Homemade British Pork Sausages
Homemade sausages recipe for the perfect British pork banger, whether it is for a toad in the hole or bangers and mash, you need these!
Making sausages at home is not difficult; it is all about technique. Budget about an hour for your first try, but as you gain experience, it gets much quicker.
Homemade British Bangers
It does not matter where you are in the world; no one makes sausages quite like your homeland. It is just one of the rules of being a migrant.
I love sausages, whether they are stuffed in a sausage sandwich, part of a full English fry up (pictured below), bangers and mash with onion gravy, or any of the countless dishes where they are the start, they are one of my favourite things to eat.
As you can see, my quest to make my own bangers led to perfect-looking British Bangers; they taste perfect, too!
You may be surprised to find out that, sausage skins aside, the ingredients in a classic sausage are really very common. You probably have most of them at home.
And despite what you have seen on the Generation Game, making homemade sausages is really not that difficult.
Although you do need to shop for a couple of things.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use store-bought minced pork?
Yes, but you want a good bit of fat in the meat; you want around 30% fat to make the best sausages.
Most high-fat minced pork in supermarkets is really cheap stuff and doesn't make the best bangers in my experience.
Can I make beef or chicken sausages?
Yes, absolutely, especially if you have a meat grinder!
The techniques here will hold for all types of sausage, so all you need to do is add your seasoning. The best way to do this is to season your mix, then fry off a little pattie and have a taste.
Is it easy to make sausages?
Yes, but it is very much technique-based and it is a skill that you have to learn. But learning that skill is great fun and an opportunity to make loads of childish jokes.
I have a recipe for a Cumberland sausage ring that features a video (below) which demonstrates 90% of the technique.
It covers all aspects except the twisting of the sausages, so this should help a lot!
What sausage skins do you use?
I always use natural sausage skins, and when I lived in Hungary, they were readily available everywhere, from supermarkets to small convenience stores.
Since returning to the UK, I've had to switch to online shopping. I use a company called Weschenfelder and opt for hog casing for nice girthy bangers.
You may also be able to sweet-talk your butcher into selling you some!
Serving Suggestions
You can use your homemade sausages everywhere you would use store-bought sausages; you can also add any flavourings you want.
I'll not list all of my sausage recipes, but I will mention a few favourites. First and foremost, you have the majesty that is toad in the hole (pictured above), bangers cooked in a Yorkshire pudding batter.
Next up would be a couple of "spicy" takes on banger and mash, I make devilled sausages (pictured below) in a spicy gravy and some honey and mustard glazed sausages.
Finally, how about a salad? Sausages may be stodgy comfort food most of the time, but they are awesome in this delicious sausage, new potato and apple salad.
If salad ain't your thing, how about this wonderful sausage, cabbage and green lentil stew?
Equipment Used
The main bit of kit that you need to make homemade sausages is a meat grinder with some form of sausage stuffing attachment.
Whilst that may sound all very expensive, nothing could be further from the truth.
I have a generic branded meat grinder, and it came with all of the attachments for making sausages and kofte. At my last look (2024), they will cost about £40-50. You can get manual grinders and stuffing machines, but I have never been satisfied with them.
Full Equipment list:
- Meat grinder/sausage stuffer.
- Mixing bowl and a small bowl to soak the sausage skins.
- Chopping board.
- Kitchen knife.
- Weighing scales and or measuring cups and spoons.
Perfect Homemade Sausages Recipe
Ingredients
- 5 m Natural Sausage Casings
- 750 g Pork Blade 26oz
- 750 g Pork Shoulder 26oz
- 400 g Fatty Pork Belly 14oz
- 125 g Dried Breadcrumbs 1¼ Cups
- 3 tablespoon Dried Sage
- 1-1½ tablespoon Salt
- 1½ tablespoon Ground Mace
- 1 teaspoon Sweet Paprika
- 2 tablespoon Powdered Mustard
- 2 tablespoon Black Pepper
Instructions
- Soak the sausage skins as per the instructions on the packet and rinse off any salt.
- Chop the meat and fat into large pieces and pass them through a medium plate on your meat grinder. Ensure that you alternate between fat and meat to begin the mixing process.
- Mix the herbs, spices and dried breadcrumbs into the minced meat.
- Fry off a small piece of sausage meat to test the seasoning and tweak it to your liking.
- Feed the sausage casings onto the sausage-filling attachment for your grinder. It is OK (obligatory) to make childish jokes at this point!
- Set up the meat grinder to the sausage-making configuration. Begin to fill the sausage skins and as soon as you can see the pork mixture beginning to show through into the skin then turn off the grinder.
