Juicy, slightly sweet, slightly spicy and well seasoned ground pork filling mixed with deliciously caramelized apple and roasted fennel spice, wrapped in a golden brown, buttery, flaky puff pastry. Up your sausage roll game with these Caramelized Apple and Fennel, Pork Sausage Rolls. These will be THE BEST SAUSAGE ROLLS you ever make!
So I heard that the USA is unfamiliar with these things. What the hell? That’s unacceptable! Time to change that! 🙂
While that may not be true for all Americans, I feel like those who don’t know about it might be seriously missing out on some amazing comfort food magic! Wikipedia calls it as a British savoury pastry snack that’s popular in many commonwealth countries, which I can totally attest to. I present to you, the wickedly delicious, Sausage Roll!
What is a sausage roll you ask? It’s ground/minced meat (pork, beef, veel, chicken, lamb – whatever!), seasoned and spiced, and wrapped in pastry (puff pastry or short crust pastry sometimes), glazed with some egg wash and then baked to a golden brown, buttery, flaky, all kinds of drool-worthy savoury treat! No, it’s not “rolled sausage” and it’s not pigs in a blanket, though it may look like a closely-related cousin. It’s so much better than pigs in a blanket. It’s hard to beat a flaky, buttery, well-seasoned sausage roll, warm out of the oven. Very hard. Maybe even impossible.
Sausage filling – pork, salt, thyme, fennel, black pepper, caramelized apple mix, butter and garlic
Today I’m going to give these an even more flavourful twist by making Caramelized Apple, Fennel and Pork Sausage Rolls! Deliciously caramelized sweet apple and roasted fennel spice (with undertones of mint), mixed with pork – to give you a well seasoned, sweet, juicy, slightly spicy and spiced pork filling that’s wrapped in a buttery, flaky puff pastry.
[bctt tweet=”Get with these #SausageRolls now! Caramelized Apple & Fennel, Pork Sausage Rolls #recipe FTW!”]
If you haven’t had sausage rolls before, there’s really no time to waste. 🙂
Just like Wikipedia says, sausage rolls were a quintessential part of my childhood while growing up in New Zealand and later in Australia. As kids, this was one of our absolute favourite party snacks and as adults, it was an easy to make, yet delicious meal when you were short on time and cash. These are widely popular in cafes, and available in supermarkets in frozen form, so all you got to do is bake ’em at home and serve fresh for lunch/dinner, for guests or at parties as a snack/appetizer. I can’t even recall the number of times I used a couple (or more, there may have been more) of these to substitute a full meal aaand…
Something this good needs a bit of love, which is why I’m not going to just take some minced meat and then slap it on a pastry, bake it and be done. Nope, no can do.
The caramelized apple and fennel take these to a whole new gourmet level, so that a glass of wine would not be out of place next to a plateful of these.
Notes about the recipe –
Caramelizing apples adds another layer of flavour to the sausage rolls. Apple sauce was an option, but that would have integrated with the pork filling too much and not given me a distinct apple flavour. So I went with bits of caramelized apple that gave me bursts of delicious flavour, every time I bit into the roll.
The apple was cut into really small 1 cm thick batons and then sliced thinly. These pieces, when caramelized, didn’t interfere with the integrity or the consistency of the pork filling, since you don’t want a separated or crumbly sausage filling either. You want it nice and smooth, juicy, without large pieces of anything. I achieved that with the really small pieces of caramelized apple, while adding a wonderful sweetness to the filling too.
Apple pieces to caramelize
And to balance that sweetness, I added roasted fennel that was ground to a powder (or you can use already ground fennel powder). This has undertones of mint, along with some chilli flakes for some heat.
Plus I added some breadcrumbs with some melted butter to keep the pork really nice and juicy. Since I used lean pork, it won’t be too much to do this, so that you don’t end up with a dry sausage filling.
How to line your sausage filling on the puff pastry sheet. Please note that the sheet has not been cut into two yet.
I sprinkled some black sesame seeds on top but that was purely for aesthetics. You can use white sesame seeds, poppy seeds or just keep it plain. I also sprinkled some sea salt on top, but that too is optional.
Ingredients
Caramelized Apple
- 2 tbsp butter
- 7-8 oz Granny Smith apples cored and cut into 1 cm thick batons and sliced thinly (as seen in image above)
- 5 oz finely diced sweet onion
- 3 tbsp white sugar
- 2 tbsp apple cider
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ tsp chilli flakes
Sausage Rolls
- 1 lb pork
- Caramelized apple
- 2 large cloves of garlic chopped finely
- 1 tsp thyme leaves
- 2 tsp heaped fennel seeds dry roasted and ground to a powder (about 2 tsp of ground fennel)
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ cup bread crumbs
- 2 tbsp butter melted
- pepper
- generous pinch of cayenne pepper
- 2 sheets of frozen puff pastry 9 x 9 inches
To finish
- 1 egg - for egg wash
- Sea salt flakes
- Sesame seeds black or white / poppy seeds
Instructions
- Heat 2 tbsp of butter in a nonstick pan. When melted, add the onions & sugar and saute over medium heat until the onions start to turn golden brown, about 15 minutes.
