Clonakilty
€1.99 for 227g, €8.77 per kg
Highs The most striking thing about these sausages is their pinkness — while their rivals have the colour, and sometimes the texture — of the greasy finger of a west of Ireland farm hand (yum), these would blend in with a chorus line of pigs wearing pink tutus. We’re not sure if that is a high or a low or an entirely neutral fact but it is undeniably true. They are increasingly widely available and come from a company with a very good reputation when it comes to making breakfast products.
Lows We couldn’t help but wonder if these sausages were, however, riding on the coat tails of the Clonakilty black and white pudding? While those two products have been frequently found on top of the tasting pile for many years, there is nothing that suggests these sausages deserve the same accolades. The texture is decidedly mushy and the overriding flavours are of grease and salt which, arguably, is not a bad thing in a breakfast sausage but we would have liked just a little bit more. They were also the dearest product trialled.
Verdict Disappointing
Star rating * *
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Kearns
€1.95 for 227g, €8.60 per kg
Highs These are the second cheapest of the sausages tasted — although the difference in price between them and the dearest is marginal. They have a decent peppery kick which is added to the saltiness that you might expect and have a slightly firmer and meatier texture than some of their rivals — although they do have the lowest pork content of all the sausages reviewed — 54 per cent.
Lows They did leave a troubling amount of grease behind in the pan, although to be fair so did all the other sausages and they shrivelled up alarmingly on the pan, so what was left behind after the cooking process was a fairly insubstantial sausage, which means you’d probably have to eat more of them which might not be the healthiest thing to do — although as an occasional thing you’d probably be grand.
Verdict A decent tasting sausage
Star rating * * *
Avoca
€3.95 for 454g, €8.70 per kg
Highs You’d imagine that a sausage bought in this fancy dan food store would be wildly more expensive than the ones found in your regular supermarket, right? We certainly did and were very surprised indeed when we realised these sausages are pretty much the same price as all the more familiar and more widely available brands on the market. They have a 70 per cent pork content which was promising and they were much more substantial than their rivals, so you could envisage eating them not only for breakfast but as a fairly low key centre piece to another meal.
Lows While they were definitely cheaper than we expected, they were also not as nice as we expected. Apart from the size of the individual sausages, there really was very little to differentiate them from their more mainstream rivals. They had the same salty greasiness and the sausage meat was as mushy as we found elsewhere and you’ll probably struggle to find them outside of Avoca outlets.
Verdict Okay but hardly worth the journey
Star rating * * *
Tesco pork sausages
€0.99 for 227g, €4.37 per kg
Highs We are not often surprised by products but we were this week. These Irish-made sausages are — by a hefty margin — the cheapest and, it has to be said, we approached the tasting with a heavy heart. “Cheap sausage” is not exactly a phrase to make the spirits soar. But while we can’t say they made our spirits soar, nor did they make our stomachs turn. In fact they tasted very, very similar to their rivals. The ingredient list tells us they are made with 70 per cent pork which puts them on a par with what we thought was going to be the significantly more upmarket sausage from Avoca, and substantially ahead of both the other brands which can be found on mainstream supermarket shelves. At 1.7g, they also have a little bit less salt than either the Kearns or the Clonakilty. They look pretty much the same as the others when they come off the pan.
Lows There are definitely much better sausages on the market — if not on the page this week — and you’d probably not want to eat too many of them, although we do think Tesco’s suggestion that a portion is two sausages is quite ridiculous. They are also not as widely available as the more mainstream brands.
Verdict Cheap but you’d not know it
Star rating * * * *