- Tie a knot into the end of the skin, trying to eliminate as much air as you can. Then proceed with filling the sausage skins.
- To divide the long sausage into individual portions, pinch the sausage and twist. When moving to the next sausage pinch again, but be sure to twist in the opposite direction, repeating always in the opposite direction to the previous sausage.
When I was a lad, the local butcher used to make (depending on the season) a beef and tomato sausage. They were a 'sometimes' treat in our house. They had a tang to them that ordinary bangers didn't. I've never come across them since the 1970s and would jump in a time machine and go back, just to buy a few pounds of them again.
I think beef tomatoes get a bit of an undue bashing, I quite like them, sure, not on my fry up or butty, but they are superb in sausage casseroles, pies or curries. Beef and tomato sounds awesome and not something I've come across before.
Brian 🙂
First time making sausages and I chose this recipe to give it a go. Easy enough to make, and tasty, but I found them slightly over salted and too much pepper. I’d reduce the salt a little and the pepper down to 1.5 tbsp next time
I like your recipes, but with adding breadcrumbs to your sausage you need to add water other wise too dry, I'm from Gloustershire/Yorkshire and live in the Philippines
I disagree, I'm a Brummie and come from a long line of butchers 😉 There are no right or wrong ways of doing things, only different ways, this way is mine (ok maybe a few generations before me) but it is now mine.
@Brian Jones, I'm a Brummie too, and I'm so longing for sausages to taste like they used to when I was a lad. I don't know what it is about corporate supermarket shelf sausages today, but there's something wrong - they all seem 'stodgy' if you know what I mean? Growing up, meat was a premium, so sausages were a weekly staple to fill the family plates and stretch the budget. I've commented above about our local butcher's Beef & Tomato speciality - I adored them! Sadly, his business went the way of most of our high street butchers. Supermarket chains have a lot to atone for!
Hey there fellow Brummie!
I think supermarket sausages have always been a bit naff to be fair. Growing up my Grandad and Uncle were butchers in Brum and they would always turn their noses up at supermarket sausages, although as I kid I quite like their squidgy almost paste like texture.
My Grandad had a shop in Moseley until the late 60's early 70's (I think) and my uncle travelled about a bit but had a shop in Yardley Wood in the 90's before going on to work with long time friends, Lashford's... who make cracking bangers. Sadly their final shop closed in fairly recent years, but they have moved into online sales and supply to the hospitality industry.
Now for me it's butchers or homemade bangers or no bangers at all, this recipe was made with my Uncle on one of his visits to Hungary and fed into all of my other banger recipes. But now I am back in the UK, I rarely feel the need to make sausages as we have two local butchers that make incredible sausages, although when time allows I do have to have a play with beef and tomato... or maybe I'll have a whisper in the butchers ear and see if they fancy a crack 😁
All the best
Brian
I am making sausage in a country other than Britain and the cuts are different. What is the difference between "blade" and "shoulder". The latter I can easily get, the former is unclear to me. Thanks for your help!
Depending on where you are blade is part of the shoulder, it is the upper part closer to the neck, it is called Boston Butt in the US I am lead to believe. It has a "harder" and more robust fat structure than the lower shoulder. It is from the end of the loin nearest the neck and above the shoulder. I hope that helps?
Hi Brian
I’ve been making our own sausage for quite a while now but have mostly used ready mixed seasonings from places like weschenfelder but I have decided it’s time to add my own seasoning and just happened to see a link to your Cumberland sausage, in your recent email. So I will be making the Cumberland and also this one on my next batch when I will also be able to try out my Christmas present which was a sausage stuffer.
I do use collagen casings for mine as I find hog casings too chewy. But maybe I haven’t found the right brand yet.
I look forward to trying your recipes and will report back.
Cheers
Steve
Great to hear from you Steve... I love making my own sausages, it is so addictive, the Cumberland sausage is a corker and one I love.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Brian
Hi Brian.
I just made your pork breakfast banger recipe as promised. I used just shoulder as that’s what I got on offer. I made up the seasonings as per your recipe. First of all , I like my measurements in grams as tbsp measurements are a bit vague. So if I hit on a great recipe I want to recreate time and again it makes it a bit hit and miss if using spoons to measure. And maybe that’s why I found this recipe too heavy on the mace. I ground mine quite finely so maybe that’s why, or maybe ready ground mace is milder? Anyway my wife thought they were beautiful and that’s what matters. After frying a test patty I decided it needed more salt. This would also counter some of the mace overload. In fact I doubled the sAlt. This made it better. Still a Lovely sausage but the mace element reminded me of the German sausage ( bratwurst etc). I will definitely be making this again but with. Half the mace and double the salt. By the way I only use Himalayan salt which might affect the ratios a bit.