- Add the apple, apple cider and salt and cook for another 20-30 minutes until the liquid is reduced and the apples have caramelized. Add the chilli flakes and cook for a few more minutes. Set aside to cool slightly.
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- In a bowl, place the ground pork, breadcrumbs and pour the melted butter over the bread crumbs, and then add the cooled caramelized apple, chopped garlic, thyme leaves, ground fennel, salt pepper and cayenne pepper. Mix with your hands or a spoon, until everything is mixed through well. Divide the mix into four portions.
- Lightly flour your work-space with some AP flour. Place one puff pastry sheet on your bench and cut it in half, so you have two 9 x 4.5 inch rectangles. Take a single portion of the sausage filling and while leaving a 1 cm margin, place the filling along one long edge of the puff pastry rectangle, evenly. Brush both long edges with some egg wash, and carefully roll up the pastry sheet with the sausage filling, until the ends overlap by about 1 cm. Gently pinch the two ends together to create a seal. Place the seam side down, and cut this roll into 4 equal parts (with a back and forth motion using a serrated knife so that you cut evenly and smoothly). Place the 4 sausage rolls on the baking tray, slightly apart.
- Repeat with the remaining puff pastry sheet to make 16 sausage rolls in total.
- Using a small sharp knife, make two slits on the top of each sausage roll. Brush the tops generously with egg wash (highly recommended) and sprinkle some salt and sesame seeds (optional).
- Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, and then increase the heat to 375°F and bake for a further 30 minutes or until they are golden brown.
- Take out of the oven, allow them to rest for a few minutes, and serve while warm.
Recipe Notes
FREEZING - You can make these sausage rolls ahead of time and freeze them, covered with plastic wrap (before brushing the tops with egg wash and baking) on a sheet pan, and then once they are frozen, store in a box with parchment paper between separate layers. Then a few hours before you need to serve, set them out on a baking tray (covered) and defrost, brush with egg wash and bake as per the recipe. If you bake them from frozen, they will take a longer to bake.
You can make these Sausage Rolls with Homemade Rough Puff Pastry, instead of store bought too! Here’s my go to recipe to make my own Easy Puff Pastry! 🙂
Did I mention how great these taste? Well, I think it bears repeating. 🙂
You can serve these with some ketchup or tomato sauce on the side (I made some from scratch), but personally, I very much prefer eating them without any kind of dipping sauce. Too much ketchup or dipping sauce can hide the flavours of the apple, fennel and pork filling.
Adding finely sliced apple is so much better than adding apple puree, because you can still taste the caramel and the apple quite distinctly. They add a subtle sweetness that’s present throughout the pork filling, so that you can taste it in every bite. The fennel adds a nice spicy freshness too.
So if you’ve never had sausage rolls before, go ahead and give these a try. You too will regret nothing. Nothing!
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Oh wow, I am sooooo going to make these! As a Kiwi I also grew up eating these (though only occasionally at family gatherings, birthdays etc because of how unhealthy they are) but I think using lean pork should at least be slightly better for you. 🙂
Great to see Ai Ping (Curious Nut) is a fan too – her recipes are some of my all time favourites. If you haven’t already google for “Curious Nut”, check her site out and feast your eyes at her amazing recipes.
Is it 7 apples 8oz each or 7 to 8 ounces of apple total
Hi Nicole, that’s 7 to 8 ounces of apple total. So it’ll be just 1-2 apples, depending on the size.
Ingredients are solid but the instructions are a little off, I burnt the first batch of apple using a medium heat I found a low and slow approach way better also the cook times of 30 minutes to reduce was off as well, the flavour of the dish is excellent, I modified it slightly by adding a little onion and lemon myrtle oil to the filling and I also added fresh apple and lemon zest to the caramel, when I made the rolls I used half the mix in the mixture and the other half of the caramel as a layer on top so every bite was bliss! I coated the pastry I’m ghee and a white truffle salt and served with a salad of pickled baby fig, fresh apple slices, garlic feta and toasted pine nut
It was stunning
These are amazing! Made them about 3 times now for parties etc, with always consistent results. I cut them into 32 instead of 16 so they’d go further and be little party bite sized. These have become firm favourites and everyone keeps requesting them at gatherings. Thanks!
