From My Kitchen

Not necessarily just for Christmas (it’s pretty wonderful throughout the winter) we are very fond of a giant sausage roll in our house, especially when part of a roast dinner or evening of festive nibbles. The key is to remember to make the stuffing and sausage elements before you need them, even the day before’s fine, because they need to be cold before you wrap them in pastry otherwise the pastry will melt and it’ll all go horribly wrong. Remember to do that and the rest is a breeze. Serves 4 ish.

Ingredients

450g sausage meat

170g pack dried sage & onion stuffing

500g puff pastry, chilled

1 egg, beaten

Method

1. Fry the sausage meat in a pan, breaking it up with a spatula or wooden spoon, and cook for a good 5 minutes until partially cooked. Set aside on kitchen paper to drain and cool.
2. While that’s happening, make your stuffing mix per the packet instructions (I use Paxo, and for every 170g of dried mix you add 450ml boiling water), mix well and leave to cool too, then mix both elements together.
3. Turn on your oven to heat to 180C (fan).
4. Roll out your pastry on a floured board to make a large rectangle or two – shape and size doesn’t really matter but I tend to keep rolling until the pastry is about 2-3mm thick then take it from there.
5. With a long edge in front of you, place a whole bunch of the stuffing mix in a sausage shape about 2 inches thick onto the pastry, far enough away from the edge of the pastry so that you can largely cover the sausage.
6. Do just that, then cut the remaining pastry so that you can fold up the other side, brush the edge with beaten egg and fold together with a little overlap.
7. Cut the ends off, brush them with egg, then flip the whole thing over so the overlap is underneath and tuck the ends under too.
8. Repeat with the remaining pastry & stuffing mix, or not if you’ve made one absolutely giant one.
9. Brush the top and side with the beaten egg, then cut out shapes or words with any remaining pastry, stick them on and brush those with egg too.
10. Bake for 45 minutes or until the pastry is golden and cooked through.