Canapé Recipe: Puff Pastry Sausage Bites

I was sent some Wild and Game sausages to use in a recipe, so I made these sausage bites. All images and opinions are my own.

Christmas is a season for entertaining. Having friends round for drinks and nibbles is something we do a lot. Whilst bowls of crisps and nuts are always a hit, serving a couple of homemade canapés makes me feel slightly more of a domestic goddess than I really am. This week I tested out these Puff Pastry Sausage Bites which I’ll be serving to guests on Christmas Eve. They were quickly gobbled up and given the seal of approval from the boys, so I’m sure your guests will like them too.

You could make them with whatever your favourite sausage is, I used some Grouse and Wild Boar sausages from Wild and Game. Wild and Game are a non-profit organisation with the main aim of introducing the British public to game meat. They have a range of game-based pies, pasties, sausage rolls and sausages and want to show that game meat isn’t just for special occasions. Game is a healthy choice and is generally low-fat and low-cholesterol.

My Puff Pastry Sausage Bites are so easy to make, especially if you cheat like me and buy ready-made puff pastry. They’re a crispy canapé, full of gamey flavour which is complimented by a dab of redcurrant jelly. They’re festive without being too in your face about it.

Puff Pastry Sausage Bites

Makes 24 Sausage Bites.

Ingredients:

1 sheet of ready-made puff pastry
A pack of Grouse and Wild Boar Sausages (or your favourite sausages)
Redcurrant jelly, I used just over a tablespoon
1 beaten egg

How to make your sausage bites:

Pre-heat your oven to 200° and put a sheet of baking parchment on a baking tray. Unroll your sheet of puff pastry and using a sharp knife divide it up into 24 squares.

Canapé Recipe: Puff Pastry Sausage Bites

I used a shot glass to press a circle into the middle of each of the squares, you just need the indent rather than cutting through. This should stop the whole pastry square from rising in the oven.

Carefully transfer each square onto your baking sheet. You might need to bake them in batches so don’t cram them in. Using a teaspoon, put a small dollop of redcurrant jelly in each of the circles. You don’t need much, maybe 1/4 of a spoon.

Canapé Recipe: Puff Pastry Sausage Bites

Now is the slightly messy bit. Take a sausage and squeeze the filling out of it put a piece of the sausage-meat on top of each circle. Each sausage should be enough for 6 sausage bites. You should use just 4 sausages for this recipe, if you’ve got a packet of 6 sausages you could make yourself a sausage butty with the last two sausages for your lunch.

Once each square has some redcurrant jelly and sausage-meat in it, brush around the edges of the pastry with the beaten egg and put in the oven. Bake for 15-18 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before serving.

Canapé Recipe: Puff Pastry Sausage Bites

If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like to try –

Five Delicious Vegetarian Comfort Food Dishes

I turned vegetarian when I was 13 and there’s not a lot I miss, but on a cold winter night I do sometimes hanker after the slow cooked, deep flavoured chilli my Nan used to make. Thankfully after lots of practice I’ve finally nailed the recipe and managed to make it vegetarian too.

Most of the warming comfort food dishes from my childhood were meat based – family roast dinners, my Nan’s amazing beef chilli, corned beef hash, shepherd’s pie and bubbling stews cooked so long the meat almost melted in your mouth.

There’s something about cooking up some comfort food which makes you feel like you’re showing your family some extra love. I enjoy throwing a few things in the slow cooker and knowing that by tea time there will be a delicious meal ready for my family.

Vegetarian comfort food can feel a bit hard to come by, so I’ve created and shared some of our favourite family recipes on my blog, here are five of my favourite vegetarian comfort food recipes –

Vegetarian Galletes

These are a recent addition to my comfort food repertoire. They’re really easy to make, utterly delicious and once you get the hang of it you can fill them however you want. I made a Goats Cheese, Caramelised Onion and Quince Galette and a Feta, Red Pesto & Tomato Galette. Both were absolutely bang on and real crowd pleasers.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup

Now autumn is here my soup making pot is starting to see some serious action. Cauliflowers are cheap and plentiful in the shops, so I recreated my favourite soup, but with a cheesy twist. Try my very delicious Norwegian inspired Cauliflower Cheese Soup.

Spanish Style Bravas Sausage Casserole

I’d had it in my head to make a big Spanish style bravas sausage casserole in my slow cooker for a while. This summer hadn’t been up to much and I was desperate to start rustling up comfort food dishes, and this was the first one of the season. I made my sausage casserole with Quorn sausages, but you could very easily make them with your favourite meaty sausages if you’d prefer. I made the sauce in the slow cooker and let it bubble away gently to itself for a few hours. The recipe is really simple and it’s now a firm family favourite.

Authentic Armenian style Imam Bayildi

Imam Bayildi is basically stuffed, baked aubergines. They’re simple to make, you can prepare them ahead of time and then cook them when you need them and they are melt in the mouth gorgeous. I like to use good quality ingredients in this recipe as every single mouthful zings flavour. Fresh vegetables and herbs are essential, they’re packed full of flavour and these sunshiny aubergines are a little bit of summer on a cold autumn evening.