I love sausage rolls and have been making them for years this is a new take which were delicious!! I make them for breakfast using breakfast sausage and with sweet and hot Italian Sausage among other flavors, to suit the different tastes of my family members and they all freeze really well. I flash freeze them (before adding egg wash) for about an hour in my freezer (if using one in your fridge’s freezer it may take a little longer depending on that appliances age) Then wrap them each in a bit of parchment like a tootsie roll and pop them into a zip lock style bag or I use my vacuum sealer for really large batches (to avoid ice crystals) I can’t say how long they keep because they are always gone within a month
Made your sausage rolls as pies using your pastry. Took one to work for lunch. Shared ir with our chef. I work at a resort. It made him go wow that is great. They are absolutely delicious.
My child can’t eat the dish which has fennel :((! The sweet flavor of fennel in this dish can be replaced by anise? Will it have any problem if i use it for your recipe?
Hi Lita! You can absolutely leave out the fennel, or substitute it with anise seeds without a problem 🙂
I hope you love this recipe. Let me know if you have any problems!
Cheers 🙂
Just made these today. I made tons of minor substitutions (apple juice instead of apple cider, mix of white and red onions instead of sweet onions, Fuji apple instead of Granny Smith) but they still came out great. Has a slight kick of heat from chili flakes and cayenne, buttery, flaky. Excellent flavor.
My only concern with this recipe is the temperature — I baked as directed (15 min at 350, 30 min at 375) but I ended up pulling them out after 30 minutes just as they were dark brown on bottom. If I left them in the entire time, they would’ve burnt to a crisp! Of course, every oven’s different so I’d highly suggest you keep an eye out on yours while baking. Thanks for the recipe – cheers!
thanks for sharing Becca, i am not using apple cider too, and time in baking is just an additional guide, not an absolute indicator / standard, seeing is believing..
Cannot wait to try these
Going to bake these next week but want to give myself the extra challenge of making my own puff pastry. Have you done this? Does the pastry have to be frozen before you use it?
Hi Jen!
YES, I do make sausage rolls regularly with my homemade rough puff pastry (the link for this is now in the post too!). Making them with classic puff pastry should be the same. You just have to make sure it is rolled out to the same thickness as store bought puff pastry. Frozen puff pastry will be extremely difficult to work with as they won’t be pliable enough to fold over and seal in the sausage filling – so I recommend that you use puff pastry that has been chilled in the refrigerator 🙂
I hope that helps! I would love to know how they turned out too! 🙂
Dini
I have made these and they were good.. Froze the remainder and they were even better when reheated.
Would definitely make these agaom.
My friend made these for a get together……they were amazingly good!
Hi Sheila! Thank you for visiting my blog and especially for that lovely comment! I am so glad everyone liked these sausage rolls! 🙂
I love the addition of apple! It must be so good:) Pinning!
These look delicious and I can’t wait to make a batch. I was thinking of having them at an upcoming holiday party. Is there a way to make these ahead and freeze them off at all? Maybe before they are baked? Just wondering if you have tried at all or have any tips/suggestions. Thanks!
I haven’t frozen them myself, but I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t work! You could cut the sausage rolls and freeze them (before baking without an egg wash) on a sheet pan and store them in a box with parchment paper separating the layers.
A few hours before you need them, set them out on a baking tray (covered) and defrost them, brush with egg wash and bake them as per the recipe. 🙂 I hope that helps!
I LOVE them! They look absolutely delicious! Big chance I’ll be making these for Christmas this year 😀
These look amazing!! Thanks so much for sharing!
I can easily eat several of these delicious sausage rolls in one sitting if I am not careful! Looks so gooooood!!!
Dini, I would make a total pig of myself because I would want to keep these fabulous sausage rolls all to myself. ** happily rubbing my belly** They look absolutely mouthwatering and amazing!
My British boyfriend had a similar reaction when he introduced me (an American) to these a couple years back. They are so good! Perhaps it’s time for me to make some of these for a treat. Maybe an appetizer for New Year’s Eve??
These look absolutely DELICIOUS n So Comforting! Would love to gobble some with Hot Chai – Thanks for sharing the recipe.
I love sausage rolls…and these sound fantastic. Have pinned and will be making soon!!
These look amazing ! Pinning this !
These look AMAZING!! I need to have a party now!!
I read that a lot of people don’t know sausage rolls and was surprised. They are SO delicious! 😀
Why do I not have these in my life? Or in front of my face at this very moment? These are definitely worlds beyond the pigs-in-a-blanket that I grew up with… they aren’t even cousins; that’s way too close. But these sausage rolls sound seriously amazing – a perfect appetizer or tailgating/party food. YUM! Thank you for bringing these into my life 🙂
I love your recipe ideas. This one is so much fun.
I’ve heard of sausage rolls before, but this variation sounds absolutely wonderful! You’re right though…more of us Americans need to know about sausage rolls! We’re seriously missing out! 🙂
Ohhh, one of things I miss about living in New Zealand is the sausage rolls! YUM!!!!!!
Never had a Sausage Roll before but I need one know!!! These look delicious!!
These are right up our alley. Perfect for game day! Thank you thank you
Fat. Die. Me. 🙂 PS. Love the GIF