In with a bang

British Sausage Appreciation Week is fast approaching - Kerry Rogan celebrates the great British banger.

There can be few pubs in the UK without bangers and mash on their menus. A traditional pub grub favourite for decades, sausages are enjoying a bit of a revival, with even the trendiest gastropubs offering hearty bangers and mash.

London's Sausage and Mash Café in hip Notting Hill is doing big business selling, as the name suggests, just sausage and mash.

Sausages are such a UK favourite that there is even a British Sausage Appreciation Society, formed in 1991 to promote the product.

Timed to coincide with Bonfire Night, this year's British Sausage Appreciation Week is an ideal opportunity to make the most of the huge variety of sausages available.

Organised by British Meat and the British Sausage Appreciation Society, this year's event takes place from October 29 until November 5.

Sausages are very cost-effective, versatile and nutritious and the appreciation week is a great time to serve up some new dishes and run special sausage promotions.

There are more than 400 varieties of sausages on the market today. Many are regional and are named after the place where they were originally made. It is almost guaranteed that there will be a sausage in existence that hails from your region, so why not offer a promotion on locally-made sausages?

Or add some foreign flair to sausages by serving up Greek-style pork sausages in pitta bread or Thai curry sausages with rice?

For more information contact British Meat Foodservice on 01908 844114 or visit www.britishmeatfoodservice.com.

Sausage facts​

• In 320AD Roman Emperor Constantinus I and the Catholic Church made sausage-eating a sin and sausage consumption was banned.
• Sausage restaurant RK Stanleys in London serves more than 3,000 sausages every week.
• The world record for the longest sausage currently stands at 35 miles long and is held by the British Sausage Appreciation Society.
• The most expensive sausages were made from fillet steak, champagne and truffles and cost £20 per pack.
• British schoolchildren eat enough sausages every year to encircle the earth five times.
• Sausages were nicknamed bangers during the Second World War because when they were fried they tended to explode with a bang.

To prick or not to prick?​

The question of whether sausages should be pricked during cooking has raised controversy for decades.

Years ago home-made sausages needed to be pricked to release the pockets of air that occurred when the sausages were packed either too tight or too loose.

Nowadays caterers can buy top-quality sausages from butchers and suppliers and are not faced with this problem.

British Meat recommends cooking sausages slowly and evenly and not pricking them, in order to maintain their flavours.

The Food Standards Agency recommends an internal cooking temperature of 72°C for two minutes.

Sausage recipes:​

Bangers and mash with thyme and mushroom gravy

Thai noodle and sausage soup(pictured)​

Full English brunch slice