Easy Microwave Jam Sponge

No vegetarian comfort food round-up would be complete without a pudding. This incredibly easy to make and very quick to cook microwave jam sponge is just the ticket to warm your cockles on a cold winter evening. All you need are a few store cupboard ingredients, ten minutes of your time and you’ve got a good pud that’ll make your family smile.

Voucherbox.co.uk have a great blog post about the five healthy foods that can actually save you money, and if you want even more money off your online shop they also have plenty of Sainsbury’s vouchers which you can use.

vegetarian comfort food

Recipe: Spanish Style Bravas Sausage Casserole

When I go out for tapas I always order patatas bravas. I love the crispy pieces of potato smothered in the garlicky, tomatoey bravas sauce. I’ve had it in my head to make a big Spanish style bravas sausage casserole in my slow cooker for a while. This summer has not been up to much and the rainy days have had me guiltily rustling up comfort food dishes, instead of summery salads and such like.

I confess I made my sausage casserole with Quorn sausages, but you could very easily make them with your favourite meaty sausages if you’d prefer. Making the sauce in the slow cooker and letting it bubble away gently to itself for a few hours makes it extra delicious.

Bravas Sausage Casserole

I browned the sausages separately and popped them into the sauce for the last hour or so. The great thing about Quorn sausages is that they take on some of the flavour of the sauce.

To serve I roasted some new potatoes in some oil and once they were cooked I spooned over some sausages and bravas sauce and added a dollop of incredibly garlicky aioli.

Spanish Style Bravas Sausage Casserole

Serves 4
A super simple, delicious and fairly frugal family meal.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 500g cartons of passata
2 tablespoons of tomato purée
1 tablespoon of sweet chilli sauce
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
1 teaspoon of sugar
2 tablespoons of fresh parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
Salt & Pepper to taste
8 sausages (two per person) I used Quorn sausages

Instructions
In a frying pan gently fry the onion in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until it’s soft but not brown. Add in the garlic towards the end of cooking and cook through.

Tip the fried onion and garlic into your slow cooker, add the passata, tomato purée, smoked paprika, sweet chilli sauce, sugar and oregano and cook on medium for about 3 hours. Taste and adjust seasoning if you feel it needs it.

In the frying pan, fry your sausages until they’re brown, drain and add to the sauce and leave to cook through for an hour. Before serving stir through 1 tablespoon of fresh parsley.

Serve the Bravas Sausage Casserole with crispy roasted potatoes and aioli. Scatter with the remaining chopped fresh parsley.

Notes
I sometimes finely dice some peppers, cook them off and add them to the sauce to bump up the veg content. This sauce is perfect for hiding secret veg from your children!
This does make lots of sauce. If you have lots left over, it’s delicious warmed up the next day with crusty bread.

The Bravas Sausage Casserole was delicious and something I will be making over and over again. What’s more it’s very simple, pretty quick to throw together and fairly frugal. What’s not to love?

Recipe: Spanish Style Bravas Sausage Casserole

Bangers for Bonfire Night with Grandad’s Sausages

Being one of those funny vegetarian sorts, I frequently enjoy a Quorn sausage while my meat eating boys scoff down seemingly vast quantities of porky sausages. The boys eat sausages at least once a week, it’s an easy meal and when the small boy is feeling fussy it’s something I know he will eat. Tonight being Bonfire Night and falling slap bang in the middle of British Sausage Week, we had to have bangers for our bonfire tea.

We were given a sample pack of seven different flavoured sausages from Grandad’s Sausages, a family business based in Bury, Greater Manchester. In our porky packet of pleasure (sorry, not sorry) were their traditional British Pork; Olde English; Lincolnshire; Cumberland; Pork & Welsh Leek; Pork & Somerset Apple and Pork & Fiery Chilli. Grandad’s Sausages also make Pork & Crushed Garlic; Pork & Bury Black Pudding; and Pork & Cranberry, but we didn’t get to try them.

I always cook my sausages the same way, probably the heathens way, on a baking tray in the oven, shaking the tray frequently. With cheap supermarket sausages the tray fills with fat and it makes me gag a bit when I clean it. With good quality butchers sausages usually there’s hardly any fat, and these sausages were very lean, but were they lean on flavour too?

Being unable to sample any sausages, I was reliant on the boys tastebuds and their ability to communicate to me the joy of the sausage. This is where the plan fell down, with mouths stuffed with sausages they told me they were “nice and sausagey”, other gems included “meaty” and the pork and fiery chilli was “hot but not melt your face hot”. So there we go folks, suspect the Michelin guide will be knocking on our door any day now to snap the boys up as new inspectors for next year.

For me it’s a good sign if their plates are clean and they were. I asked them post-sausage what their favourites were. Hubs went for the chilli, my Dad went for the pork and apple and the small boy said “sausages”, so that went well. All were deemed a success and I’d happily serve them again to the boys and anyone else who sat nicely at my dining table.

What better way to celebrate British Sausage Week AND Bonfire Night, than with a plate of rather lovely local Grandad’s Sausages.