I saw this recipe on TV on Everyday Gourmet, with former Masterchef contestant Justine Schofield. What attracted me to the recipe was the ingredients she used, adding sambal oelek made me quite curious to taste how it would turned out. It also looked delicious when the sausage rolls were taken out of the oven. I thought why not give it a try, it’d be way better than those frozen/Four and Twenty/tucker shop varieties.

My primary difference was using Beef Mince, along with Beef/Pork Sausages (With no skin) as noted below.

Sausage Rolls (Everyday Gourmet – Justine Schofield)

Time: 35 minutes
Serves: 16

Ingredients
2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
300g lamb mince (Or Beef)
3 Italian sausages, skin removed (6 small Beef/Pork Sausages – no skin)
1 ½ tsp. fennel seeds
1 tbs sambal oelek (2 1/2 tbs sambal oelek)
1 tbs tomato paste
1 onion, finely chopped and fried
2 tbs parsley, finely chopped
2 eggs, 1 lightly beaten
1 carrot, finely grated
Salt and pepper
Toasted Sesame Seeds (Optional)

Method

1. Pre heat the oven to 200C. Lightly grease and line a large baking tray with baking paper.

2. In a large bowl mix lamb (beef) mince, sausages, fennel seeds, tomato paste, sambal oelek, onion, grated carrot, parsley and 1 egg. Season well with salt and pepper. With your hands thoroughly combine the meat mixture. If you want to taste whether or not the seasoning is to your liking, try  taking a small spoonful of the meat mixture and cooking it (pan/oven/microwave) but if using a microwave make sure it’s cooked all the way through.

3. Cut pastry sheet in half. Place one quarter of the mixture along the length of the pastry pressing together tightly. Roll the sausage roll log until the meat is completely covered with ½ of pastry. Cut excess pastry. Cut into 4 pieces and place on the baking tray.Repeat the process with the remaining ingredients.

4. Brush some lightly beaten egg over the mini sausage rolls and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top, cook in the oven for 20 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown. Serve with your favourite tomato chutney or sauce.

Impressions

I loved this recipe! Having the sambal oelek in the recipe makes the difference, It simply cannot be ignored. I saw in Justine’s pictures that she sprinkled what looked like black sesame seeds on top but I wasn’t sure. We didn’t have any so I used the white variety instead, made it look better (I think).

You may notice that the fat from the sausages/ mince etc liquifies and spills on to the baking paper. This is what happened with mine, I just scraped it off from the bottom and cut it off from the sausage rolls and re-plated it.

Using beef does give it a strong beef taste but I think some will enjoy it, as not everybody seems to like the taste/smell of lamb.