Thanks for the recipe. Steve
Hey Steve...
Thanks for the thorough feedback a couple of points that are definitely worth addressing.
First of all salt, you are absolutely right in the fact that not all salts are equal, there have been reams written and whole TV shows devoted to the differences in salt and I really can not go into an appropriate amount of detail and still get put in front of readers on sausages rather than an essay on salt.
Suffice to say this recipe is underseasoned on the salt front and is aimed at pretty regular ground salt that the majority of people use. But that is where the advice to fry off a patty and taste comes from.
I am usually pretty steadfast in the use of scales when it comes to food but when I kicked off my site in 2015 it became very apparent very quickly that the majority of people just do not have scales working accurately at such small figures. So I agree it is not the most "scientific" approach but I have to feed an audience, without readers I would have had to close my site a long time ago.
As for mace, well we all like different "stuff", I guess living for 12 years in central Europe has certainly changed my tastes 😀
Sincerely thanks again for taking the time to write such a comprehensive message, it is stuff like this that makes my site better and me a better writer and recipe developer!
I'll spend some time in the coming week addressing some of these points in the main body of the post.
All the best.
Brian.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your lovely recipes. Two years now, and I'm still underwhelmed by the choice of supermarket sausages here in Berlin. I'm going to take the leap and try making my own, as I've always wanted. Whilst I appreciate you might not want to advertise any products, do you think you could recommend a) a meat grinder and b) natural sausage skins to a fellow EU dweller (online sales preferable)? You could always email me instead of posting on your site if you want to keep your choices private.
Thanks!
Hi... Thanks for taking the time to write to me although I am not sure I can really help. My meat grinder is made by Clatronic, a bit of research indicates that they do trade in Germany, mine is ancient now and does not exist on their website anymore but they do have equivalents.
As I mentioned in my post I initially went with some very well known brands and neither lasted a year. I try not to promote products because to do it with any justice I would need to compare and contrast thoroughly, sadly something that really does not happen on the web very often.
I'm afraid I can't really offer any recommendation on Natural Sausage Skins, I can buy them everywhere from the local butcher to Spar through to major supermarkets here without thinking about it. In the UK I would advise you to speak to a local butcher so I would probably advise the same in Germany. Although searching on Google I have found this https://peter-gelhard.de/en/rheingold/ they may be able to help hook you up with a distributor 🙂
Have fun... Making sausages is a great giggle!
I have always wanted to make my own sausage but never have. I know my Kitchenaide mixer does have an attachment to do this! Im bookmarking this, time for me to give the old try! Thanks for inspiring me!
Your sausages look so good and you make it sound pretty easy and fun. I need to get a meat grinder attachment for my Ferrari (mixer not car!) and a sausage filler then I'll be good to go!
Have you ever watched the show Seinfeld? There is an episode where Kramer has a meat grinder and is pumping out sausages and it is just hilarious. We die every time we watch it, so I totally get why you guys would get the giggles when making sausages! I would love to try making my own sausages at home because we enjoy smoking them on our grill outside!
I have always wanted to make my own sausage but never have. I know my Kitchenaide mixer does have an attachment to do this! Im bookmarking this, time for me to give the old try! Thanks for inspiring me!
Give it a go, it is great fun and definitely a way to up your sausage game 😮 😉
Your sausages look so good and you make it sound pretty easy and fun. I need to get a meat grinder attachment for my Ferrari (mixer not car!) and a sausage filler then I'll be good to go!
I love that you have a Ferrari mixer, please tell me you also have a Lamborghini tractor too 😀 😀 😀
Have you ever watched the show Seinfeld? There is an episode where Kramer has a meat grinder and is pumping out sausages and it is just hilarious. We die every time we watch it, so I totally get why you guys would get the giggles when making sausages! I would love to try making my own sausages at home because we enjoy smoking them on our grill outside!
lol, no Seinfeld missed me by it was during my partying, travelling student phase and have little recollection of any TV for most of those 10 years 😉 Making sausage is definitely a giggle and a great way to be childish and rude 😉
I would really like to give sausage-making a go - I've got a mate here who recently started making his own, so hopefully I can give it a try round his. Have you heard of Britwurst Vienna? Rich has started making and selling bangers in, well, Vienna and is doing really well with it. Not sure what the Germans would make of me doing that though 😉
HA Ha, no I had not heard of it but have just seen it on Facebook... Superb! I do make small batches for some fairly local expats, but we live in the middle of nowhere so the market place is small, the good news is that they are fairly simple to make, it really is just about balancing the fat to meat ratio with some 'cereal' and then adding your favourite blend of spices or even vegetables, apple works really well 🙂