decided to just go with that, rather than digging around for one with a better fit.

When you oven bake sausages you really need to be able to get them cooking at the same rate and be able to turn them over, but I wasn’t overly bothered about that.

To oven cook sausages that are this thick they need to be cooked in the oven at 170-180°C for about 30 minutes.  I was in a bit of a rush, so only cooked them for 25 minutes, so they weren’t overly brown.

Grill or Fry Sausages?

These methods are quicker, the sausages take just 14-16 minutes to grill, or 10-12 minutes to fry – but I don’t have a hob and I didn’t want the grill to get muckied up with any spitting fat!  So that’s why I chose to oven bake them.

Nutritional Information:

The pack shows that, per sausage, grilled, each sausage contains 98 calories, 6.8 grams of fat (10%), 1.5 grams of sugar (1.5%) and 0.67g salt (17%).

Method:

1. Snip the sausages apart at the twist, using a pair of scissors
2. Place the sausages in an oven proof dish, there’s no need for oil as a lot of fat will come out of the sausages as they cook.  Ideally they should all be flat and with a little gap between them, as you can see from the photo I didn’t do either of these things as I was working with the dish I had and not “the perfect dish”.
   
3. Bake in the oven at 170°C (toaster oven or fan)/180°C electric oven/Gas Mark 5 for 25-30 minutes on the middle shelf.  The packet says to pre-heat the oven, but I put mine in from cold, using the toaster oven I had the top and the bottom elements both on, so they were cooking from both sides, on the bottom shelf.  TURN: Turn the sausages over 2-3x as they’re cooking.
   
4. Once the sausages are cooked, drain away the hot oil carefully and serve your sausages!

Today I just ate two of these sausages, the other two I popped into a takeaway box and put in the fridge for another day, when I could reheat them, or might just serve them cold as a sandwich filling.

Aldi Lincolnshire Sausages Review:

These were nice enough sausages. Although they weren’t overly seasoned, there was a definite taste to them and I liked it.  The sausage skins came away and peeled off during the baking process, but I’m not keen on sausage skins in any case and I wasn’t concerned how the sausages looked as I wasn’t going to be judged on presentation 🙂

For the price I’d be prepared to buy them again, but I’m more likely to try other packs and other flavours in the same range, to see if others are “better”.

A good little grabbable bag, but nothing to write home about.